Freedom of Information

Justices consider Va. limits on access to public records

The Supreme Court’s justices suggested Wednesday that state laws limiting access to government records to their own state residents might be pointless, but the justices seemed not to be persuaded that the laws are also unconstitutional. Lawyers for two men who had sought government records from Virginia – joined by a broad group of media organizations and professional data miners – asked the court Wednesday to invalidate those restrictions, arguing that they discriminated against out-of-state residents in ways that violated two separate constitutional limits.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/02/20/supreme-court-state-access-laws/1932847/.

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Intellectual Property Issues

Free Speech Battle Over Publication of Federal Law

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) asked a federal judge today to protect the free speech rights of an online archive of laws and legal standards after a wrongheaded copyright claim forced the removal of a document detailing important technical standards required by the federal government and several states. Last month, the association of Sheet Metal and Air Conditioning Contractors (SMACNA) claimed an online post of a federally-mandated 1985 standard on air-duct leakage violated its copyright and demanded the post be removed. After a threat of legal action from SMACNA, the document was taken down.

https://www.eff.org/press/releases/free-speech-battle-over-publication-federal-law.

Public Domain, My Dear Watson? Lawsuit Challenges Conan Doyle Copyrights

Some 125 years after his first appearance, Sherlock Holmes remains a hot literary property, inspiring thousands of pastiches, parodies and sequels in print, to saying nothing of the hit Warner Bros. film starring Robert Downey Jr. and such television series as "Elementary" and the BBC’s "Sherlock."

But according to a civil complaint filed on Thursday in federal court in Illinois by a leading Holmes scholar, many licensing fees paid to the Arthur Conan Doyle estate have been unnecessary, since the main characters and elements of their story derived from materials published before Jan. 1, 1923, are no longer covered by United States copyright law.

http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/02/15/public-domain-my-dear-watson-lawsuit-challenges-conan-doyle-copyrights/.

DRM Lawsuit Filed By Independent Bookstores Against Amazon, "Big Six" Publishers

Three independent bookstores are taking Amazon and the so-called Big Six publishers (Random House, Penguin, Hachette, HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster and Macmillan) to court in an attempt to level the playing field for book retailers. If successful, the lawsuit could completely change how ebooks are sold. The class-action complaint, filed in New York on Feb 15., claims that by entering into confidential agreements with the Big Six publishers, who control approximately 60 percent of print book revenue in the U.S., Amazon has created a monopoly in the marketplace that is designed to control prices and destroy independent booksellers. The complaint centers on digital rights management, or DRM, the technological lock that prevents consumers from transferring any ebook they buy on an Amazon Kindle onto, say, a Nook or Kobo ereader.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/20/drm-lawsuit-independent-bookstores-amazon_n_2727519.html.

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Internet Access

Oxford Blocks Google Docs in Response to Phishing Scams

The University of Oxford temporarily blocked Google Docs on Monday in an attempt to make its students and professors more aware of an increase in phishing scams that use the Web service. In a blog post, Robin Stevens, a communications programmer at Oxford, said university officials had decided to take "extreme action" after what they perceived to be Google’s inaction on the issue.

In the schemes, attackers, often pretending to be from Oxford, send out Google Doc forms that ask users to enter their personal e-mail passwords. Students and faculty members deceived by the form then freely type in that information, unwittingly lending their account to the attacker. "Almost all the recent attacks have used Google Docs URLs, and in some cases the phishing e-mails have been sent from an already-compromised university account to large numbers of other Oxford users," said Mr. Stevens.

http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/oxford-blocks-google-docs-in-response-to-phishing-scams/42401.

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Public Policy

33% of Seafood Mislabeled in Grocery Stores, Restaurants & Sushi Venues

Oceana, the largest international advocacy group working solely to protect the world’s oceans, uncovered widespread seafood fraud across the United States, according to a new report (PDF) released today. In one of the largest seafood fraud investigations in the world to date, DNA testing confirmed that one-third of the 1,215 fish samples collected by Oceana from 674 retail outlets in 21 states were mislabeled. Among the report’s other key findings include:

• Only seven of the 120 red snapper samples collected nationwide were actually red snapper
• 84 percent of the white tuna samples were actually escolar, a species that can cause serious digestive issues for some individuals who eat more than a few ounces
• Fish on the FDA’s "DO NOT EAT" list for sensitive groups such as pregnant women and children because of their high mercury content were sold to customers who had ordered safer fish

Oceana is calling on the federal government to require traceability of all seafood sold in the U.S. Tracking fish from boat to plate would not only significantly reduce seafood fraud and help keep illegally caught fish out of the U.S. market, it would also give consumers more information about the fish they purchase, including the species name, where, when and how it was caught, if it was farmed or previously frozen and if any additives were using during processing.

http://oceana.org/en/news-media/press-center/press-releases/oceana-study-uncovers-widespread-seafood-fraud-nationwide.

