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Thursday, May 20
"Everybody Draw Muhammed" Day
by
Jason
on Thu 20 May 2010 07:00 AM CST
Even if you want to make a point about censorship, you can't be too careful on "Everybody Draw Muhammed" Day...
Sunday, May 2
"You Can't Handle The Truth" - Media Bans in the Digital Age
by
Jason
on Sun 02 May 2010 07:21 PM CST
Everybody's probably familiar with the sad story of Tori Stafford, the young girl from Woodstock, Ontario who was abducted and killed last year.
Recently, some new detail has apparently come to light but the judge has imposed a publication ban meaning no Canadian media can cover this aspect of the trial. The traditional media aren't happy about this and I can't say I blame them. ...the practical reality is that in the Internet age, trying to stop the
dissemination of information revealed in open court is impractical.
Indeed, placing limits on traditional, responsible media may be
counterproductive, as the only information available to the public will
be incomplete and rife with speculation and rumour. As the Globe & Mail says, all a publication ban does is give free reign for anyone with an Internet connection to add their speculation to the mix (hi!  ) or, with a couple carefully chosen keywords, even profit from the lurid interest. Some Canadian media outlets are doing the best they can to work within the ban, hypothetically musing their way through their reports. A publication ban is doubly useless in the Internet age when a blogger OR a news outlet just across the US border in Buffalo or Cleveland could publish the details without any sanction as was frequently the case during the Karla Homolka trial. Publication bans are even more useless in less sensationalistic circumstances. In the past, media have been prevented from revealing national election results from the east until polls have closed in the west. But again, anybody with an Internet connection and a modicum of technical knowledge could find out what was going on before going to cast their vote...as if enough people would ever be paying enough attention or change their vote significantly if they *did* see results for it to make a difference. Finally, just as with the attention drawn by banned books pushing the questionable item to the top of the bestseller lists, a publication ban only serves to shine a light on information that would've likely made little more than a ripple otherwise. From the Toronto Star article I already linked to above: The facts get distorted. This is going to snowball to epic proportions
and disgustingness. Really, I don’t understand how they’ll manage to
enforce hush-hushness. I’ve been going on Facebook all day to see if
anybody has posted anything about it. That’s so easy to do now, just put
up an anonymous page and say what you like. How are they going to stop
that? It’s impossible to keep secrets in this day and age.”
Friday, April 23
Friday Fun Link - 4% of Librarians Are Virgins But 7% Have Had More Than 20 Sexual Partners In Their Lives (April 23, 2010)
by
Jason
on Fri 23 Apr 2010 11:28 PM CST
Recently, a 1992 study of sex and libraries was published online having originally been published without much initial fanfare but then quickly leading to the firing of the columnist who published it.
Lots of interesting tidbits. I thought about listing what my answers would be but nobody needs to know which Shakespeare play my first time resembles (okay, half "Midsummer Night's Dream" and half "Comedy of Errors" if you really must know.  ) (via reddit.com) Wednesday, April 21
Parody Is Not An Infrigement of Copyright (Watch It While You Can)
by
Jason
on Wed 21 Apr 2010 08:34 PM CST
I wrote about this meme before. Turns out that a couple years after these parodies gave their German-language art house film some international attention, the people who made the movie have decided that the single scene used for all these parodies is an "infringement" of their work. Well, they say that dinosaurs had small brains and that's why they went extinct...
Thursday, April 1
Why Ann Coulter is the Iron Sheik of Politics
by
Jason
on Thu 01 Apr 2010 10:15 PM CST
One of the big hub-bubs of the last week or so was around the fact that American right-wing commentator, Ann Coulter, had one of her speeches in Canada shut down by protesters. The one that was shut down was at the University of Ottawa while others at locations including my alma mater, the University of Western Ontario and my former employer, the University of Calgary (where I spent exactly one week as a page before being hired by the Writers Guild of Alberta!) went on as planned.
