Accurate, Focused Research on Law, Technology and Knowledge Discovery Since 2002

Monthly Archives: January 2023

Hide your books to avoid felony charges, Fla. schools tell teachers

Washington Post – Unsure what titles violate new state rules, two school districts tell educators to conceal every book for now..Students arrived in some Florida public school classrooms this month to find their teachers’ bookshelves wrapped in paper — or entirely barren of books — after district officials launched a review of the texts’ appropriateness under a new state law. School officials in at least two counties, Manatee and Duval, have directed teachers this month to remove or wrap up their classroom libraries, according to records obtained by The Washington Post. The removals come in response to fresh guidance issued by the Florida Department of Education in mid-January, after the State Board of Education ruled that a law restricting the books a district may possess applies not only to schoolwide libraries but to teachers’ classroom collections, too. House Bill 1467, which took effect as law in July, mandates that schools’ books be age-appropriate, free from pornography and “suited to student needs.” Books must be approved by a qualified school media specialist, who must undergo a state retraining on book collection. The Education Department did not publish that training until January, leaving school librarians across Florida unable to order books for more than a year…In Duval County, the district published a brief blog post on Jan. 23 announcing that, after “recent training and direction from the state, Duval County Public schools will now conduct a formal review of classroom libraries.” Two days later, the district shared with staffers a private, unlisted YouTube video titled “Classroom Libraries.” In the seven-minute video, obtained by The Post, Chief Academic Officer Paula Renfro announced that “classroom libraries will be temporarily reduced to only include … books that have been approved by certified media specialists and books on the state-approved” list…”

See also HuffPo: Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis said Tuesday that he plans to defund diversity, equity and inclusion programs in every Florida university, another move in his push to upend higher education in the state. The governor and potential 2024 presidential hopeful laid out a list of higher education “reforms” his administration aims to carry out, including banning DEI programs that help universities create a more supportive and inclusive space for staff and students from marginalized backgrounds. The state legislature will need to approve the plans before they go into effect. “We are also going to eliminate all DEI and [critical race theory] bureaucracies in the state of Florida. No funding, and that will wither on the vine,” DeSantis said. “And I think that that’s very important because it really serves as an ideological filter, a political filter.” The governor equated mandatory DEI trainings as “imposing an agenda” that constitutes “a drain on resources,” and claimed that having universities include diversity statements is no different than “making people take a political oath.”

How the Supreme Court ruling on Section 230 could end Reddit as we know it

MIT Technology Review: “February, all eyes will be on the biggest players in tech—Meta, Google, Twitter, YouTube. A legal provision tucked into the Communications Decency Act, Section 230 has provided the foundation for Big Tech’s explosive growth, protecting social platforms from lawsuits over harmful user-generated content while giving them leeway to remove posts at their… Continue Reading

New AI classifier for indicating AI-written text

Open AI: “We’ve trained a classifier to distinguish between text written by a human and text written by AIs from a variety of providers. While it is impossible to reliably detect all AI-written text, we believe good classifiers can inform mitigations for false claims that AI-generated text was written by a human: for example, running… Continue Reading

Alternative Legal Services Providers Growth Is Dramatically Accelerating

Thomson Reuters, January 31, 2023: “Alternative legal services providers (ALSPs) now make up a $20.6 billion segment of the legal market and growth is accelerating dramatically, according to the Alternative Legal Services Providers 2023 Report. The report is issued biennially by the Thomson Reuters Institute; the Center on Ethics and the Legal Profession at Georgetown… Continue Reading

Can I use

“Can I use” provides up-to-date browser support tables for support of front-end web technologies on desktop and mobile web browsers. The site was built and is maintained by Alexis Deveria, with occasional updates provided by the web development community. The design used as of 2014 was largely created by Lennart Schoors. Features a Browser comparison… Continue Reading

2022 Corruption Perceptions Index reveals scant progress against corruption as world becomes more violent

Berlin, 31 January 2023: “The 2022 Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) released today by Transparency International shows that most of the world continues to fail to fight corruption: 95 per cent of countries have made little to no progress since 2017. According to the Global Peace Index, the world continues to become a less peaceful place.… Continue Reading

Open-access textbook on the Holocaust

“An open educational resource (OER) textbook, “The Holocaust: Remembrance, Respect, and Resilience,” is now available for previewing by educators and learners. This preview edition is co-edited by Michael Polgar, professor of sociology, Penn State Hazleton, and Suki John, professor of classical and contemporary dance, Texas Christian University. The text’s audience includes people involved with secondary… Continue Reading

Measuring and Mitigating Racial Disparities in Tax Audits

Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research: Working Paper, Measuring and Mitigating Racial Disparities in Tax Audits. Hadi Elzayn; Evelyn Smith; Thomas Hertz; Arun Ramesh; Robin Fisher; Daniel E. Ho; Jacob Goldin. Publication “Government agencies around the world use data-driven algorithms to allocate enforcement resources. Even when such algorithms are formally neutral with respect to protected… Continue Reading

LLRX January 2023 Issue – Articles and Columns

2023 Healthcare MiniGuide – Marcus P. Zillman’s guide addresses the challenging landscape of healthcare information that proliferates on the internet. A large measure of the information hosted on self described authoritative health and healthcare sites is grounded in speculative, e-commerce drive subject matter. Search engines drive traffic to these sites with no transparent and accountable… Continue Reading

Do classified document revelations highlight problems at the National Archives?

The American Prospect – “Presidential Document Scandals Should Take Down America’s Secrecy Industry We classify way too many documents. Unfortunately, that will probably not be the takeaway from recent events. America has a problem with classified information. But this problem isn’t the one you’ve been hearing about for the past few weeks, with the revelations… Continue Reading