Research – Public Reporting of Hospital Infection Rates

Health-care associated infections (HAIs) kill about 100,000 people annually; most are preventable, but many hospitals have not aggressively addressed the problem. In response, twenty-five states and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services require public reporting of hospital infection rates for at least some types of infections, and other states and private entities are implementing such reporting. We report on work in progress, in which we assess the quality and suitability of different state websites and reports for different target audiences and the extent to which they meet best practices for online communication.

http://www.bespacific.com/mt/archives/032662.html.

White House Open Access Memo Strong, Could Be Stronger

Today [Feb. 22], the White House released a memorandum (PDF) in support of a more robust policy for public access to research, making the results of billions of dollars of taxpayer-funded research freely available online. The memorandum gives government agencies six months to detail plans to ensure the public can read and analyze both research and data, without charge. Both open access and open data are key to promoting innovation, government transparency, and scientific progress. This comes on the heels of Congress’ introduction of FASTR (Fair Access to Science & Technology Research), a bill that sets into law many of the same goals as the memorandum. There are, however, some key differences.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/02/white-house-open-access-memo-strong-could-be-stronger.

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Privacy Issues

Mobile Device Security: Boosting Confidence and Trust in Health IT

Mobile devices like laptops, smartphones and tablets have the potential to increase the quality and efficiency of health care by, among other things, making it easier for health care providers to access patient information when and where they need it. Because health care providers are increasingly using these devices, the HHS recently released a new set of online tools to help providers comply with their obligations under HIPAA when using mobile devices. Mobile devices pose unique risks to the security of health information; the biggest cause of health information breaches is theft and loss of laptops and other portable media.

http://www.ihealthbeat.org/features/2013/mobile-device-security-boosting-confidence-and-trust-in-health-it.aspx.

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Digital History

Kerala State Central Library Starts Digitizing Hundreds of Rare Books

The Kerala State Central Library, which happens to be one of the oldest in India, has made the big leap to the digital age by having digitized hundreds of books, some which dates back hundreds of years. During the initial phase, 707 rare documents which includes 644 English and 63 Malayalam books comprising 3,28,268 pages were added to the Digital Archive. 480 more English books comprising a total of 1,84,321 pages were added in the second phase in 2012.

http://www.librarystuff.net/2013/02/22/184-year-old-kerala-state-central-library-starts-digitizing-hundreds-of-rare-books/.

Please feel free to pass along in part or in its entirety.
The Intersect Alert is a newsletter of the Government Relations Committee, San Francisco Bay Region Chapter, Special Libraries Association.

If this review is late, it’s Tasha Bergson-Michelson’s fault. She’s got me compulsively clicking on every pixel of my Google search page, looking for hidden treasures.

We all search – a LOT, in this job – but do we think about HOW we search? That’s Tasha’s job. She’s a self-described “passionate search geek” who opened her presentation to the SLA-BayNet joint meeting with “My world is about learning what you search for, and how.” Since Google has, to quote legendary reference professor Terry Crowley, “drenched us all with a fire-hose of information,” its Search Education program is working to make making sense of all that information. Dan Russell, whom we visited at Google in 2011, and Tasha are at the forefront of this effort, introducing us to all the features of Google search that relatively few searchers know about or use. The site at http://www.google.com/insidesearch/searcheducation/ offers a variety of tools for getting the most out of these features, along with sample searches, self-paced lesson plans, and tests — even a Continuing Education certificate for the truly dedicated.

The way we in the profession talk about search both helps and hinders us: the jargon doesn’t translate. Things we get stoked about – Boolean logic, controlled vocabulary, stop words — are meaningless to most end-users. That’s why Tasha and Dan teach classes: it gives them shoulders to peek over, to see how people with basic skills do basic searches.

We tend to make our initial searches very specific, forgetting that every word counts and too much precision rules out partial answers that could lead us to better ones. Sometimes an informal search works best, as Tasha showed with the Stanford basketball song that goes “oooh-oooh-ooh.” Who’d think you could get a viable answer by entering “sports song oooh-oooh-ooh.” Try it! The song elected “Best Answer” at Ask.com, “Kernkraft 400 “ by Zonbuie Nation, has been taken down by the copyright owner, which may prove something, but it’s amazing how large the result set is.

Yes, this did remind me of the reference desk classic where the kid says “Mom wants to know what this song is” and hands the librarian a slip of paper on which Mom has written “dum-e-dum, dum DAH-de-dee-dum,” – but it worked. And Tasha addressed the other ref-desk classic, “I don’t remember the title or author, but the cover was pink.” Under the “search tools” button (“all the good stuff is hiding under this button,” she says) in Image Search is an “any color” button. This pulls down to give a click-able choice of colors, so when you enter the word “book” and whatever the patron does remember of the subject – Anglo-Saxon art, in her example – and filter by color, this will limit the results to a less overwhelming number. She also showed us how to use background color for implied context: where searching for SF Giants images brings up the predictable orange and black, filtering for green gives you action shots on the green field.

