It's amazing what a week in Cancun can do for a person, disconnected from the world, not even watching television. It was fantastic and now I'm slowly rejoining the information age, so please forgive me and be patient if you sent me email and are awaiting a response. Thanks!

Rent to Never Own

"This is not about Digital Rights Management. I'm not against the idea of DRM per se—it can have its uses, as the sales of DVD movies clearly show. This is about something more insidious—an attitude. The entertainment media companies are increasingly acting as if you have only the right to borrow their content—not own, not even license. Just pay for a peek, if you will. Then pay for the next peek…and the next. Certainly DRM is a tool that enables this idea, but DRM can be relatively user friendly, as we've seen with iTunes.

Despite all these efforts, illegal copies of games often show up on pirate sites before the actual day of release, and pirated DVDs or music CDs can be purchased for a few dollars on street corners and flea markets around the world. Media publishers often treat these as root causes, when a lot of us see them as symptoms—symptoms of a creative malaise, overpriced media and increasing restrictions on fair use. The next thing you know, book publishers will force public libraries to charge a fee for every book that's checked out.

I don't know about you, but I don't want to live in a world where every artistic endeavor is metered by the minute. The next thing you know, you'll have to put coins into slots at museums to see each work of art." [Extremetech]

• There's an interesting Rhapsody blog from the Rhapsody folks themselves. It covers music, rather than the service itself, but it's still interesting to me as a subscriber.
   
• I really, really, really wish I could go to the OCLC Symposium at ALA Midwinter.
   
• Teri Vogel and Doug Goans have a new write-up about the great Georgia State University Library's blogging bonanza. Pull quote from Teri's post: "However, there has been once major change since we submitted the article: the number of blogs has more than tripled since March."
   
• How can RSS help patrons? Peter Rukavina, he of the "I can build an RSS feed of my checked-out items faster than your vendor can" and new DVDs scripts, gets notified of newly-arrived ILL items before his library even sends him email notification. So not only has Peter routed around the Library and its vendor, but he even gets his notifications faster than we can send them. (I've had this happen, too, thanks to Library ELF.) Very cool.
   
• Congratulate me - I finally had a successful VR session as a patron tonight! Yay! What a nice change....

Privacy Advocates to Fight Electronic Tags at SF Library

"Anonymous Patron writes 'CBS5.com - Privacy Advocates Promise to Fight Electronic Tags in Library Books A plan to put radio frequency identification (RFID) tags into San Francisco public library books has drawn sharp criticism on grounds ranging from privacy for library patrons to the health and safety of library workers. A provision in the San Francisco city budget approved last June allocated $300,000 to begin a pilot RFID program at the San Francisco public library. However the plan has been placed on hold according to San Francisco supervisor Jake McGoldrick, who expects the Board of Supervisors to revisit the RFID issue in January.' " [LISNews.com]

Please blog. Really, I'm begging you. When I have a moment, I'm going to write up what I said at the Internet Librarian conference to help, but these pages on RFID just don't cut it. How about something in the first person? Humanize your site by blogging. Acknowledge the ongoing issue and address it with something more empathetic than "RFID Implementation Proposed Plan of Action."

Trust me on this one.

Oh, and ALA, you're on the naughty list for not blogging with RSS feeds yet. Lead the way!