Milford police searching for armed robbery suspects
Milford police are searching for the suspects in an armed robbery.
18-year-old man from Ohio with assault rifle and wearing gas mask taken into custody
Tamika Palmer slams BLM Louisville and Kentucky state representative Attica Scott as frauds
Follow the latest updates
Small fragments no longer worth tracking, US National Ice Center says
YouTube star’s Rolls Royce flipped three times after reportedly hitting black ice
After the death of one child and 38 other incidents involving children, a US safety regulator is urging consumers to stop using the fitness device
The search for survivors continues.
Hinge CEO Justin McLeod dissected some of the dating app's most tired clichés such as "I'll fall for you if... you trip me up."
The Natomas Unified School District hosted a mass vaccination clinic on Saturday. KCRA 3 spoke with some of the teenagers there that were ready to get their shot. See more in the video above.
‘Huge letdown’: Telegram users on Lindell’s verified channel express frustration at signing up for VIP access to new social media network that still hasn’t opened despite announcement
Taylor Hall scored his second goal in two nights, Jeremy Swayman stopped 25 shots in his first career shutout and the Boston Bruins beat the Islanders 3-0 on Friday, their second win over New York in two nights. David Pastrnak added his 17th goal of the season and Curtis Lazar had a late empty-netter as Boston won its third straight overall and put more distance between itself and the idle New York Rangers for the East Division’s final playoff spot. Ilya Sorokin had 21 saves for the Islanders, who have lost three of four.
The Seacor Power vessel capsized on Tuesday in the Gulf of Mexico during a severe storm with 19 people onboard. Nine men are still missing
MLB postponed the Angels' games scheduled for Saturday and Sunday against visiting Minnesota because of the Twins' multiple positive COVID-19 tests.
Photo Illustration by Sarah Rogers/The Daily Beast / Photos via GettyDuring a rough pandemic year of distance learning, e-books—cheap to distribute, searchable, easy to annotate, and accessible on devices that students use every day—became the default choice in many schools.So you might think that e-books should be freely available to teachers and students to use in the same ways they’ve long used paper books, and at comparable prices. But they’re not.Instead, many of the biggest publishers are charging schools and libraries top dollar, putting digital books out of reach for tons of kids who need them while putting severe restrictions on how schools can use the books they’re now renting, rather than owning. The draconian terms mean, for example, that a single e-copy of The Diary of Anne Frank can cost a school district as much as $27 per student per year—with the lion’s share of the money going to billion-dollar publishing companies.“I don’t think parents understand that what their children are learning is based on the decisions of publishers,” a teacher in South Boston told us.Shrinking district budgets had already forced teachers to take extreme measures to provide quality learning materials for their students; the non-negotiable need for expensive distance-learning materials during the pandemic only made matters worse. One teacher took screenshots of every page of a graphic novel and compiled them into a PDF for his class; another reads just one page of a book each day during virtual story time in order to avoid copyright restrictions. Others have gained access to Learning Ally, which provides e-books for the print-disabled, by claiming learning-disabled status for every student they teach. In October, the National Education Association reported that nearly a quarter of students don’t have what they need for online learning.“I’m a teacher, not a copyright lawyer,” said an art educator who teaches mostly via YouTube video. “I worry in the future that these videos will harm me in some way.”It’s not an abstract concern; violating copyright can land school districts in serious trouble. In 2019, Houston Public schools were ordered to pay $9.2 million to a publisher for violating copyright law. The recent lawsuit against the Internet Archive’s Open Library was filed by four of the world’s biggest publishers, who claim that the laws that apply to paper books bought and loaned in libraries don’t apply to digital books. The publishers’ ultimate goal is to turn e-books into assets that libraries and schools can only rent, and never own. The stakes couldn’t be higher.As the debate rages over the legal aspects of owning digital assets, rather than licensing them on terms set by corporations—which is at its core a fight over the right of schools and libraries to provide books for everyone, regardless of income level or zip code—poorer kids and their families are the losers. As Heather Joseph, the executive director of the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition, said at a recent event, “People can still get access to resources with a card, but it is no longer with a library card or a student ID; it’s with a credit card. A library card is a legitimate, equalizing force that ensures everyone has access to knowledge.”The good news is that the Biden administration seems to be taking learning equity seriously. The new American Rescue Plan allocates $7 billion to support teachers and students with connected devices. But Congress must also take more and bolder steps, not just to beef up school budgets, but to protect that money from profiteers.This spring, the new nonprofit Library Futures organized library groups to support initiatives that balance copyright with the service of the public good, including Controlled Digital Lending, which allows libraries to buy and lend digital materials on the same terms as print books. Oregon Senator Ron Wyden—who is the son of a librarian—spoke recently in support of these initiatives at a recent Georgetown Law panel.“How do you combat falsehoods and lies?” he asked. “Some say, let’s just force internet platforms to take down disinformation... that’s unconstitutional. The First Amendment protects 98 percent of all speech. But even if it was legal, putting the government in charge of policing what’s true and false is a horrendous idea... What government needs to do is to make sure that every single American has easy, free access to reliable information from trustworthy sources, so we have more good information to combat the bad stuff. That’s the role that libraries were designed to fill.”What we need, in other words, is an approach that balances copyright with the free and equal access to information that’s the hallmark of a healthy society. Connecting the fight against disinformation to protecting every student’s access to good books is smart policy, and smart politics.Read more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.
‘America is a nation with a border, and a culture, strengthened by a common respect for uniquely Anglo-Saxon political traditions,’ an America First pamphlet says
The Canes, 4-2-1 on their longest homestand of the season, close it out with the second of two games against the Predators.
The window of opportunity to revive the deal is closing, and Biden will need to act quickly and boldly to clear away the political traps set by Trump.
Artemis will land the first woman and person of colour on the moon
The world’s two biggest polluters have agreed to ramp up their ‘respective actions’ to combat climate change
The question isn’t whether Nebraska Republican candidates must embrace Trump. It’s how tightly.