Learning how to read search results productively is a skill in itself. A first question, especially a more formal one, can bring in results that look far off the point – but much can be learned from them: better key words to use, the type of sites that seem to have the best answers, criteria to filter by. One of the most interesting experiments Tasha mentioned on watching people search is one she’s doing with Diane Sands of the California Academy of Sciences, whose cartoons and drawings (and brownie recipe) have been featured on this newsletter (she also has a book out, Hot From the Toaster.) The team is encouraging searchers to draw their queries, bypassing words altogether. The results have been “eye-opening, sometimes stunning.” I’d love to hear more about this – perhaps another meeting topic?

The main take-home lesson was “Know your options,” In Tasha’s case, that meant exhaustively experimenting with everything on the Google search page, especially the wonders hidden under that magical search button. For us, it can be one-click easy:

http://www.google.com/insidesearch/searcheducation will get you to the Power Search class, live training opportunities, and the addictive “Google-a-day” trivia search challenge.

Enjoy!
Jo Falcon

Thanks go to Information Express for their generous sponsorship of this event.

Photo by Tricia Soto

Take Action!

Call to action: Tell Congress you support the Bipartisan Fair Access to Science and Technology Research Act (FASTR)

Today (February 14, 2013), Senators Cornyn (R-TX) and Wyden (D-OR) and Representatives Doyle (D-PA), Yoder (R-KS), and Lofgren (D-CA) introduced the Fair Access to Science and Technology Research (FASTR) Act, a bill that will accelerate scientific discovery and fuel innovation by making articles reporting on publicly funded scientific research freely accessible online for anyone to read and build upon.

Every year, the federal government funds over sixty billion dollars in basic and applied research. FASTR will make these articles freely available for all potential users to read and ensure that articles can be fully used in the digital environment, enabling the use of new computational analysis tools that promise to revolutionize the research process.

Act Now!

http://www.taxpayeraccess.org/news/FASTR_calltoaction.shtml.

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Open Access

Open Access Journal PeerJ Publishes First Articles

Multidisciplinary Open Access journal publisher PeerJ announced the publication of its first 30 peer-reviewed articles today. Co-founders Jason Hoyt, formerly chief scientist and VP for research and development for Mendeley, and Peter Binfield, formerly publisher of the Public Library Of Science (PLOS), launched PeerJ in June 2012. They quickly garnered support for the project, ultimately assembling an Editorial Board of 800 academics and an advisory board of 20 – five of whom are Nobel Laureates. PeerJ is now hoping that its business model can help make academic publishing more efficient and less expensive for both researchers and libraries.

http://www.thedigitalshift.com/2013/02/publishing/open-access-journal-peerj-publishes-first-articles/.

California bill to release the state’s building codes online for free

Assemblyman Brian Nestande of California has introduced Assembly Bill 292, which would open source the California Code of Regulations (including the Building Codes!!). The summary reads: "This bill would provide that the full text of the California Code of Regulations shall bear an open access creative commons attribution license, allowing any individual, at no cost, to use, distribute, and create derivative works based on the material for either commercial or noncommercial purposes."

http://freegovinfo.info/node/3869.

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Public Policy

New GPO report suggests charging taxpayers twice for government info

The National Academy of Public Administration (NAPA) recently released their congressionally mandated report, Rebooting the Government Printing Office: Keeping America Informed in the Digital Age.  NAPA’s five-member panel spent ten months conducting an audit of the Government Printing Office (GPO). The panel’s lengthy 166 page report does present some interesting, and at times, troubling thoughts.

On one hand the panel definitely grasps the difficult position that GPO is in considering that, with 97% percent of today’s federal documents are born digital, the GPO has had to make many changes over the past two decades. While much of the report is reasonable and responds to the needs of libraries, the public, and GPO itself, the section in Finding III-5, Government Information Dissemination and Access, is cause for concern. It gives some ideas on how GPO might ensure funding for FDsys in the future. One of these ideas is that "now might be the time to revisit charging the public for access to FDsys content."

http://www.districtdispatch.org/2013/02/new-gpo-report-suggests-charging-taxpayers-twice-for-government-info/.

What’s the Difference Between an Executive Order and a Directive?

The Obama Administration issued policy statements this week on critical infrastructure protection and cyber security, including measures to encourage information sharing with the private sector and other steps to improve policy coordination.  Curiously, the Administration issued both an Executive order and a Presidential directive devoted to these topics.

"There are probably two significant differences between an EO and a PD, at least to my understanding," said Harold Relyea, who served for decades as a Specialist in American National Government at the Congressional Research Service. "First, in almost all cases, for an EO to have legal effect, it must be published in the Federal Register. Second, is the matter of circulation and accountability. EOs are circulated to general counsels or similar agency attorneys, which can be readily accomplished by FR publication. Again, a PD may be more selectively circulated, and this is done through developed routing procedures."

http://www.fas.org/blog/secrecy/2013/02/eo_pd.html.

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Privacy Issues

CISPA is Back; All Your Data Are Belong to Us

Barely a year after the defeat of SOPA, Congress is back to testing the waters for legislation that many internet users believe to be in violation of their fundamental rights to privacy and free expression. CISPA, a bill that would make it easier for corporations and the government to share internet users’ personal data, was officially re-introduced in the House on Wednesday. It’s already being rushed forward in the legislative process. The House Intelligence Committee is holding a full hearing on the bill today [Feb. 14] at 10 am. They will hear from four witnesses – all from the business sector and all known supporters of CISPA. No experts with concerns about privacy issues in the bill were invited to address the committee.

http://www.opencongress.org/articles/view/2527-CISPA-is-Back-All-Your-Data-Are-Belong-to-Us.

