Archive for the 'Legal Issues' Category

Virginia Mandates Internet Safety Classes

April 16, 2008

The State of Virginia is the first state to have mandated Internet safety classes for public schools. Apparently this law went into effect this school year, so I’m guessing that schools have been integrating this curriculum throughout the year. Yahoo Tech found this PDF from the Virginia Department of Education which provides ideas [...]

Google Has an Age Requirement

April 16, 2008

Apparently, the Google Terms of Service includes an age requirement.

Section 1 — The Terms of Service document is used with all Google’s “services and web sites (referred to collectively as the ‘Services’ ;) . . . “
Section 2.1/2.2 — You must agree to these Terms in order to use the Services. You can accept the [...]

Proposals Over Twitter

April 11, 2008

Twitter, a service that allows you to send very short messages to one another, now has at been part of at least two marriage proposals.
March 2
@stefsull - “ok. for the rest of the twitter-universe (and this is a first, folks) - WILL YOU MARRY ME?”
@garazi - OMG - Ummmmm… I guess in front of the [...]

Help with Newly Found Documents on Kennedy Assassination

April 11, 2008

The Dallas County District Attorney Craig Watson found some previously unknown documents related to the Kennedy assassination in his office.  They were originally compiled by Henry Wade, the district attorney at the time of the assassination, but were not made public.
Watson has scanned these documents and the Dallas Morning News has made them public.  In [...]

Filtering Report for San Jose Public Library

April 5, 2008

In February, Sarah Houghton-Jan, Digital Futures Manager for the San Jose Public Library, wrote a report on filtering for the city commissioners. She has since posted the report, which compares three filtering packages — CyberPatrol, FilterGate, and WebSense.
The report includes information on how filtering is done, a description of the methodology, the findings (both [...]

Best Web Sites on Capitol Hill

March 24, 2008

For the second year, the Congressional Management Foundation has reported on the web sites created by members of Congress and their staff.  Called the 2007 Gold Mouse Report, the report itself is well written, with insights into what makes a good congressional website, e.g., easy to use and navigate, Section 508 compliance, information on how [...]

MySpace and Texas

March 24, 2008

In January, MySpace and 49 attorneys general agreed to several changes aimed at protecting children and teenager users of their service.  The agreement states:

MySpace and the attorneys general will:

share the goal of designing and implementing technologies and features that will make MySpace safer.

meet regularly to discuss improvements relevant to minors’ safety on MySpace.

support initiatives for [...]

Wireless Policy Checklist

January 4, 2008

MaintainIT posted a checklist for wireless policies, courtesy of Louise Alcorn. In an earlier post, she states:
Policy is a good issue, though I think some libraries over-policy the wireless. If you have a good library computer/internet use policy and a good library conduct policy, you are largely covered. You need some wording changes for [...]

Tracking State Legislation

October 26, 2007

The National Conference of State Legislatures has posted a list of state legislation by subject:
At the request of NCSL’s Legislative Research Librarians (LRL) staff section, NCSL has developed this resource of 50-state compilations covering various issues that concern state legislators and legislative staff. Here you will find a topical, alphabetical listing of legislative and statutory [...]

State Cell Phone Driving Laws

October 19, 2007

The Governors Highway Safety Association has compiled information on the laws concerning driving and cell phones from each of the states.  Texas has restrictions for drivers under 18 and school bus drivers who have passengers under 18.
[from WebReference Update]