Library Juice 1:21 - June 3, 1998

 
 
Contents: 
 
1. Peter Gilbert's site on Environmental Scanning 
2. Steve Bergson's list of online library serials 
3. American Libraries Online news stories for June 1 (ad) 
4. Pinakes: A Subject Launchpad 
5. Gay/ Lesbian Reading List from PUBLIB list 
6. News about the Divx video format 
7. List of American political prisoners 
8. Livermore Public Library sued for not filtering the internet 
9. Yale C/AIM Web Style Guide 
10. Sorry Day in Australia 
11. _Uniform Crime Reports 1997 Preliminary Annual Release_--FBI [.pdf, 7p.] 
12. Discussion of book banning experiences in small public libraries 
13. Pigs That Fly - Metaphor for the information age 
14. Act Two of The Electronic Disturbance Theater is June 10th 
15. Keith Richards recovering from library related accident (actual truth) 
 
 
Quote of the week: 
 
"To prejudge other men's notions before we have looked into them is not to 
show their darkness but to put out our own eyes."  -John Locke 
 
 
_______________________________________________________________________________ 
 
 
 
 
1. Peter Gilbert's site on Environmental Scanning 
 
 
http://cwis.lawrence.edu/~gilbertp/mudd/ESCAN.HTML 
 
This is Peter Gilbert's work in progress on environmental scanning 
(which is a scary almost sci-fi term for managing a world of information, 
mainly electronic.) 
 
It is a generalist's resource page with articles on the concept of 
environmental scanning. 
 
_______________________________________________________________________________ 
 
 
 
2. Steve Bergson's list of online library serials: 
 
 
http://www.fortunecity.com/skyscraper/gates/18/libpers.html 
 
Library and Information Science Periodicals on the Internet 
 
Last updated: May 25, 1998 
 
"(This) list represents my attempt to produce a list of all major 
online periodicals that provide either a table of 
contents, abstracts or full-text articles. If I have left any sites out, 
please e-mail me the URL(s) at safran-can[at]geocities.com. I do not 
represent or necessarily endorse any of these publications." 
 
_______________________________________________________________________________ 
 
 
 
3. American Libraries Online news stories for June 1 (ad) 
 
<http://www.ala.org/alonline/> 
 
* Former DCPL Head Plea Bargains Theft Charge 
* Arizona Librarians Edge Out Cyberporn Bill 
* Miami-Dade Director Mary Somerville Announces Retirement 
* Phone Companies to Pass Universal-Service Costs to Customers 
* Mom Sues Library to Restrict Kids' Web Access 
* Medical Librarians Return to Philadelphia for Centennial Conference 
* Akron-Summit County Launches Renovation Program 
* Fired Director Settles Out of Court 
* Bookstore Continues to Fight Kenneth Starr Subpoena 
* San Jose Greenlights City-University Library Merger 
* Wayne County Employees Seek to Unionize 
* Minnesota Libraries Awarded Technology Grants 
* Stolen Volumes Recovered in Greek Bookstore 
 
American Libraries' Web site also features the latest "Internet Librarian" 
columns by Karen Schneider; AL's "Career Leads" job ads; listings of 
conferences, continuing-education courses, exhibitions, and other 
events from AL's "Datebook"; and Tables of Contents for the current 
year. 
_______________________________________________________________________________ 
 
 
 
4. Pinakes: A Subject Launchpad 
 
Pinakes links to 25 major Subject 
Gateways, plus 2 Multi-subject gateways. 
http://www.hw.ac.uk/libWWW/irn/pinakes/pinakes.html 
 
In ancient times, the Library of Alexandria was seen as a universal 
store of human knowledge. As the Library grew in size, however, it 
became increasingly difficult to locate relevant material. The poet 
Callimachus solved the problem  by compiling a catalogue called The 
Pinakes. On a far smaller scale, this Web page hopes to provide a 
similar function for Internet resources, by linking to the major 
subject gateways, especially those in the UK.  It could be a good 
starting point for serious Internet-based research. 
 
