BOSTON (CBS) — The new travel order for Massachusetts goes into effect on Saturday, August 1. Visitors and in-state residents returning home must fill out a “Massachusetts Travel Form” and quarantine for 14 days unless they are coming from an exempt, lower-risk state or can provide a negative COVID-19 test from the last 72 hours.
At Logan Airport on Friday night, travelers were flying in just before the new rules kick in. Many said they think the travel order is a good idea.
“We came from Seattle. There’s still a lot of illness out there. We don’t know what we’re bringing back to Massachusetts, so I think its not a bad idea,” said traveler Nick Mascoli.
“It is a good idea because you’re not only taking care of you, you’re taking care of the rest of the people around you,” said Nick Castillo, of Lowell, who was arriving home after a trip with his family.
Individuals who fail to comply with a new travel order in Massachusetts could be fined $500 per day.
The current exempt states are Connecticut, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Vermont, Maine, Hawaii, New Jersey, and New York.
Other exemptions include people passing through the state, people commuting across state lines for work, people traveling to Massachusetts for medical treatment, people complying with military orders, or people traveling to work in federally designated critical infrastructure sectors.
Incoming college students are included in the order.
LEWISTOWN — Goose Day will be taking flight soon in the Juniata River Valley.
Goose Day will be celebrated over the long weekend of Sept. 25-29 this year. The Juniata River Valley Visitors Bureau’s focus for 2020 is promoting this unique holiday locally.
“This year we’re focusing on promotion locally to be sure everyone knows the legend of Goose Day, understands what we’re doing to promote it and how important it is that everyone gets on board with it,” said Jenny Landis, executive director of the JRVVB.
By continuing to build and promote Goose Day each year, Landis said this effort draws more visitors to our area, boosts the local economy and helps to instill pride in the community.
The bureau has been promoting the “I believe in Goose Day” slogan for the past several years. While that is still relevant, they also plan to incorporate “Goose Day is a State of Mind” in this year’s promotions.
“So many things are up in the air these days because of the pandemic and we wanted an additional slogan to reenforce the idea that Goose Day happens every year, no matter what,” Landis explains. “If you haven’t eaten goose on Goose Day in the past, this could be the best year to start doing it. We all need any kind of luck we can find.”
Each year, the visitors bureau publishes a list of activities that will be happening over the Goose Day Celebration Days and some over the entire month of September. The Goose Day Celebration is a combination of all these activities. In order to build the list, the staff contacts businesses, groups and individuals that have participated or have expressed a desire to play a part in the local holiday.
“Everyone is welcome to do something for Goose Day,” said Buffie Boyer, JRVVB marketing assistant, “and if you don’t have an idea, I’m sure we can come up with one that will not only help build the holiday but possibly benefit your business, too.”
Each year, the visitors bureau does something to show its support of the holiday. This year, a special commemorative pictorial postmark has been designed by Ryan Cherry to provide a special souvenir to mark this year’s event. The design is a unique philatelic item featuring a goose graphic and the text Lewistown Station, September 29, 2020. If you would like this postmark on your outgoing mail, just stop in the Lewistown Post Office on West Market Street and ask for the special postmark. It will be available only on Tuesday, Sept. 29.
The visitors bureau is also offering a special Goose Day postcard package to make the most of this special postmark. Starting on Sept. 1, a pre-stamped postcard, showcasing artwork by Yeagertown artist Neil Demi, can be purchased at East End Coffee Co., Yoder’s Tees and More, the Mifflintown Farmer’s Market and online through The Pennsy Station’s website (https://ift.tt/2DbuFIn). For $5 per card, the buyer can fill out the back of the postcard and then return the card to the shop owner. On Goose Day, the postcards will then be taken to the Lewistown Post Office, where the postmark will be applied and then the card will be mailed.
“We think this is a pretty exciting idea and a great way to share Goose Day with the world,” Landis said. “We know that stamp collectors will love this offer, but we also believe that the general public will be interested in this unique souvenir. And with the online ordering option from The Pennsy Station, we can help family members in other states connect over our local holiday.”