After the speech in Ottawa was shut down due to "safety concerns", I was a bit saddened to see the crowing on Facebook and other social media sites by people who should know better (ie. librarians) about how proud this made them. See, I have two big insights into this whole "controversy" that I'd like to share - one comes because I worked in publishing and one comes because I was a huge fan of professional wrestling as a kid. The first observation from the publishing angle is this - the worst thing you can do is draw attention to something you don't agree with as it only gets it more attention/more sales/more money/more notoriety. People on the left and right both seem to miss this anything they try to censor something/someone - whether it's someone like Philip Pullman (great title, eh?) from the right or someone like, well, like Ann Coulter from the left. Often the best thing to do with a book or a person you don't agree with is to ignore it/them (especially one that is so blatantly a media whore like Coulter). Which leads to my second point. Ann Coulter is the modern equivalent of the Iron Sheik (and I'm not hte only one who noticed the similarity.) Now, for those unfamiliar with the 1980's wrestling scene, the Iron Sheik was one of the leading bad guys who had a gimmick of being an evil Iranian doing battle with the super hero American champ, Hulk Hogan. He got "heat" (or crowd response) by saying and acting in the most inflammatory fashion possible - using the American flag as a prop, belittling his enemies and generally, just carrying on like an ass. (Sound familiar?) So yeah, if Ann Coulter happened to come to the University of Regina, I wouldn't have been there protesting - I'd have been there with a box of popcorn and a big foam finger (guess which one?) enjoying the show for what it is - a staged exhibition intended to maximize the heat for a performer who is very skilled at what they do. Oh, and this is a bit of a tangent which has nothing to do with Ann Coulter but I recently learned that Iron Sheik has had a late life career resurgence due to appearances on Howard Stern and YouTube where he plays (?) an amped up, crack-head version of his former character - rambling drunkenly while threatening to humble people by anally raping them! Here's a clip of the Sheik in action which is somewhat NSFW (but compared to some others on YouTube, relatively tame): And here's a photo of Ann Coulter's face that I photoshopped onto the Iron Sheik's body. (Sorry it's not my best work in this vein but I had to try it.) Friday, February 26
FTRW 2010 - Friday Fun Link - "Straight Outta Compton" Edited to *Only* The Profanity
by
Jason
on Fri 26 Feb 2010 11:22 PM CST
For how demonized some albums are, when you cut it down to just the "bad" parts, it really puts things in perspective. 19 seconds. 42 seconds. 29 seconds. 0 seconds. 10 seconds.
(via MetaFilter) Thursday, February 25
FTRW 2010 - Running Back To Saskatoon
by
Jason
on Thu 25 Feb 2010 10:21 PM CST
I thought somebody (the CLA Committee on Intellectual Freedom?) released an annual report on book challenges during the past year. I wasn't able to find it but the official site for Freedom to Read does have a list highlighting 100 different books that have been challenged in the past decade.