 
Agnes Guyon, EEVL Database Officer, Email: A.Guyon[at]hw.ac.uk 
Heriot-Watt University Library, Edinburgh, EH14 4AS. 
Tel: [+44](131) 451 3572 Fax: [+44] (131) 451 3164 
Visit the Engineering Virtual Library http://www.eevl.ac.uk/ 
 
_______________________________________________________________________________ 
 
 
 
 
5. Gay/ Lesbian Reading List from PUBLIB list 
 
 
	The Humanities Department of the Tampa-Hillsborough Public Library 
wishes to thank all PUBLIB members who graciously sent URL's and 
bibliographies (or bookmarks) from their library in response to our 
request.  Our first Gay & Lesbian Fiction bibliography is completed for 
June, and although it only contains works in our holdings, we are glad to 
send a copy to any library that is interested.  Please email Robin Leigh 
at leighr[at]scfn.thpl.lib.fl.us   if you want a copy.  Because of time 
limitations, I chose to do an author list for Fiction, Drama, and Poetry, 
followed by a title list of literary collections, and a brief annotated 
list of new young adult fiction.  I relied heavily on the bibliographies 
sent to me from Seattle Public Library, Dallas Public Library, Decatur 
Public Library, and bookmarks from Johnson County Library.  Other 
important selection sources were reference and circulating titles in our 
system, especially *Gay and Lesbian Literary Heritage (c1995)* and *Gay 
and Lesbian Poetry in Our Time: An Anthology (c1995). 
	Several PUBLIB respondents sent websites.  I relied on the award 
titles listed at our ALA site.  I have not visited all of the sites 
contributed but am listing them here for your information: 
  ALA's Gay, Lesbian, & Bisexual Task Force: 
	calvin.usc.edu/~trimmer/ala_book.html 
 
  ALA's GLBT resources for librarians 
	http://www.drizzle.com/~kathleen/wla/glbt.html 
  Annotated titles presented at OLA/WLA Conference 4/97, includes links 
for Gay and Lesbian Fiction Web Sites (NYPL Gay & Lesbian Studies site) 
and booksellers. 
 
Selected Bibliography of Gay Fiction (Annotated) 
	http://pubweb.nwu.edu/~vmccoy/bibliography/ 
 
Yahoo search using "gay" "literature" subheading "bibliographies" 
 
Sadly, my general searches on Alta Vista with keywords such as "gay" 
"fiction" "Young Adult" led to smut.  So the terminology is very 
important.  Probably "adult" was throwing those searches off base. 
 
  Fiction_L archives 
	http://www.webrary.org/rs/rsmenu.html 
 
  Gay and Lesbian detectives in mystery novels: 
	http://www.bookbrowser.com/Diverse/index.html 
 
  Gay Asian Literature: 
	http://www.geocities.com/WestHollywood/3821 
 
  Gay Latino Literature: 
	http://www.cc.columbia.edu/cu/libraries/events/sw25/case9.html 
 
	http://www.vms.utexas.edu/~demedina/biblio.htm 
 
Gay and Lesbian Resources page for Conference at University Saskatchewan: 
	http://library.usask.ca/education/gay.html 
 
I hope this URL list will be of use to others.  Thank you again for all of 
your support online.  I am not a subscriber to PUBLIB, so if you wish to 
contact me email me directly, and if you send corrections or additions, 
in reference to this posting, please email me a copy. 
Best, 
 
Robin Leigh, Reference Librarian 
Humanities Department, 
Tampa-Hillsborough County Public Library, 
900 N. Ashley St., 
Tampa, FL 33602 
leighr[at]scfn.thpl.lib.fl.us 
 
 
_______________________________________________________________________________ 
 
 
 
6. News about the Divx video format 
 
 
Forwarded from a friend: 
 
Have you heard of the "Divx" format for video that Circuit 
City and a Hollywood law firm have developed? You can read good 
things about it at: 
    http://www.divx.com/ 
One very bad thing about it is that allows movie studios to 
publish and still deny the public the fair use that is 
deliberately allowed by copyright law.  In particular, libraries 
won't be able do offer the material for free viewing. 
 
If you want to know more, I can send you some info and pointers. 
If you know about Divx and don't like it, would you also be 
interested in some anti-Divx activities I'm planning?  I'm 
trying to arrange it so people can spend as much or as little 
time as they like on it, and don't have to make firm commitments 
in advance. 
 
