NY Times: Battle Over Access to Online Books. Now, new technologies are igniting a similar battle closer to home. Librarians have seized on the potential of digital technology and offered users free online access to the contents of books from their homes, and they are squaring off with publishers who fear that free remote access costs them book sales. [Tomalak's Realm]

This type of development coupled with government coercion like CIPA will get us in the not too distant future a dearth of trust based information on sex and sexuality over the internet. One of my plans for future versions of this site is a way to search local card catalogs for books The Safer Sex Page recommends. I figure if in a future version I allow the user to sign in then I should be able to make calls to various card catalogs based on zip code. It would be pretty nifty I think to have a reference to an article and then be able to check it out or check on its local status. If this was linked deeply enough in conjuction with a commerce engine like Amazon it would make a great platform for research about safer sex issues.

6/17/02:11:07:48 PM PST    comment

Dave Winer, a guy who I have read and learned from for many years now has evidently become ill. Dave has been a cornerstone of my internet education since what seems like yesterday but has actually been far longer than I usually notice. Dave's software and ideas about content management, along with others, have been instrumental in revitalizing this site and seems to verbalize so much of what I have been grappling with since I first started to work in this sphere.

Best wishes for a quick recovery Dave!!!

6/17/02:12:32:24 PM PST    comment