Mandatory Black Boxes in Cars Raise Privacy Questions

The Electronic Frontier Foundation urged the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration today to include strict privacy protections for data collected by vehicle "black boxes" to protect drivers from long-term tracking as well as the misuse of their information.

Black boxes, more formally called event data recorders (EDRs), can serve a valuable forensic function for accident investigations, because they can capture information like vehicle speed before the crash, whether the brake was activated, whether the seat belt was buckled, and whether the airbag deployed. NHTSA is proposing the mandatory inclusion of black boxes in all new cars and light trucks sold in America. But while the proposed rules would require the collection of data in at least the last few seconds before a crash, they don’t block the long-term monitoring of driver behavior or the ongoing capture of much more private information like audio, video, or vehicle location.

https://www.eff.org/press/releases/mandatory-black-boxes-cars-raise-privacy-questions.

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International Outlook

Egyptian Court Orders 30-Day Ban On YouTube Over Hosting "The Innocence of Muslims" Video and There’s Plenty of Blame to Go Around

This weekend, the Cairo Administrative Court issued a 30-day ban order on YouTube and all other websites that host or link to content from the anti-Islam film "The Innocence of Muslims," which was protested worldwide after footage from the trailer was shown on Egyptian television. The court’s ruling may force the hand of the National Telecom Regulation Authority and the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, which have refrained from pursuing such a ban themselves.

It is unclear what the court hopes to gain by temporarily blocking access to YouTube. YouTube had voluntarily blocked access to the video in Libya and Egypt in mid-September – a clear breach of Google’s own policy of only removing content if it is found to be in violation on their Terms of Service or in response to a valid court order.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/02/egyptian-court-orders-30-day-ban-youtube-over-hosting-%E2%80%9C-innocence-muslims%E2%80%9D-video.

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Freedom of Information

Congress Asking the Right Questions on FOIA

A recent letter from Congress to the Justice Department represents a positive development toward strengthening the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). The letter (PDF), sent Feb. 4 by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, asks what steps the government is taking on a number of key transparency improvements. The reforms, if implemented, could significantly improve the public’s access to information about critical topics such as food safety, compliance with environmental standards, and special interest influence in government decision making.

Open government advocates praised the letter. The Sunshine in Government Initiative said the letter asks "pointed questions," and the Washington Examiner’s Mark Tapscott wrote that it "could be the most comprehensive congressional review [of FOIA] in three decades."

http://www.foreffectivegov.org/congress-asking-right-questions-foia.

Please feel free to pass along in part or in its entirety.
The Intersect Alert is a newsletter of the Government Relations Committee, San Francisco Bay Region Chapter, Special Libraries Association.

Taxonomies: What are they and how are they useful?

Online Webinar on Tuesday, March 12, 2013, 5:30 – 6:30pm (Pacific)

presented by Margie Hlava

Why:
Members of the SLA are perfect candidates to build and implement taxonomies. The oceans of data coming at us through the Internet portals need to be harnessed to power our research, development and management of existing knowledge as a foundation for growth and profitability. This webinar is a great introduction to a powerful skill that sets us apart from IT and adds value to our information systems.

Who:
Marjorie M.K. Hlava is President, Chairman, and founder of Access Innovations, Inc., in New Mexico. Very well known in the international information arena, she is the founding Chair of the SLA Taxonomy Division established in August 2009. She is past president of NFAIS (2002-2003), the organization of those who create, organize, and distribute information. Ms. Hlava is past president of the American Society for Information Science and Technology – 1993 (ASIST) and the 1996 recipient of ASIST’s prestigious Watson Davis Award. Ms. Hlava was also twice a member of the Board of Directors of SLA where she was awarded the President’s Award for her standards work. She has been granted 21 patent claims for her work.

When:
Tuesday, March 12, 2013, 5:30 – 6:30pm (Pacific)

Where:
By phone and online via GoToWebinar, hosted by SLA-SF. You will need a PC with internet access. You can use your computer audio or telephone (toll call). The link and call information will be provided after verification of registration payment.

Cost:
$25 for SLA members, $50 for non-members/guests, and $15 for students/retirees/unemployed.

Registration:
Registration is now closed.

Are you a current member of the SLA Taxonomy Division?
Taxonomy Division members may attend this webinar for free. Do not use the registration link shown above. Instead, send your name, email address and phone number with your interest in the webinar to Wendi Pohs, Taxonomy Division PD Chair: wpohs@infoclearonline.com. The deadline for this special offer is March 1, 2013.

I am very pleased to announce the launch of the SF Bay Region chapter’s newly revitalized social media presence. Many of you may already be aware of the chapter’s group on LinkedIn. This group will continue on as it has, albeit with a few additional administrators. If you aren’t already a member of this group, I urge you to join.