The first public launch of Divx will happen right here in 
the Bay Area, in a couple weeks.  If we want to fight it, 
we're in the right place at the right time to make a real 
difference. 
_______________________________________________________________________________ 
 
 
 
7. List of American political prisoners 
 
accesible at the Jericho 98 web site: 
http://www.jericho98.com/profiles.html 
 
 
Sent to the PLGNET-L by Chris Dodge in answer to a query. 
_______________________________________________________________________________ 
 
 
 
 
8. Livermore Public Library sued for not filtering the internet 
 
 
The following news was sent to Web4Lib by PRO-filtering activist David Burt: 
 
On May 27, 1998, the Livermore (Calif.) Public Library became the first 
public library to be sued for failing to protect children from pornography. 
Earlier a lawsuit was filed in Florida against the Broward County Public 
Schools for allowing children to access pornography. 
 
The complaint, filed by a parent with the assistance of  the Pacific Justice 
Institute ,  says that a minor accessed sexually explicit websites using the 
library's computers, downloaded images harmful to minors to a floppy disk, 
and then printed them out at a relative's house. 
 
The complaint asks for an "injunction against the City of Livermore 
preventing it or its agents, servants, and employees from spending any 
public funds on the acquisition, use, and/or maintenance of any computer 
system connect to the Internet or World Wide Web for which it allows any 
person to access, display, and/or print obscene material or for which it 
allows minors to access, displays, and/or print sexual material harmful to 
minors." 
 
Public Library Directors, take note: 
Fail to protect children, and you can be sued. 
 
 
Read the Full Complaint ,  Attorney Michael Millen's letter to the City of 
Livermore, and  the Livermore City Attorney's  response letter  at: 
 
http://www.filteringfacts.org/liver.htm 
 
Read the Tri-Valley Hearld's coverage at: 
http://www.newschoice.com/WebNews/anghefpg2/98-05-29_m1as429.asp 
 
Library sued for not filtering Net 
By Janet Kornblum 
May 29, 1998, 2:00 p.m. PT 
http://www.news.com/News/Item/0%2C4%2C22579%2C00.html 
 
Web4Lib Information - http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/Web4Lib/ 
 
***************************************************************************** 
David Burt	President, Filtering Facts 
Website: 	http://www.filteringfacts.org 
E-Mail:  	David_Burt[at]filteringfacts.org 
Phone/Fax:	503 635-7048 
_______________________________________________________________________________ 
 
 
 
9. Yale C/AIM Web Style Guide 
 
http://info.med.yale.edu/caim/manual/ 
Less graphical entrance: 
http://info.med.yale.edu/caim/manual/contents.html 
 
To guide anyone who wants to produce a well-designed web site, the Yale 
Center for Advanced Instructional Media (C/AIM) provides this style manual, 
which comfortingly states, "The basic elements of a document aren't 
complicated, and have almost nothing to do with Internet technology." C/AIM 
develops multimedia educational and communications programs; the Web Style 
Guide is an outgrowth of their web development projects. The Guide 
addresses the problem of creating Web sites that are both easy to use and 
full of complex content by applying sound design concepts derived from 
print media traditions. The Guide is broken into chapters on topics such as 
interface, site, and page design, web graphics, multimedia and animation, 
and also includes extensive bibliographies and a visual glossary of common 
interface icons such as buttons and check boxes. [DS] 
 
>From the Scout Report - http://scout.cs.wisc.edu/scout/report/ 
_______________________________________________________________________________ 
 
 
 
10. Sorry Day in Australia 
 
National Sorry Day 
http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/special/rsjproject/sorry/index.htm 
_Bringing Them Home_ 
http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/special/rsjproject/rsjlibrary/hreoc/stolen/ 
Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation 
http://www.austlii.edu.au/car/ 
Australia: The Divided Nation--_The Age_ 
http://www.theage.com.au/special/dividednation/index.html 
 
