In Which We Write Letters: Stop SOPA

via

Anna here. This post is cross-posted at the feminist librarian.


Depending on your level of involvement in things internet-political and techy, you may or may not be aware of the Stop Online Privacy Act (SOPA) now making its way through congress. Introduced by representative Lamar Smith (R-TX), this bill mandates widespread monitoring of internet activity and has the potential to cause the internets as we know them to be fundamentally altered as blogs and other social networking sites are shut down for supposed acts "piracy." You can read more about the act at the Organization for Transformative Works, TechCrunch, and the American Library Association. The letter Hanna and I sent to our representatives is heavily cribbed from the ALA talking points.

Find your U.S. Representative here. 

Find your U.S. Senators here.

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18 December 2011

Dear Representative Capuano,

As librarians, bloggers, and registered voters in Allston, Massachusetts, we are writing to ask you to vote against the proposed Stop Online Privacy Act (SOPA), H.R. 3261.

This bill, if it becomes law, will cause a widespread “chilling effect” on use of the Internet for commerce, communication, and participation in democratic society. The bill strikes at copyright protections currently granted to libraries and educational institutions by creating the possibility of criminal persecution of institutions and institutional representatives. for online streaming and other use of online resources in library and classroom space. SOPA's requirements to monitor internet traffic violate free speech and privacy protections and may create new forms of government surveillance of private activities within and outside the United States. The predicted consequences of SOPA are far-reaching. If passed, the potential for new jobs, innovative new ventures, and economic growth will be stifled.

Citizen engagement in online spaces depends on the ability to share and discuss a wide variety of media content across multiple social networking and other Internet platforms. SOPA will effectively shut down the vibrant creativity and vital political discourse that has been made possible by the World Wide Web. On behalf of ourselves, our online community of bloggers, and our library patrons, we ask you to vote against H.R. 3261, and support alternative ways for protecting legitimate copyright interests online.

Sincerely,

Anna J. Cook & Hanna E. Clutterbuck

lists, lists, lists---

so when, during the week, i found it necessary to utter a moan or two (again) about jocasta nu, my least favorite film librarian of all time (more on her in a minute), my roommate, anna, semi-dared me to come up with a list of the top 10 best to worst film librarians. 

so here we go.

1. evelyn carnahan (rachel weisz), more commonly known as "evy" from the mummy and the mummy returns. (i haven't seen the third movie because i don't really care if weisz isn't involved and i'm not a big fan of maria bello.) anyway, how can you not give pride of place to someone who declares with great pride, although also great drunkenness, "i am proud of what i am. i -- am a librarian!" plus she rescues people with great elan, doesn't panic when kidnapped by resurrected mummies, and translates very quickly.

2. bunny watson (katherine hepburn), from desk set. i even went so far as to check on imdb.com to make sure that "bunny" really was the only name for this character. it is. the research library in this movie is so far out of date as to be funny now -- the computer is the big bad villain of the piece and it's about as big as a large walk-in closet. but ms. watson is great -- a wonderful, funny, helpful reference librarian. and it's a really sweet, little-known hepburn/tracy romantic comedy with a great supporting cast. my dvd version even has this awesome little documentary on it about how hepburn's wardrobe for the film was promoted to catch on as 'librarian chic'!

3. flynn carsen (noah wyle), from the librarian: quest for the spear. "what is this -- slap the librarian day!" his version of library science is definitely more action-oriented than the ordinary run-of-the-mill variety -- much more kidnapping and running and nearly getting abducted and/or murdered than i see going on at the bpl. but, in the end, books are important, and what you know in your heart is important, too. oh, and don't listen to the books if they tell you to hurt small animals. that's important, too.

4. dean corso (johnny depp), from the ninth gate. this is a little unfair since dean corso isn't technically a librarian; he's a rare books dealer. but i'm putting him in the list 'cause...well, it's my list. also, because his knowledge of books borders on the encyclopedic and i love the libraries he gets to use in the movie even if he isn't working there. and both the film the ninth gate and the club dumas on which it is based are very worth while.

5. CAL (eve newton), from doctor who: silence in the library and doctor who: forest of the dead. this is also a tad bit unfair since CAL isn't a librarian so much as a library system, but i still think she's fairly cool. the ailing daughter of a very clever (and rich) family immortalized as the controlling intelligence behind the main cataloging and data computer for a library the size of a planet. she's got a few problems -- like alien intelligences are oozing out of her books, taking over the planet, and eating people -- but other than that, she's doing quite well and she does save everybody.

6. tanis (steven mackintosh), from underworld: evolution. a vampire librarian/historian/archivist. what's not to love? okay, he's in exile 'cause he pissed off the leader of his clan by remembering a few things he shouldn't have but he's still in pretty classy exile. people do keep breaking into his house and demanding he tell them things, but he mostly seems to have a pretty sweet deal going.

7. marian the librarian (shirley jones), from the music man. just has to be on the list. love or hate 'marian the librarian,' we've all heard the jokes.