In addition, thanks to the efforts of Lauren Reid, our new Networking Chair, our chapter has new, active accounts on Twitter and FaceBook. Lauren has been working energetically on both accounts for a few weeks now, so check them out to see the type of information that is being made available to you. In addition to SLA announcements and links to Bayline posts, you’ll find information about networking and professional development opportunities, calls for papers, and news of general interest to information professionals.

Follow the Twitter feed at http://twitter.com/SLASFBay.

On FaceBook, we opted for a group, rather than a page, because it is focused more on the people making up the community. All group members should feel free to post stories of interest or comment on anything you see on that page. I hope you’ll join our group at https://www.facebook.com/#!/groups/50637818626/. We also plan to use this account to promote chapter events, so be sure to connect with your colleagues by marking yourself as “attending” an event if you plan to register.

In addition to using these venues to connect with each other, we hope these resources will also help us communicate our presence and value to non-members. Heather Gamberg, our PR Chair, is currently strategizing the best ways to use these resources, and other forms of media, to push our message out past the choir box and into the larger world.

Finally, on the topic of chapter communications, are you signed up for the chapter discussion list? If you’re reading this via e-mail, you may be thinking that I have lost my mind. “Of course, I’m signed up for the discussion list. I’m reading this, aren’t I?” Look up at the “From” line. If you only receive chapter messages that appear to come from Linda Yamamoto, you are not signed up for the discussion list.

Linda very ably administers the discussion list, but she also moderates the chapter reflector. The reflector is an e-mail list used for official chapter and SLA headquarters announcements. You will see event listings and important messages from yours truly on this list, but the only person with permission to post to this account is Linda. All chapter members are automatically signed up for the chapter reflector by SLA headquarters.

The discussion list is a completely separate resource to which any subscriber can post. You’ll see the same types of official announcements as on the reflector, but also a variety of other e-mails sent by members, from requests for recommendations for particular software or services, to a vast array of webinar opportunities forwarded from other SLA units, many of them free to members.

If you are starting to wonder if you are on the discussion list, but can’t remember who has always been in that “From” line, there’s another easy way to tell. Have you been getting the Intersect Alert? This newsletter is sent to the discussion list every Sunday or Monday by the faithful members of your Government Relations committee, Michael Sholinbeck, Tony Sheaffer, and me. It provides annotated links to news stories related to the intersection between libraries/librarians and government information policies. If you have not seen this newsletter recently, you are not on the discussion list.

Please sign up for the chapter discussion list by sending an e-mail to lyris@sla.lyris.net in the following format (leave the subject line blank):
Subscribe SLA-CSFO your-e-mail_address “FirstName LastName” (e.g. Subscribe SLA-CSFO jdoe@xyz.com “John Doe”)

If you are not on the chapter discussion list, you are missing a great opportunity to connect with our chapter and its members. Don’t worry; the number of e-mails is not overwhelming.

Please note, even if you signed up in the past, the Lyris platform has an unfortunate tendency to drop people from time to time. This usually happens if your employer’s e-mail server flags a few messages as spam and, unknown to the subscriber, sends an “unsubscribe” request back. For those of you who signed up with your UC Berkeley e-mail address, it’s probably time to sign up again. I am working with HQ to try and find a way to resolve this ongoing issue, so hopefully we’ll have a better way to deal with it in the future.

Your chapter leaders are working hard to offer you ways to engage through a number of communication channels. Pick the one(s) that work best for you. I hope to be hearing from you soon!

By Anne N. Barker
Chapter President

Registration for SLA’s Annual Conference in San Diego, June 8-11, opens today! This is the first time the conference has been in our time zone since Seattle in 2008. Think about being able to make it to those 8:00 am sessions without the feeling that no amount of caffeine will keep your eyes open!

The conference schedule has changed this year; all CE programs will be on Saturday and regular sessions start on Sunday. The conference ends on Tuesday. The online conference planner is already up and running, so you can start choosing your sessions now.

Make sure to put the Western States Chapter Reception on your calendar for Sunday the 9^th at 7:30. This year’s reception is being planned by our neighbors to the east in the Sierra Nevada Chapter. I spoke with BJ Combs, of the Sierra Nevada Chapter, while at the Leadership Summit last week, and the food and beverages promise to be plentiful!

Get to know San Diego and all it has to offer by visiting the conference wiki. Keep an eye on the site leading up to the conference as it will be continually updated.

It’s a short, inexpensive flight down the coast to beautiful San Diego! More details will be coming soon, but you’ll even have a chance to win lunch on the beach with Deb Hunt, who, it seems, could be easily convinced to take you on a boogie boarding adventure!

Intellectual Property Issues

The Orphan Works Problem: Time to Fix It

Can Congress embrace and enact sensible copyright policy? Four years ago, for a brief shining moment, it seemed the answer might be yes, as various interested stakeholders rallied around long-overdue legislation that would have helped to fix the orphan works problem. Orphan works are those whose owner cannot be located. Consequently, those who would like to use and share these works may hesitate to do so out of fear that they could later be found liable for copyright infringement because they didn’t get permission. In 2008, a variety of interested parties managed to come up with a way to limit that liability. It wasn’t perfect, but it represented real progress. Sadly, that effort collapsed. In the past several months, however, momentum started slowly building once again toward a solution.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/02/orphan-works-problem-time-fix-it.