"Sorry Day," held on May 26, 1998 in Australia, was an attempt on the part 
of some Australians to come to grips with the policy of forced removal of 
Aboriginal children that took place for 150 years until the 1970s. The 
National Sorry Day site is provided by the Reconciliation and Social 
Justice Project of the Australian Legal Information Institute. The site 
contains background and an educational activities kit. The centerpiece, 
however, is full text access to _Bringing Them Home: Report of the National 
Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander 
Children from Their Families_, which was tabled by the Australian Federal 
Parliament exactly one year before Sorry Day. The Council for Aboriginal 
Reconciliation, made up of 25 members, over half of whom are Aborigines or 
Torres Strait Islanders, as well as members of the Commonwealth Parliament, 
maintains a site highlighted by its _Weaving the Threads: Progress Towards 
Reconciliation_ report to Parliament. _The Age_, a Melbourne newspaper, 
provides a series of articles chronicling Australia's racial divide. [JS] 
 
>From the Scout Report - http://scout.cs.wisc.edu/scout/report/ 
_______________________________________________________________________________ 
 
 
 
11. _Uniform Crime Reports 1997 Preliminary Annual Release_--FBI [.pdf, 7p.] 
http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/ucrann97.htm 
 
The US Federal Bureau of Investigation has released the preliminary 1997 
edition of this report (available in Adobe Acrobat [.pdf] format only), a 
brief compendium of crime statistics for the US and its cities of over 
100,000 people. Three of the report's four tables compare trends in various 
types of crime. The bulk of the report, however, is a table that enumerates 
eight different types of crimes, including murder, forcible rape, robbery, 
aggravated assault, and arson in cities over 100,000, during 1996 and 1997. 
Also included are crime index totals. Final figures will be available in 
Fall 1998 in the FBI's annual _Crime in the United States_ report. [JS] 
 
>From the Scout Report - http://scout.cs.wisc.edu/scout/report/ 
_______________________________________________________________________________ 
 
 
 
12. Discussion of book banning experiences in small public libraries 
 
 
>From the newsgroup soc.libraries.talk 
 
 Jeffrey D Swope wrote: 
    I have a strong interest in book banning.  I am 
  particularly interested in the subtle book banning that takes place during 
  the collection development/acquisitions process.  I wish to speak to one 
  aspect of this issue specifically.  Recently I spoke with the librarian of a 
  small, rural library.  During our conversation the topic of books pertaining 
  to race, religion and sexuality in the children's and young adult 
  collections came up.  The librarian said that when she and her assistant 
  choose books, they do not include books about certain religions, races and 
  types of sexuality.  When I asked her why, she informed me that there is no 
  one in her community with an interest in those topics.  I was slightly taken 
  aback by the comment.  I asked the librarian if she felt that by doing this 
  they were limiting the youth of the community's experience and what 
  ramifications doing so might have on these youth as they move out of the 
  community into a widely diversified world.  She did not feel that it was the 
  public library's job to prepare children for the "rest of the world" but 
  rather to supply information pertaining to the needs of the community.  I 
  can honestly say that I do not agree with the reasoning.  However, I do 
  understand the concept to some degree.  I was wondering if any small, rural 
  librarians could respond as to how they handle the same concerns.  Often, if 
  the topics are not espoused in a community it can cause problems for the 
  librarian.  What do you do?  How do you handle this?  I would be interested 
  in your opinions and approaches. 
 
-------------------- 
 
"Bob Jones" replied, 
 
 There are a couple of things at work in many small public libraries: 
 
 1. A reluctance to rock the boat by placing controversial materials in 
 the library, especially in the children's or YA collections. 
 
 2. A prevalence of non-professional "librarians" who have no concept of 
 intellectual freedom or censorship providing children's services, 
 including materials selection. 
 
 3. A fear of a public relations disaster if any local individual or 
 organization goes on a rampage against "inappropriate" materials being 
 made available to children. 
 
 4. The individual librarian applying his/her personal standards to the 
 library's collections. 
 
 5. Undue influence exerted by library board members or community leaders 
 to control what goes into the library. 
 
 When I first came to my present library, a parent asked us to get 
 "Daddy's Roommate" and "Heather Has Two Mommies" on interlibrary loan. 
 I suggested to our "children's librarian" (who had no formal education 
 in library science) that we buy both books.  She threatened to quit. 
 Later on she did, but not over a censorship issue.  I suspect her 
 attitude is not uncommon in small libraries.  In defense of non-degreed 
 "children's librarians," I previously worked with one whom I would 
 compare favorably with any professional children's librarian I have 
 known. 
 