8. any of the librarians from the name of the rose: the abbot, malachi, berengar, and, if i'm remembering right, jorge of burgos into the bargain (as well as numerous other monks whose names i don't even come close to recalling). their cataloging scheme defies description for complexity, their stacks are a maze (literally) -- freedom of information and accessibility are really just words to these guys. words with which they are not familiar.

9. sloan (morgan freeman), from wanted. again, i'm getting by on a technicality here. if sloan is really anything, he's probably more of a sibylline interpreter, creating "truth" out of the patterns woven in cloth. but, since he not only interprets, but also keeps and stores the cloth pieces and the records of the assassin fraternity of which he is the head, i'm calling him an archivist. (just think of the number of textile storage boxes he must buy!) but he is definitely not the guy to take as your role model -- not only is he restricting certain privileged information to his own use, he is perverting the use of that information for his own ends. not good, people, not good!

10. jocasta nu (alethea mcgrath), from star wars: attack of the clones. possibly the worst librarian i have ever seen on film. ever. not only does she give her patron cursory, verging on the outright rude, treatment, she also tells him his question is ridiculous because the information in the archives "can't be wrong." argh! someone promote her into retirement. (but, hopefully, before revenge of the sith because i don't dislike her that much.)

honorary mention: ianto jones (gareth david-lloyd), from torchwood. he insists he knows everything and, often, he seems to. i'm not sure which is more worrying.

edit:

an additional honorary mention i should be ashamed of forgetting the first time around (he really should be on the main list, but i don't feel like renumbering the whole thing and thank you, diana, for pointing out the gap!)

rupert giles (anthony stewart-head), from buffy the vampire slayer. i have to blame his omission the first time around on cold medication because there really is no other excuse. i mean, he watched "passions" with spike. this isn't strictly a librarian's job, true, but it just goes to prove that giles was just damn cool.

saturday morning again

miraculous how it just keeps comin' round, huh?

sir john mortimer, the writer of rumpole, summer's lease, the titmuss novels, journey round my father, and, not last or least, the original screen adaptation of brideshead revisited (jeremy irons, anthony andrews, nicholas grace, laurence olivier, etc., etc.) died this week. i can't help feeling it's a little ridiculous to feel sad over the death of someone i've never met but, on the other hand, i also can't help feeling that a certain voice of sanity has left england as well as an excellent writer. if you haven't read any of the above -- or, in the case of brideshead, summer's lease, or rumpole -- seen them, i suggest an addition to the ol' netflix queue and library list.

librarians -- or archivists -- rarely get to lay the smackdown. only in the movies do we generally get to tote around weapons of mass destruction (in the form of books, of course), swing through forests, or try to track down demons; mostly in the real world we even try not to shush people too much. i think this is all to the good, but, on the other hand, i can't help getting a real sense of satisfaction out of the verdict in the trial of farhad hakimzadah in london.

the first headlines i saw on this story were from last november's guardian. approximately 150 rare and/or unique books in the british library's collection had been vandalized -- pages sliced out, maps missing, etc. -- over the space of a few years. the librarians worked with the police -- and their own reading room records and the like (use statistics to fight crime!) -- to figure out what was going on and tracked the entire problem down to hakimzadah. lord love the british, they immediately took him to court for it for vandalism and, basically, irreparable damage to international cultural heritage items. if you click through into the story above, there's a partial list of some of the volumes he went through and some of them are just heartbreaking -- and they can never be the same again. even with the sliced-out maps, pages, indices, whatever returned, the books can't be fixed to be the same. the informational value will be the same -- for the books that had all their missing parts found and if those missing parts are still undamaged, legible, etc. and i don't know whether they did find all the missing pages -- but the experience of using them will never be the same for any researcher after hakimzadah.

within the last two days, the trial has concluded and the verdict handed down -- the library gets to claim about three hundred thousand pounds in damages (plus the return of the items, obviously) and hakimzadah goes to jail for two years -- plus paying legal costs, restitution, so on and so forth. (the two links above are to two very similar stories, by the way; i just included them both for the sake of completion.) apparently, hakimzadah pleaded that he had a psychological "compulsion" to steal from the library to perfect his own personal collection. apparently hakimzadah had also stolen from the bodleian (which has to be pretty pissed it didn't notice what was going on -- i see no note of whether their items are returned or paid for) and previously from the royal asiatic society which let him off if he paid for the mutilated and lost items.

now, hakimzadah, as far as i can see, has absolutely no excuse for what he did. he was a topline academic, access to research collections across the world for basically anything he might need to get his hands on outside, maybe, of the vatican archives which i hear are a pain to get into. he had money to buy more or less anything he wanted for his own collection which was, so the article said, the fourth best in his field in the world.

so we don't really get to play with the book of the dead, or the language of the birds, or the nine gates of the kingdom of shadows (which is okay by me!), but do not mess with our stuff.