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Public Policy

Law Library Sues San Francisco for Breach of City Charter

The San Francisco Law Library filed a lawsuit today against the City and County of San Francisco, alleging that since 1995 the city has violated a City Charter provision that requires it to provide proper funding and adequate space for the Law Library. Since 1995, the Library has been housed in a cramped, leaky and damaged upper room of the San Francisco Veterans War Memorial building. The Veterans building is set to close for renovation in May 2013, meaning that if the city continues to violate the Charter and fail to meet its obligations, the Law Library will then be homeless.

http://www.heraldonline.com/2013/02/06/4600104/law-library-sues-san-francisco.html.

Tech, telecom giants take sides as FCC proposes large public WiFi networks

The federal government wants to create super WiFi networks across the nation, so powerful and broad in reach that consumers could use them to make calls or surf the Internet without paying a cellphone bill every month. The proposal from the Federal Communications Commission has rattled the $178 billion wireless industry, which has launched a fierce lobbying effort to persuade policymakers to reconsider the idea, analysts say. That has been countered by an equally intense campaign from Google, Microsoft and other tech giants who say a free-for-all WiFi service would spark an explosion of innovations and devices that would benefit most Americans, especially the poor.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/2013/02/03/eb27d3e0-698b-11e2-ada3-d86a4806d5ee_story.html.

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Open Access

Researchers opt to limit uses of open-access publications

Academics are – slowly – adopting the view that publicly funded research should be made freely available. But data released yesterday suggest that, given the choice, even researchers who publish in open-access journals want to place restrictions on how their papers can be re-used – for example, sold by others for commercial profit.

http://www.nature.com/news/researchers-opt-to-limit-uses-of-open-access-publications-1.12384.

NISO Launches New Initiative to Develop Standard for Open Access Metadata and Indicators

NISO [National Information Standards Organization] voting members have approved a new project to develop standardized bibliographic metadata and visual indicators to describe the accessibility of journal articles with respect to how "open" they are.

Many offerings are available from publishers under the banner of Open Access (OA), Increased Access, Public Access, or other names; the terms offered vary both between publishers and within publishers by journal, and in some cases, based on the funding organization of the author. Adding to the potential confusion, a number of publishers also offer hybrid options in which some articles are &quotopen&quot while the rest of the journal’s content are available only by subscription or license. No standardized bibliographic metadata currently provides information on whether a specific article is openly accessible and what re-use rights might be available to readers. Visual indicators or icons indicating the openness of an article are inconsistent in both design and use across publishers or even across journals from the same publisher.

http://www.niso.org/publications/newsline/2013/newslinefeb2013.html#report2.

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Privacy Issues

In a Major Privacy Victory, Seattle Mayor Orders Police to Dismantle Its Drone Program After Protests

In an amazing victory for privacy advocates and drone activists, yesterday, Seattle’s mayor ordered the city’s police agency to cease trying use surveillance drones and dismantle its drone program. The police will return the two drones they previously purchased with a Department of Homeland Security grant to the manufacturer. EFF has been warning of the privacy dangers surveillance drones pose to US citizens for more than a year now. In May of last year, we urged concerned citizens to take their complaints to their local governments, given Congress has been slow to act on any privacy legislation. At least thirteen states are now considering legislation to restrict drone use to protect privacy, and there are also members of Congress on both sides of the aisle pushing the same thing.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/02/major-privacy-victory-seattle-mayor-orders-police-not-use-surveillance-drones.

Security fears slow cloud progress: Concern over government stopping companies from using the cloud

Almost half of IT professionals are deterred from keeping sensitive data in the cloud because of fear of government intervention and possible legal action. The survey, which looked at IT and cloud experts’ attitudes to storing data in the cloud, revealed that government and legal interference puts 48% of them off from entering the cloud environment. These figures highlight that IT managers are deterred from the Cloud, because they are unsure if their organisation’s sensitive data is adequately protected and will therefore pass IT security audits or indeed government regulatory checks which hosted cloud environments are subjected to.

http://www.iwr.co.uk/information-management-and-technology/3011477/Security-fears-slow-cloud-progress.

Obama wants your immigration story – and personal data

Writing from a BarackObama.com email account, self-described "undocumented immigrant" Jose Magana last night shared his personal immigration story with the masses. Magana said he came to the United States from Mexico at age 2. He slept on a couch for much of his young life. He worked hard and excelled in school but lived in fear of being deported to a country he barely knows.

"Everyone has a story – I’m sure you do, too," Magana wrote in touting immigration policy reform on behalf of Organizing for Action, President Barack Obama’s new nonprofit advocacy organization that sprung from his campaign committee. "Will you share your immigration story? Organizing for Action will use these stories to move the conversation forward."