 I have added copies of "The Unabomber Manifesto" and "The Turner 
 Diaries" to our collection.  The former has never been checked out in 
 almost 2 years, the latter has been checked out 5 times since last 
 September.  Howard Stern's "Miss America" has been checked out 20 
 times, but now is missing from the shelf.  We are the only one of 41 
 libraries in our union catalog to own any of these titles.  We have had 
 no formal complaints about any of these books.  We have been fortunate 
 that there have been no public campaigns to remove "objectionable" 
 materials from our library.  This is a pretty conservative community, 
 but I guess it's mostly a passive conservatism. 
 
 I can understand librarians worrying about their budgets or their jobs, 
 but that's a poor excuse for intellectual cowardice. 
 _______________________________________________________________________________ 
 
 
 
 
13.  Next: Pigs That Fly?  Metaphor for the information age 
 
 
Andrew Kimbrell, founder of the International Center for Technology 
Assessment in Washington, D.C., describes one of the "classic" experiments 
in genetic engineering this way: 
 
   Dr. Vernon Pursel inserted the human growth gene in a pig.  Pursel 
   hoped to create giant pigs that would be major meat producers.  The 
   problem was that though the human growth gene was in every cell of the 
   pig's body it did not act in the manner the scientists expected. 
   Instead of making the pig larger it made it squat, cross-eyed, bow- 
   legged, smaller than an average pig, with huge bone mass, a truly 
   wretched product of science without ethics.  Pursel tried to find a 
   silver lining in his experiment gone wrong by claiming that the pig was 
   leaner.  Pursel's argument was that people are worried about 
   cholesterol, so maybe we can sell this as lean pig.  Did he really 
   think the public was ready for pork chops with human genes? 
 
That pig strikes me as a good metaphor for the constructions of the 
Information Age.  The prevailing notion is that we have this massive 
collection of information -- exemplified by several hundred thousand 
snippets of human genetic code -- which we can merrily pass from one 
database to another, inserting this piece here and that piece there. 
 
But there is no such thing as an "objective piece of information".  Like a 
word in a sentence, a bit of information *means* a particular thing only 
within a given context.  Pursel's pig symbolizes the kind of result you 
get when you ignore context and try to build things from the bottom up -- 
that is, when you start with the reduced products of your sophisticated 
analyses, forgetting what it was you were analyzing in the first place. 
 
Context in the present case means, to begin with, the pig itself.  Pursel 
was willing to see fragments of DNA -- and even lean pork chops -- but did 
not care to see the pig.  Such is the technological mindset we now trust 
to re-engineer the human being. 
 
Exactly the same trust is at work wherever information is glorified as the 
decisive form of capital, the basis for problem-solving, and the 
fundamental ingredient of all knowledge. 
 
(Kimbrell's remark, incidentally, occurs in a remarkable new book from the 
Sierra Club, called *Turning Away from Technology*, edited by Stephanie 
Mills.  I hope to review it in the near future.) 
 
 
[This is from Netfuture #72. - http://www.oreilly.com/~stevet/netfuture/ ] 
_______________________________________________________________________________ 
 
 
 
 
14. Act Two of The Electronic Disturbance Theater is June 10th 
 
 
>From   A - I N F O S  N E W S  S E R V I C E -  http://www.ainfos.ca/ 
 
Remember that Wednesday, JUNE 10, is Act Two of The Electronic Disturbance 
Theater. For updates as JUNE 10 approaches click here 
http://www.nyu.edu/projects/wray/ecd.html 
 
The Electronic Disturbance Theater proprosal for SWARM has been accepted as 
one of the featured projects for the Ars Electronica 98 Festival (a group 
based in Linz, Austria). An Ars Electronica web page already links to the 
JUNE 10 action. http://web.aec.at/infowar/index.html 
 
"Ars Electronica - a Festival for Art,Technology and Society - was 
initiated in 1979 and focuses on electronic art and media theory. This 
year's theme of the Festival is "INFOWAR". The Festival '98 takes place 
from the 7th - 12th of September." http://web.aec.at/fest/feste.html 
 
Opening these connections in Europe is a clear sign that The Electronic 
Disturbance Theater is acting on the global stage. We are making inroads 
into the computer/arts communities across international borders. People 
skilled in computers and the arts are becoming more aware of the 
Zapatistas, Chiapas, and the Mexican government's counter insurgency war. 
While at the same time computerized activists within the world wide 
pro-Zapatista movement are becoming more aware of uses for the Net beyond 
merely a communication device for transmitting email. The Net is becoming a 
site for non-violent direct action. We are only witnessing its early forms. 
 
