Hello from Sydney! I am in the Harbour City to talk at the Australian Library and Information Assocation (ALIA) National Conference tomorrow about the new orphan works scheme.
This week there is a lot about government bodies’ regulatory interventions:
- DOGE’s cancellation of National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) grants has been declared unconstitutional by a US court
- the US Government has formed agreement with major AI companies to evaluate pre-deployment AI models
- A different US court has struck down the Biden-era FCC's rules prohibiting discrimination in access to broadband services
- Meta has taken the UK communications regulator Ofcom to court over its online safety fines regime.
Also, ALIA and PressReader has putout a report looking at the role of Australian libraries in media literacy education and the barriers they fact in an increasingly complex information environment.
There’s no Bit on the side this week, but you will find an update on the social media addiction case in California that wrapped up in March.
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Rapid-fire
A short list of other things:
- Internet Archive Switzerland joins a growing network of mission-aligned organisations. Shoot through
- Googlebook is the successor to Chromebook. The upcoming laptop lineup will run the long talked about new operating system that brings together Android and ChromeOS. Shoot through
- Meta’s Threads is leaning into an italics logo refresh. Shoot through
What’s been going on?
Here's WTF happened this week:
A US federal judge has ruled DOGE cuts to Humanities grants was unconstitutional
A US federal judge ruled that the cancellation of National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) grants by DOGE was unconstitutional, violating the First and Fifth Amendments. The decision is based on testimony showing DOGE staffers used ChatGPT to identify and flag grants for cutting based on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) related terms.
US District Judge Colleen McMahon has ruled that the cancellation of National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) grants by DOGE last year was unconstitutional, violating the First Amendment and the equal-protection component of the Fifth Amendment. Back in March I included a listing in WTF now?! about a court challenge brought by the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS), the American Historical Association (AHA) and the Modern Language Association (MLA) against the 1,400 NEH grants DOGE cancelled.
