radref's blog

I really like the term digital environmentalism! Check this article out. It discusses some of the ideas put forth in our recent copyright discussion.

Righting Copyright: Fair Use and "Digital Environmentalism" by Robert S. Boynton, Bookforum (February/March 2005)

Boynton is director of New York University's magazine journalism program.

Below are the lastest media coverage of RR, one favorable and one unfavorable and delusional -- but it comes from David Horowitz, and so not unsurprising in its disconnect from reality! Keep up the good work folks!! And print some flyers out and drop them off at your favorite local coffee shop, activist organization, IMC, UFPJ or ANSWER office, etc.

• "Intersect: SLA and Government" by Michele McGinnis, p. 10-11. "The librarians at Radical Reference, steeped in the knowledge of alternative, progressive and radical information sources, are providing a necessary service to activist communities -- and ultimately to a freer, more just society. This is the tip of the iceberg."
• "A Capitol Hatefest" By Ben Johnson. FrontPageMagazine.com, January 20, 2005. I refuse to actually link to that tripe and add to his hit counts, but feel free to go there and search for yourself. Below is the section where we're mentioned. I had to laugh that vegetarian/organic farming is seen as conspiratorial, anti-American!! I can hear June Cleaver saying, "eat your meat, Beaver. You don't want to be under suspicion as a commie pinko, do you?!" LOL!
  

  "The Peace Resource Project represents the overtly conspiratorial spectrum of DAWN’s membership. PRP sells bumper stickers bearing such messages as, “9/11=Inside Job,

Here's a
interesting/disturbing news item from the Register about the seizure of the IMC servers by the FBI last month. Evidently, the IMC (read, "Owner of said servers") has no standing in the case to find out who seized their servers. I seem to remember a little thing called THE CONSTITUTION that says, "In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence. (Article VI)". Hold on to your hats folks; the world is getting wacky!

I just ran across this bunch of book reviews that I thought might be interesting for RR folks. Check these out!

National Catholic Reporter
Issue Date: November 5, 2004

Here's how you can support those that were arrested during the RNC convergence: order a CD or 5 at Beyond the ballot

As you may know, as many as 1800 people we're mass-arrested at the demonstrations, and some have been slapped with huge bails and other legal expenses. The cash raised from this CD will go towards these legal costs right now.

Some of you may be following this story, but for those of you who don't know, on Oct 7, two Indymedia servers hosted by Rackspace in the UK went down. The servers host the sites of more then 20 local collectives, radio streams for several radio stations, BLAG (a GNU/Linux distribution) as well as miscellaneous other projects. It turned out that the FBI had seized them, but the circumstances surrounding this blatent free speech threat are still foggy. For more, see "IMC: FBI and other legalbreaking news" including IMC press releases, list of affected sites, etc. Don't forget to sign the solidarity statement.

HEY YOU! Check out our new page on elections information just in time for the election. Radical Reference will be on the street and providing elections support at this site from 7am to 10pm EST. Got a question? Send in the form or IM us at Radreference!

Well, they didn't mention anything about what radical reference is about, but at least we've been included in this month's

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Steal This v. Stealth Is: Community Technology Collective Bullied Over Misreading of URL

Interactivist, our trusty virtual hosts, are under pressure to give up their domain name. Read on.

Here's a good story about radical reference from the NYC Indypendent posted Sept. 22, 2004. It was reposted on Chuck's Infoshop News with a great picture of one of our radical reffies doing a reference interview on the subway!!