Ideally, hopefully soon, maybe by this fall, The Electronic Disturbance 
Theater will become one of many small "affinity groups" that periodically 
(regularly) act in concert, at the same time, against the same site, but 
maintain autonomy and independence as their own group. In this sense, we 
again want to copy the earlier civil disobedience movements that relied on 
an affinity group structure for carrying out mass nonviolent direct action. 
In effect, this is what is meant by SWARM. 
 
As an analogy, think of us and our actions as those of a just a handful of 
bees or wasps. Our stingers, are, so far, the FloodNet devices that send 
out a little sting, or automated electronic pulse. As just a handful of 
bees, with just a handful of stingers, stinging our opponents, we may be a 
nuisance and a pest, but we clearly are a force that can be dealt with or 
even ignored (perhaps so far). But if we become a SWARM of bees and wasps 
that go after a site, or a series of related sites, all at the same time, 
but from many different directions, using different types of stingers with 
varying degrees of potency, then we become a more powerful force that sends 
a surge of energy across the Net, as opposed to sending out a handful of 
pulses. 
 
For those postmodernists in the crowd, consider Deleuze and Guattari's 
"plateaus" or "assemblages" that occur when certain "lines of flight" 
converge. (1) A SWARM is a massive convergence of a multiplicity of lines 
of flight arising momentarily to send a powerful surge (i.e., message) to 
then quickly disperse and disappear. Appearing and disappearing and 
reappearing. Moving nomadically as need be. 
 
So we need a thousand points of light. A thousand plateaus. We need an 
array of FloodNet devices. We need the FloodNet electronic pulse device to 
be just one tool, one machine, one computerized act within a spectrum of 
tools, machines, and acts. 
 
Like the tinkerers who meddled with metal and formed the first swords and 
shields, like the Mongols and other early nomadic warriors who wandered and 
roamed, we need more electronic tinkerers to meddle with today's electronic 
metal, to create new tools, new machines, that enable new acts for today's 
nomadic warriors who wander on the Net. 
 
Below is the article. 
 
- Stefan Wray 
 
(1) Deleuzes, Gilles and Felix Guattari (1987) A Thousand Plateaus. 
Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota 
Press 
 
From:  Stefan Wray <sjw210[at]is8.nyu.edu> 
--------------------------------------------------------------------- 
  Hey, Ho, We Won't Go Civil Disobedience Comes to the Web 
   By:             Jeanne Carstensen 
 
 
                When I think of civil disobedience I think of an 
                environmentalist chained to a redwood or anti-war 
                activists stretched out on the tracks in front of trains 
                loaded with weapons headed for Central America. 
                There are bodies on the line. And although most acts 
                of civil disobedience are nonviolent, there is always 
                the possibility that blood will be spilled. 
 
                So when I read a message on a Bay Area events 
                e-mail list I subscribe to announcing a "virtual sit-in" 
                at the website of Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo 
                on April 10 to protest repression against the 
                Zapatistas in Chiapas, the idea sounded strange. 
                Civil disobedience in cyberspace? Will it work 
                without the breath and bulk of angry bodies? 
 
                The concept "electronic civil disobedience" emerged 
                from the sophisticated global internet activism of the 
                Zapatistas and their supporters. Since their uprising 
                in 1994, the Zapatistas have taken advantage of the 
                web to circulate rapid-fire e-mail from the 
                charismatic Commandante Marcos about conditions 
                inside Chiapas. And Zapatista supporters have 
                flooded web sites and discussion groups with human 
                rights reports and articles that are updated on a daily 
                basis. 
 
                The web has been so influential in the Zapatista 
                struggle, that the conflict is often referred to as a 
                kind of information war. "This is a war of public 
                opinion, a war of declarations and political 
                positions..." a top national security officer in Mexico 
                said in a recent New York Times article ("Mexico 
                Sees Both Carrot and Stick Fail in Chiapas," 
                5/17/98). 
 