Even though the visitors bureau has been notified of some event cancelations, there are a handful of activities that are already scheduled. These include in-person events at Middle Road Speedway, At the Barnyard, and Mifflintown Farmer’s Market. The Lewistown Borough’s 225th anniversary event has been rescheduled for Monday, Sept. 28 and the annual Goose Day Road Rally will be back. All in-person events will be held barring an unforeseen shutdown due to COVID-19.
The visitors bureau has also been building online content to share throughout September. These include new how-to videos and product showcases. Local media outlets Bigfoot Country and WMRF will be holding a Wild Geese selfie contest and a trivia contest, respectively, both with Goose Day prize packs provided by the visitors bureau. The visitors bureau will be working with other media as well to promote the holiday.
On Sept. 1, the official list of events, sales, promotions and roast goose dinners will be released by the visitors bureau on its website and social media channels. Hardcopies of the list will be available at the Visitors Center in the Historic Courthouse during office hours and by calling the office at (717) 248-6713. Ongoing details about Goose Day and planning for the Festival of Ice can be found on Facebook.
PHILADELPHIA (WPVI) -- It's the first-ever Ummah Shop inside a gallery at 9th and Spring Garden. Muslim vendors encouraging everyone to support Muslim owned businesses.
It's only Friday, July 31, in celebration of Eid al-Adah. The second of two holidays in Islam.
"We celebrate by giving back to the community, we celebrate by through prayer, we celebrate by bringing our families together and it's really the largest holiday we have in Islam," said Ummah Shop founder Sherrima Sharif.
Philadelphia has one largest Muslim communities in the country. The Ummah Shop is the first time in 2020 many have seen each other.
Originally, this celebration was set for April after the first holiday the eid following Ramadan.
But the COVID-19 pandemic postponed everything.
"We were quarantined the entire time, so that is typically a time the community comes together to pray," said Sharif. "To eat, to fast and we haven't seen anybody. All the mosques have been closed."
Kaboobesh in University City is also celebrating the eid.
People can come and enjoy traditional Halal meat. Everything from lamb, beef and chicken.
The owners who are from Pakistan say the restaurant offers outdoor dining and lots of tasty dishes.
"The meat is a big item we have to eat meat if you can and that is what we serve here," said owner Asad Grumman.
On one of the holiest days for Muslims, the community still makes it a point to celebrate while properly social distancing.
We’re glad Congress is asking the question. Without fair use, much of our common culture would be inaccessible, cordoned off by copyright. Fair use creates breathing space for innovation and new creativity by allowing us to re-use and comment on existing works. As Sherwin Siy, lead public policy manager for the Wikimedia Foundation, said in his testimony: “That fair uses aren’t rare exceptions to the exclusive rights of copyright law but a pervasive, constantly operating aspect of the law. Fair use not only promotes journalism, criticism, and education, it also ensures that our everyday activities aren’t constantly infringing copyrights. Especially now that so much of our lives are conducted on camera and online.”
Unfortunately, the answer to Congress’s question is: not enough. The DMCA, in particular, by design and as interpreted, doesn’t do enough to protect online fair uses. This is the case in both Section 1201 of the DMCA—the “anti-circumvention” provision which bans interference on technological restrictions on copyrighted works—and Section 512—the provision which immunizes platforms from liability for copyright infringement by their users so long as certain conditions are met.
Fair Use and Notice and Takedown
The DMCA was meant to be a grand bargain, balancing the needs of tech companies, rightsholders, and users. Section 512 embodies a carefully crafted system that, when properly deployed, gives service providers protection from liability, copyright owners tools to police infringement, and users the ability to challenge the improper use of those tools. Without Section 512, the risk of crippling liability for the acts of users would have prevented the emergence of most of the social media outlets we use today.