What isn’t immediately evident to people inclined to submit their names, emails, ZIP codes, photo and personal immigration story through a provided online form: that the group reserves the right to use submissions "for any purpose whatsoever at the sole discretion of OFA, including without limitation any political, advertising or commercial use of any kind."

http://www.publicintegrity.org/2013/02/07/12166/obama-wants-your-immigration-story-and-personal-data?utm_source=iwatchnews&utm_medium=web&utm_campaign=rss.

The FTC and Mobile Privacy: Be Careful in Collecting User Data, or Face the Consequences

The FTC’s announcement late last week of a settlement with a mobile app developer and the Commission’s simultaneous release of a mobile privacy report highlighted the agency’s focus on protecting consumer privacy in the popular mobile space. Moreover, the Commission’s actions provided a pointed reminder to app developers that they must consider privacy at the earliest stages and in all phases of creating their innovative products.

The settlement was with Path, a social networking company, arising out of alleged violations of the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) and the FTC Act. With respect to COPPA, the company had not actually targeted children, but it collected birthdates in the enrollment process and that, the FTC concluded, was enough to give the company knowledge that it was collecting data from children under 13.

https://www.cdt.org/blogs/gs-hans/0702ftc-and-mobile-privacy-be-careful-collecting-user-data-or-face-consequences.

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Digital History

Rebooting the Government Printing Office: Keeping America Informed in the Digital Age

The National Academy of Public Administration (NAPA) independent study of the U.S. Government Printing Office (GPO), Rebooting the Government Printing Office: Keeping America Informed in the Digital Age (PDF), was released January 2013.

"Over the past two decades, the shift from an industrial age to an information age has affected the way both public and private sector organizations operate. For GPO, the demand for federal print products has declined by half over the past twenty years, but the demand for information that government creates has only increased. While conducting this review, the Panel determined that GPO faces challenges in dealing with the movement to the digital age that are shared across the federal government. Critical issues for the federal government include publishing formats, metadata, authentication, cataloging, dissemination, preservation, public access, and disposition. The Panel believes that the federal government needs to establish a broad government-wide strategy to manage digital information through all stages of its lifecycle. The absence of such a strategy has resulted in a chaotic environment with significant implications for public access to government information—and, therefore, the democratic process—with some observers describing federal digital publishing as the "wild west." Now that approximately 97 percent of all federal documents are "born digital," many important documents are not being authenticated or preserved for the future, and the public cannot easily access them. GPO has a critical role to play along with other agencies in developing a government-wide strategy that streamlines processes, clearly defines agency responsibilities, avoids duplication and waste, and effectively provides information to current and future generations."

http://www.bespacific.com/mt/archives/032568.html.

Please feel free to pass along in part or in its entirety.
The Intersect Alert is a newsletter of the Government Relations Committee, San Francisco Bay Region Chapter, Special Libraries Association.

Intellectual Property Issues

Publishers and Library Groups Spar in Appeal to Ruling on Electronic Course Reserves

Fair use and electronic course reserves are back in court. A keenly watched copyright case that pitted three academic publishers against Georgia State University has entered the appeals phase, with a flurry of filings and motions this week and more expected soon. The case in question is Cambridge U. Press et al. v. Mark P. Becker et al. In 2008, Cambridge, Oxford University Press, and SAGE Publishers sued Georgia State, asserting it had committed widespread copyright violations when it allowed some of their content to be used, unlicensed, in e-reserves. The Association of American Publishers and the Copyright Clearance Center, which specializes in licensing content to universities, bankrolled the legal action.

https://chronicle.com/article/PublishersLibrary-Groups/136995/.

EPO and USPTO launch Cooperative Patent Classification

The European Patent Office (EPO) and the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) today launched the Cooperative Patent Classification scheme (CPC), a global classification system for patent documents. The system is the result of partnership between the EPO and the USPTO in their joint effort to develop a common, internationally compatible classification system for technical documents, in particular patent publications, which will be used by both offices in the patent granting process. The CPC is an ambitious harmonisation product that incorporates the best classification practices of both offices.

http://www.epo.org/news-issues/press/releases/archive/2013/20130102.html.

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Digital History

Update on the Twitter Archive At the Library of Congress

In April, 2010, the Library of Congress and Twitter signed an agreement providing the Library the public tweets from the company’s inception through the date of the agreement, an archive of tweets from 2006 through April, 2010. Additionally, the Library and Twitter agreed that Twitter would provide all public tweets on an ongoing basis under the same terms. The Library’s first objectives were to acquire and preserve the 2006-10 archive; to establish a secure, sustainable process for receiving and preserving a daily, ongoing stream of tweets through the present day; and to create a structure for organizing the entire archive by date. This month, all those objectives will be completed. To date, the Library has an archive of approximately 170 billion tweets. Press release (PDF).

http://www.bespacific.com/mt/archives/032522.html.

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Open Access

World wide web creator sees open access future for academic publishing

Activists pushing for free, open access to academic papers will eventually defeat publishers who seek to lock scholarly findings behind paywalls, the founder of the world wide web said today. Sir Tim Berners-Lee, who revolutionised the way we access information on the internet through the creation of the world wide web over 20 years ago, has been a vocal proponent for making data freely available while also protecting people’s privacy.

http://phys.org/news/2013-01-world-wide-web-creator-access.html.