                And on the web, the Zapatistas are winning. Every 
                day a community of savvy cyber-activists helps 
                spread the message of the largely indigenous 
                movement in southern Mexico to the entire world. 
 
                Two of those activists, Stefan Wray and Ricardo 
                Dominguez, are the main proponents of "electronic 
                civil disobedience" and the organizers of the recent 
                "virtual sit-ins" supporting the Zapatista cause. Wray 
                hosts a web site dedicated to the theory and practice 
                of electronic civil disobedience and Dominguez is the 
                editor of The Thing, a small ISP for an artists virtual 
                community. 
 
                Ricardo Dominguez, 39, is a former actor and 
                long-time political activist. He talks about electronic 
                civil disobedience in terms of "theater." In fact, the 
                series of ECD actions Wray and Dominguez have 
                planned are referred to as "Electronic Disturbance 
                Theater." Like the Yippies, Greenpeace, Act Up and 
                other activists who have used the media to draw 
                attention to their causes, Dominguez appreciates the 
                power of narrative to capture the public attention. 
 
                "We began to notice that 80s activist tactics were 
                getting less media attention," Dominguez explained. 
                "Power had shifted from the streets to the 
                information highway so we started thinking about 
                how to create political gestures on the web 
                equivalent to lying down in the street and refusing to 
                move." 
 
                The idea of conducting "virtual sit-ins" actually 
                originated in Italy with the Autonomous Digital 
                Coalition, which suggested that Zapatista supporters 
                on the internet connect their browsers to a 
                pre-selected site at a certain hour and manually hit 
                the reload button over and over again as a form of 
                protest. The intention was to temporarily overload 
                the capacity of the server, thus disrupting service 
                and effectively "blockading" the entrance to the 
                targeted website. 
 
                But Dominguez and some other activists decided to 
                take the virtual sit-in process a step further by 
                automating it. They created a website called Flood 
                Net that uses a Java applet to automatically reload 
                the web page of the targeted site every three 
                seconds. When the first virtual sit-in was held on 
                April 10 at Zedillo's web site, all the cyber-protesters 
                had to do was connect their browsers to Flood Net 
                at the appointed hour. 
 
                Because a stats program is installed on the Flood 
                Net site, Wray and Dominguez know that 8141 
                surfers hit their site that day and participated in the 
                sit-in. Some disruption in Zedillo's site was noted by 
                the activists, and the New York Times Cyber Law 
                Journal on May 1 quoted a Mexican Embassy 
                official who acknowledged that there had been some 
                disturbance to Zedillo's site on April 10. 
 
                Another virtual sit-in was held on May 10, this time 
                targeting the White House website. Wray and 
                Dominguez didn't notice any significant disruption to 
                the White House site, which Dominguez assumes 
                "has a more robust infrastructure" than Zedillo's site. 
                "This is experimental," Stefan Wray explained about 
                the sit-in process. "We don't know what critical 
                mass is for a site to be blocked." 
 
                The interesting thing about the virtual sit-in tactic is 
                that it makes use of a public function available to any 
                internet user. Reloading a page again and again, 
                while capable of causing disruption, isn't hacking into 
                the system. "We're interested in creating public 
                gestures in the public sphere of the internet," 
                Dominguez emphasized. 
 
                Civil disobedience is defined in Robert Seeley's 
                Handbook of Non-Violence as "the refusal on 
                principle to obey an unjust law." One of its main 
                goals "is to influence public opinion to change an 
                unjust law or abolish unjust policy." 
 
                Mike Godwin, staff counsel to the Electronic 
                Frontier Foundation, said that a virtual sit-in is "no 
                more or less illegal than tying up the White House 
                switchboard." The law makes a distinction between 
                harrassing content and actions. "It's legal when 
                calling in to voice a complaint and illegal when you're 
                purposefully trying to jam the switchboard." 
 
                In the May 1 New York Times Cyber Law Journal 
                article, however, internet consultant Mark D. Rasch 
                said that "participants in electronic sit-ins run a risk 
                of violating a federal law... [that] makes it a crime to 
                intentionally distribute a program...with the intent to 
                cause damage to another's web site." 
 