But Congress knew that Section 512’s powerful incentives could result in lawful material being censored from the Internet, without prior judicial scrutiny, much less advance notice to the person who posted the material, or an opportunity to contest the removal. For example, users often making fair use of copyrighted works in all kinds of online expression. That use is authorized by law, as part of copyright’s “built-in First Amendment accommodations.” Nonetheless, it is often targeted for takedown under the DMCA.
For Section 512, user protections are supposed to be located in sections 512(g) and 512(f). In practice, neither of these sections have worked quite as intended.
Section 512(g) lays out the requirements for counternotifications. In theory, if a takedown is issued against a work making fair use, then the target can send a counternotice to get the work restored. The counternotice contains personal information of the creator and an agreement to be subject to a court case. If the person or organization doesn’t respond to the counternotice with a legal action within two weeks, the work goes back up. In practice, very few counternotices are sent, even when the original takedown was flawed.
512(f) was supposed to deter takedowns targeting lawful uses by giving those harmed the ability to hold senders accountable. Once again, in practice, this has done little to actually prevent abusive and false takedowns.
Columbia Law Professor Jane C. Ginsburg agreed, saying that these parts of 512 “may not always have worked out as intended.” She highlighted that automated takedown notice systems don’t take fair use into account and that there are relatively few counternotices. She allowed that “fear or ignorance” would cause users not to take advantage of counternotices, a point backed up by cases of trolling and the intimidating nature of the counternotices.
Evidence of how users avoid the process was given by Rick Beato, a musician who also has a popular YouTube channel that teaches music theory. He noted that he has made 750 YouTube videos, of which 254 have been demonetized and 43 have been blocked or taken down. Beato noted that he’s never disputed anything – it’s too much trouble.
Several witnesses urged the creation of some sort of “alternative dispute resolution” to make taking down and restoring content easier. We disagree. Section 512 already makes takedowns far too easy. The experience of the last 22 years shows just how much of the fundamental right to freedom of expression is harmed by extrajudicial systems like the DMCA. The answer to the DMCA’s failures cannot be yet another one.
As for the European model, there is no way to square the Copyright Directive with fair use. The European Union’s Copyright Directive effectively requires companies to ensure that nothing is ever posted on their platforms that might be infringing. That incentivizes them to over-remove, rather than take fair use into account. And to handle that need, filters become necessary. And so it creates a rule requiring online service providers to send everything we post to the Internet to black-box machine learning filters that will block anything that the filters classify as "copyright infringement." And, as Beato testified to in the hearing, filters routinely fail to distinguish even obvious fair uses. For example, his educational videos have been taken down and demonetized because of a filter. And he is not alone.
Witnesses also suggested that fair use has expanded too far. This is a reassertion of the old bogeyman of “fair use creep,” and it assumes that fair use is set in stone. In fact, fair use, which is flexible by design, is merely keeping up with the changes in the online landscape and protecting users’ rights.
As witness Joseph Gratz put it:
Nobody likes to have their word, or their work, or their music used in ways that they can’t control. But that is exactly what fair use protects. And that is exactly what the First Amendment protects. Whether or not the copyright holder likes the use, and indeed, even more so where the copyright holder does not like the use, fair use is needed to make sure that free expression can thrive.
Fair Use, Copyright Protection Measures, and Right to Repair
On balance, Section 512 supports a great deal of online expression despite its flaws. The same cannot be said for Section 1201. Section 1201 makes it illegal to circumvent a technological protection on a copyrighted work, even if you are doing so for an otherwise lawful reason.
Sound confusing? It is. Thanks to fair use, you have a legal right to use copyrighted material without permission or payment. But thanks to Section 1201, you do not have the right to break any digital locks that might prevent you from engaging in that fair use. And this, in turn, has had a host of unintended consequences, such as impeding the right to repair.
The only way to be safe under the law is to get an exemption from the Copyright Office, which grants exemptions to classes of uses every three years. And even if your use is covered by an exemption, that exemption must be continually renewed. In other words, you have to participate in an unconstitutional speech licensing regime, seeking permission from the Copyright Office to exercise your speech rights.