One entry in particular caught my attention: Pritchard, Jimmy. The New York City Bartender’s Joke Book. 2004—A library patron complained to the Saskatoon Public Library about this book- length collection of jokes that the author had heard while working in bars. Cause of objection—The complainant said that the jokes were in poor taste and promoted negative attitudes toward women and ethnic minorities. Update—The library’s Challenged Materials Committee later agreed that the book was “racist, sexist, and demeaning to women and citizens of many countries.” The book also failed to meet the library’s collection development standards. The committee withdrew the book from circulation. Although this is from six years ago, seeing that a library in my home province would remove a book from their collection really bugs me. Why? Well, here's a dirty little secret - the book loving, BA - English librarian you see before you didn't always read Hemingway and Faulkner (who am I kidding? I still don't - just for a few years there as an undergrad so I'd look smart in coffee shops!) Like many teenaged boys, there was a time in my young life when a lot of my pleasure reading consisted of things that weren't very literary in nature - the latest Calvin & Hobbes cartoon collection. Rock star biographies. And yes, occasionally, I would take out a book that would be the 1985 equivalent of "The New York Bartender's Joke Book". But you know what? That's part of the reason I would go to the library even at a time when it wasn't "cool". I don't remember saying this exactly but if a friend called me a nerd for going to the library, I could show them the joke book. "Really? You got that? At the library? Lemme see that!" After all, isn't this one of the single biggest hand-wringers in public libraries today? "How do we get teenaged boys to come to the library?" Offensive joke books aren't the full answer. But they're part of it if you're truly committed to serving *all* of your users - which most public libraries claim to be. Even though I read such a "harmful" book in my formative years, I'm glad no one at Regina Public Library or Indian Head Public Library had to decide whether this book was appropriate for me or not and that decision was mine to make alone. I like to think that I don't have negative attitudes towards women or minorities because I read books like this, just like I don't want to start a war because I read "Rambo: First Blood". (I will cop to having bad taste on occasion - that's nothing to do with my reading choices though!) The other reason this bugs me is that it hits a lot closer to home than it did, even a few years ago. Under the new province-wide SILS consortium, every library system has worked very hard to come up with a common set of policies. Each system still retains the right to develop its own internal policies in regards to things like collection development, intellectual freedom and so on so the common policies are mostly in regards to how items circulate, fine tables, patron registration and things like that. So if it doesn't directly affect me at RPL or in my day-to-day work, why get so worked up? Well, for one thing, there's always a danger that this could be the start of the proverbial slippery slope. The next time a book gets challenged in Saskatoon, it'll be harder for someone there to say "no". And it might be harder in Regina too - especially if we're partners in SILS. "My sister, Alice Tinhat Jones, got a joke book with the 'n' word in it removed from Saskatoon Public Library. I'd like this one removed as well." Uhm, madame, that's "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. "I don't care. You're partners with SPL aren't you?") To be frank, I also don't like that this decision has both tinges of both imposed morality AND political correctness - both extremes of the censorship spectrum. As I point out in one of my all-time favourite posts, "What Freedom To Read Is *Not*": 6. Freedom to Read is not a "left" or a "right" issue (I think people often believe that only people holding the opposite opinion of their own want to ban books.) Challenges come from both ends of the political spectrum and are just as likely to come on grounds of political correctness from someone on the left as on they are on morality grounds from someone on the right. Tuesday, February 23
FTRW 2010 - Hitler and the Public Domain
by
Jason
on Tue 23 Feb 2010 10:13 PM CST
German copyright law grants an author copyright for 70 years after their death. Hitler died in 1945 so that means "Mein Kampf" will enter the public domain in that country in 2015. Or will it?
There is a well-known German law banning the dissemination of Nazi ideologies which was put in place after the fall of the Third Reich. Germans (including many Jewish groups) claim that this law trumps any right the infamous work has to freely enter the public domain. Opponents counter that the diaries of Goebbels and Himmler are easily available in Germany already (as is Mein Kampf for anyone with an Internet connection). German scholars want the work to enter the public domain so they can prepare an annotated version of "Mein Kampf" for 2015 while the government fears that Neo-Nazi groups would prepare their own propagandized version. Libraries get a mention in the linked article as well. "Stephan J. Kramer, secretary general of the Central Council of Jews in Germany in Berlin, said the publication of “Mein Kampf” continued to split the Jewish community in Germany, with many Holocaust survivors opposing its publication. “I have the highest respect for this opinion, but on the other hand I’m saying very openly: The copyright is going to be waived anyway. It’s a matter of time before the book is available in shops and libraries,” Mr. Kramer said." I've already discussed my own early exposure to Mein Kampf on this blog and I'm pretty sure it's clear what side of the debate I'm on - it is Freedom to Read Week after all! (I should do a post and try to list which books I think *should* be banned, if any. That'd be a fun challenge.) Monday, February 22
FTRW 2010 - Music Monday "Listen, little girl, it's near the hour...I've got the righteous power"
by
Jason
on Mon 22 Feb 2010 08:33 PM CST
So yeah...