                "Is it illegal to refresh a web site over and over?" 
                Wray answered when I asked him about the legality 
                of virtual sit-ins. "I don't see any clear directive that 
                says this is illegal. We're walking into territory that 
                hasn't been clearly regulated or controlled so it's 
                hard for us or the government to know where we 
                stand." 
 
                Although the Electronic Disturbance Theater sit-ins 
                are designed to pressure the Mexican government to 
                respect the human rights of the indigenous 
                communities in Chiapas that the Zapatistas 
                represent, some people see risks in restricting free 
                speech on the web to achieve that goal: "Why do 
                you need to shut out anyone from speaking out on 
                the web when you can use the same medium to 
                express your own views?" Mike Godwin said. 
 
                Maureen Mason, program director of the Institute 
                for Global Communications (IGC), an ISP for 
                progressive organizations and individuals based in 
                San Francisco, drew distinctions between different 
                kinds of possible civil disobedience actions. Last 
                July, IGC was the target of a "mail-bombing" 
                campaign against one of the websites they host, the 
                Basque Euskal Herria Journal. The huge volume of 
                repetitive e-mail overwhelmed their server, and they 
                were forced to suspend the Basque web site in order 
                to continue to serve their other clients. 
 
                IGC has issued a statement condemning 
                mail-bombing, but Mason believes that political 
                speech itself should be protected. "The expression of 
                a political opinion should be allowed, but if 
                technology is used to shut down a communication 
                service all together, then it's like burning the 
                bookstore to protest one book," she said. 
 
                It's too early to predict how electronic civil 
                disobedience will evolve on the web, and whether it 
                will ever have the same impact as a group of 
                anti-war activists smearing human blood on a missle, 
                as they did last week at Andrews Air Force Base. 
                There's something so powerful about people using 
                their own bodies to protest injustice, and that will 
                never happen on the net. But in our increasingly 
                virtual world, electronic civil disobedience is a timely 
                tactic. 
 
 
 
 
 
                            Jeanne Carstensen is 
                            Entertainment Editor of the Gate. 
                            When not trying to escape to 
                            Costa Rica, where she worked as 
                            a shortwave radio producer for six 
                            years, she likes to eat arroz con 
                            pollo, read Jeanette Winterson, 
                            and occasionally live out her 
                            fantasy of being a nurse. 
                            jeannec[at]sfgate.com 
 
_______________________________________________________________________________ 
 
 
 
15. Keith Richards recovering from library related accident (actual truth) 
 
 
by Daniel Frankel 
May 29, 1998, 12:25 p.m. PT 
 
It's not as tragic as when Spinal Tap lost a drummer in a bizarre gardening 
accident, but another legendary British band, the Rolling Stones, will be 
out of comish for a bit while their 
five-decade-chemistry-experiment-gone-awry guitar player, Keith Richards, 
recovers from a freakish library incident. Honest. 
 
Seems the 53-year-old wrinkled rocker got high and hurt himself again. No, 
not that kind of high. According to his agent's statement, Richards fell 
off a ladder while trying to retrieve a book in the library of his 
Connecticut home last weekend. 
 
The statement said Richards "sustained injuries to his ribs and chest after 
the fall," but no other details about his condition were given other than 
"he had not been drinking" at the time of the spill. No word on what title 
caused Richards' tumble. 
 
As for Mick Jagger, Ron Wood and the rest of the geriatric band, their 
European Bridges to Babylon tour, scheduled to start Friday, has been 
delayed until Richards comes off the disabled list. 
 
How long will the delay last? "During the next week, doctors will give 
promoters of the tour a clean indication of Keith Richards' recovery 
period, and an announcement will follow if any more European concerts are 
affected," the Richards statement adds. 
 
For now, four shows in Germany and Croatia have been postponed. 
 
According to Reuters, this latest setback is similar to the last time the 
35-year-old rock band canceled several shows. That was back in 1990, also 
in Europe, when one of Richards' fingers got infected after he punctured it 
on a guitar string. 
 
As Keith heals this time, we have one question: If you're a doctor, what 
kind of pain medication do you prescribe to this guy? 
 
_______________________________________________________________________________ 
 
 
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Date: Thursday, October 29, 1998 12:09 PM