Nevertheless, Christopher Mohr, the Vice President for Intellectual Property and General Counsel of the Software and Information Industry Association, called Section 1201 a success because it supposedly prevented the “proliferation of piracy tools in big box stores.” And Ginsburg pointed to the triennial exemption process as a success. She said it “responds effectively to the essential challenge” of balancing the need for controls with the rights of users.
That’s one way of looking at it. Another is that even if you have an exemption allowing you access to material you have a Constitutional right to use, you can’t have someone with the technological know-how to do it for you and no one is supposed to provide you a tool to do it yourself, either. You have to do it all on your own.
So if you are, for example, one of the farmers trying to repair your own tractor, you now have an exemption allowing you to do that. But you still can’t go to an independent repair store to get an expert to let you in. You can’t use a premade tool to help you get in. This is a manifestly absurd result.
We’re glad Congress is asking questions about fair use under the DMCA. We wish there were better answers.
As we roll toward the half-year mark of the COVID-19 pandemic, the effects on work, office space, and focus have been profound. Executives can now be found working out of what had been guest rooms, attics, or walk-in closets. The need to work in corporate offices, once considered indispensable, is now being rethought in its entirety.
We’ve learned that maintaining our focus at home is different than at the office, and there are advantages and disadvantages to both places. But as office attendance is now optional, it’s clear that office buildings and their functionality need to change to remain viable.
Having these thoughts about the ramifications of COVID-19 on workspace and focus, I felt immediately drawn to an article called The Office is Dead, Long Live the Office! that Eddy Badrina penned for Medium.
Work, especially in urban centers, will never look the same again.
getty
Recommended For You
Recently, I had the chance to sit down with Eddy, who is the CEO of Eden Green and President of BuzzShift, and Ryan Bricker, an urban designer for HNTB Corporation, to talk about the changing nature of office space, the needs of professionals, and the fight for focus. What follows is an abbreviated version of our conversation, which I hope will serve as inspiration to leaders and workers everywhere as they consider what office work and the space that contains it should become in the future.
Curt: We’re talking about reorganizing office space to make it valuable again. Even before COVID-19, only 23% said they worked better in an office than at home. So, when we talk about office space, it’s an odd combination of “expensive, but useless.” Those in commercial real estate should be interested in redesigning for a new era of human and work needs.
Eddy: So, if you’re talking to a real estate developer, what are you telling them in terms of an office worker’s perspective, or efficiency and effectiveness or from a corporate perspective?
Curt: It feels to me like the premise of commercial office real estate has become old. The real estate industry wants to establish a high value to make money, but companies and workers are no longer valuing it that way. We find value in space when it facilitates our work, and we’ve discovered on a massive scale that we can get that value at home. So, the core question for office building developers is, how do you create a better space, where people gain as much by going to the office as they save or reclaim by working at home?
Eddy: Ryan, from your perspective as an urban designer, how do you respond to that?
Ryan: What is happening all over the country in new development is about adjacencies between workspaces and what the city has to offer. In the downtown area where I work, you see an incredible emphasis on livability. I could show you 15 buildings where the ground floors are being reshaped into amenity centers, where anyone with a laptop can stop to work. As technology has gotten smaller, the portability of work has increased, so you don’t need the office to work. That means the office has to change — not just its layout, but its culture. If I’m going to commute two days a week into a downtown office, then that office has to have ten times the amenities and attractions of staying home.
Curt: Because otherwise, it's just a crazy amount of wasted space.
It is a time of reinvention for commercial real estate.
getty
Ryan: Right. And the burden falls not only on a company but also on those who develop the office buildings to figure out the cultural elements. But let me ask, how will that affect individuals and teams, and how they focus at work?
Curt: Only a small percentage of office roles need to be performed at a particular spot. Most people don't need to be in a specific location. The notion that we need an office for people to “collaborate” is an intriguing one because, so far, we've got it absolutely wrong. Most companies have gone to open offices or large communal workspaces, which actually suppress collaboration as people focus inward to produce work and shut out distractions. It’s the opposite of collaboration, which flourishes when you provide private spaces for people to think, and just a few larger spaces that teams can visit when they put those thoughts together and work collectively.