I was trying to think of a good clip to feature for Music Monday now that it's Freedom to Read Week. I thought about posting Elvis' infamous early Milton Berle appearance which led to him only being filmed from the waist up when he later appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show. But that's pretty tame by today's standards - sort of like how people still want to challenge "Catcher in the Rye" because the words "heck" and "gosh-darn" are in there.  Then I remembered a song I heard when I first moved into college dorms - pretty much fresh off the farm at 17 - when the most rebellious music I knew was Def Leppard. I actually didn't even hear the song from the shock rock outfit, the Mentors (and until about five minutes ago, had never heard it.) Instead, a a floormate quoted some of the lyrics to me and they have been seared into my brain ever since.  Still, that famous line about "I may not agree with what you say but I'll defend to the death, your right to say it" applies here. It has to because if it doesn't, freedom of expression is absolutely meaningless. I'm actually nervous about hitting the "Submit" button this post because this is some pretty disturbing stuff and people always confuse the defense of something with an endorsement. But ultimately, that's what Freedom of Expression is about. I am not going to run out and buy a Mentors CD (probably - unless I need to shock some other sheltered small town kid!) but some people do and did. Some people went to their shows. As long as there's nothing illegal happening, that's completely within their rights - the band's rights, the fans' rights and according to the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, that's within anyone's rights (as is your right *not* to click through to any lyrics or music I link to in this post. And trust me, the lines I quoted in the title of this post are pretty much the only two lines in the song that I felt comfortable doing so!) I'll save you the pain and link to a clip of the live version of the song where the lyrics are hard to understand (here's a link to the album version of the song for the braver souls among you - I won't censor but I will warn you that you can't un-hear this song once you hear it!) [Edit: I forgot to bring it back to Elvis the Pelvis like I originally wanted to. One of the strongest anti-censorship arguments that I know is to compare the comments made by people who were disgusted by Elvis with those who were/are disgusted with Eldon Hoke below - "filthy", "depraved", "sick", "demonic", etc. Notice something? They're the exact same words! To me, that shows that the people who hated Elvis in the 1950's are the exact same type of people who hated Eldon Hoke in the 1990's - even though those same anti-Hoke people in the 1990's probably liked Elvis, took family vacations to Graceland and will shell out for the new Cirque du Soleil Elvis show the next time they're in Vegas. So to me, it's *really* important to keep in mind that it's all very relative. Something that offends me today (and Eldon Hoke definitely comes really close!) will probably be a Broadway show that Pace goes to see with his family in thirty years.] Sunday, February 21
FTRW 2010 - Ban This Book!!!
by
Jason
on Sun 21 Feb 2010 07:54 PM CST
It's extremely rare that you'll hear me advocating for a book to be challenged. But as my former classmate (and published author) Corey Redekop asks in his post on this year's Freedom to Read Week celebrations: "could you challenge me? Call a
library and demand that I be taken off the shelves? Nothing sells a
person on a book like a little controversy."
So if you want to help out a fellow librarian, go to your local library this week and put in a challenge against "Shelf Monkey". It could actually be fun - like a banned book flash mob - and since Corey's book has censorship as one of its central themes - it'd be a perfect fit. Hmmm, I started this post with my tongue firmly in cheek but I'm talking myself into this...I think it'd make a really good statement about censorship if a book that is firmly against censorship had a bunch of challenges during Freedom to Read Week, especially if they all used the same reason. Something like "This book is wrong with its theme that censorship is wrong." It's a bit of a conflict of interest (or at least potentially awkward) for us public librarians to do this at our home libraries. So hopefully you academic librarians out there pick up the torch (or we in public libraries could put in a challenge of Corey's book at a neighbouring town - that would work too!) |
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