Eddy: From my perspective, as a business owner, I believe that if we take excellent care of our employees and look out for their efficiency, their effectiveness, and their well-being, they're going to make our company better. I’m not talking about lip service or promoting a standard 401(k) plan, but thinking deeply about their day-to-day comfort and work, and the reasons and needs and motivations behind that. Our team is actually more effective at home for 80% of their work. But we really do feel the collaboration piece — being together — is missing.
So, we redesigned our space. We made the first floor available to everyone with a variety of seating areas – booths, tables, nooks, a kitchen, and a ten-person conference room. We designed the second floor as an open office concept with desks, etc. Guess what? No one uses the second floor. You might see one or two people there, but everyone else is downstairs.
Curt: Exactly, because the concept of fully open office space is actually paralyzing. When you need a place for sustained focus, well, you get that at home. Also, in your home, everything about it reflects that “you matter here.” In an open office space, which can feel dehumanizing, the suggestion is “you’re replaceable.” In a typical workday, you end up with large rooms of people who don’t talk to each other but look for ways to escape.
Eddy: And that’s why space needs to be designed for the comfort and convenience of the people in the organization, not for the organization’s comfort and convenience, which is how it has been until now. But speaking of spaces, let’s talk about the outdoors. In my article, I talked about people posting Instagram photos of themselves working outside at home. Obviously, they’ve got internet access outdoors. Ryan, where do you see architectural design and urban planning when it comes to outdoor spaces at work?
Ryan: Designing outdoor spaces in the public realm has most often involved things like recreation, play or relaxation, and sometimes reverence, memory, and contemplation, all traditionally built around human behavior. Landscape architecture hasn’t widely addressed work behavior within outdoor settings. So it’s a new question: How do you bridge that gap to design outdoor spaces for productive work?
Curt: There’s a study from the University of Michigan that proves a simple walk in nature can restore our focus. When you return, you can sustain a longer period of focus than you could without the nature walk. Nature creates a sensation of peace and rests the mind.
Ryan: Yes, but designing the outdoors for work could be a double-edged sword. If you’re outdoors, plugged in, focused on a screen, then you’re not really being in nature, right? And the same is true of the home environment. If you can’t totally unplug in the evening or on weekends to be at home with your family, then you’re not really “home from work.”
Some may find a new home office on the pier. Others may prefer to separate nature and work.
getty
Eddy: One thing I’m struggling with is understanding my new cadence. What are my new patterns for work? Do I go to the office just for client meetings? What other work do I do there? Am I going to stay home today? Is there a trigger for choosing one or the other?
Curt: The bottom line is, we need to challenge this baseline assumption that we need to go into the office. If you can work from home, then isn’t all that commuting actually appropriating time from your home life, your private life, or being with your kids? So, whatever happens at the office better be something super valuable.
On the other hand, we also need rituals. So maybe on Tuesdays, I go into the office, do certain “Tuesday” things, and leave. But even as a ritual, it’s got to be easy to go there.
Ryan: What’s coming up quickly is the transportation side – flying cars, the hyperloop, or supersonic travel that could get you from New York to Shanghai in 60 minutes. As those transportation technologies come to life, you can live and work almost anywhere. It will radically change real estate, development, and communities.
Curt: In the end, I think this pandemic is forcing society to catch up to where technology was already heading. And that means new models of where we work, driven by why we work there.
Conclusion
The baseline of where people want to work has shifted. And that means we’re going to have spaces where people meet only once a week, not every day. It’s a huge opportunity for developers to create new, productive, focus-friendly flex spaces for work in locations that also give meaning and add cultural value to those who come to work there.
"Clogged up head, clogged up nose where you can only mouth breathe, my ears were popping, and that nose burning was really it, if I wouldn't have care, I would have been like, 'oh it's just allergies, I'll take some Allegra I'll be fine,'" Vance said.