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Public Policy

Agency Attempts to Block Scientific Assessments of Toxic Chemicals

In a report released today, the Center for Effective Government (formerly OMB Watch) documents attempts by the Office of Advocacy at the Small Business Administration to thwart important agency assessments of chemical toxicity at the behest of lobbyists for large chemical companies. No actual small businesses requested these interventions, according to the materials the Center for Effective Government obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests.

Specifically, the report, titled Small Businesses, Public Health, and Scientific Integrity: Whose Interests Does the Office of Advocacy at the Small Business Administration Serve?, reviewed the Office of Advocacy’s activities regarding toxicity assessments by the Department of Health and Human Service’s National Toxicology Program and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Integrated Risk Information System of the cancer-causing potential of three substances: formaldehyde, styrene, and hexavalent chromium. "In each case," said Randy Rabinowitz, Director of Regulatory Policy at the Center for Effective Government and one of the authors of the report, "the Office of Advocacy claimed that small businesses took issue with labeling these substances as known or suspected cancer-causing agents. We found no evidence that this was the case."

http://www.foreffectivegov.org/office-of-advocacy-report-press-release.

EPA Releases New Report on Children’s Health and the Environment in America

EPA today [Jan. 25, 2013] released "America’s Children and the Environment, Third Edition," a comprehensive compilation of information from a variety of sources on children’s health and the environment. The report shows trends for contaminants in air, water, food, and soil that may affect children; concentrations of contaminants in the bodies of children and women of child-bearing age; and childhood illnesses and health conditions.

"This latest report provides important information for protecting America’s most vulnerable – our children. It shows good progress on some issues, such as reducing children’s blood lead levels and exposure to tobacco smoke in the home, and points to the need for continued focus on other issues", said EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson.

http://yosemite.epa.gov/opa/admpress.nsf/bd4379a92ceceeac8525735900400c27/1fe31a8bc6eb3c4385257afe0061b1f4!OpenDocument.

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Freedom of Information

Activists Flood Government Agencies With FOIA Requests in Tribute to Aaron Swartz

In honor of the transparency fights that coder and internet activist Aaron Swartz led while alive, an online records processing service has submitted more than 100 public records requests on behalf of members of the public.

Muckrock, a site that processes public records requests for a fee on behalf of journalists, lawyers, activists and others, decided to waive its fee (generally $20 for five requests) last week and offer to submit federal Freedom of Information Act requests for free to honor Swartz, who committed suicide earlier this month.

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2013/01/foias-honor-aaron-swartz/.

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Privacy Issues

Congress Will Battle Over Internet Privacy in 2013

Last year, we saw more battles in Congress over Internet freedom than we have in many years as user protests stopped two dangerous bills, the censorship-oriented SOPA, and the privacy-invasive Cybersecurity Act of 2012. But Congress ended the year by ramming through a domestic spying bill and weakening the Video Privacy Protection Act.

In 2013, Congress will tackle several bills – both good and bad – that could shape Internet privacy for the next decade. Some were introduced last year, and some will be completely new. They include:

• Update to the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA)
• Restricting Government and Corporate Use of your Cell Phone GPS Info
• Cybersecurity Legislation

and more.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/01/congress-will-battle-over-internet-privacy-2013.

Facebook Graph Search: Privacy Control You Still Don’t Have

Facebook’s Graph Search has certainly caused quite a stir since it was first announced two weeks ago. We wrote earlier about how Graph Search, still in beta, presents new privacy problems by making shared information discoverable when previously it was hard—if not impossible – to find at a large scale. We also put out a call to action – and even created a handy how-to guide – urging people to reassess their privacy settings. One notable blog that has been making rounds on the Internet is Tom Scott’s Actual Facebook Graph Searches. Scott has compiled a number of unnerving—and in some cases, humorous—examples of Graph Searches, such as "Family members of people who live in China and like Falun Gong."

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/01/facebook-graph-search-privacy-control-you-still-dont-have.

Drone Programs Spark Budgetary, Privacy, Legal Concerns

The development of unmanned aerial systems (or drones) for military and civilian applications appears to be accelerating faster than the normal policy process can adapt to it. Aside from festering doubts about the legality, propriety and wisdom of their routine use in targeted killing operations, drone programs are beset by budgetary confusion, and a host of privacy and other legal problems are poised to emerge with the expanded use of drones in domestic airspace.

"With the ability to house high-powered cameras, infrared sensors, facial recognition technology, and license plate readers, some argue that drones present a substantial privacy risk. Undoubtedly, the government’s use of drones for domestic surveillance operations implicates the Fourth Amendment and other applicable laws," said a new report from the Congressional Research Service.

http://www.fas.org/blog/secrecy/2013/01/drone_legal.html.

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International Outlook

From Timbuktu, Reports That Most Manuscripts Were Saved

Reports from Timbuktu, Mali, on Wednesday indicate that most of the ancient manuscripts at a famed library may have been saved by residents before Islamist radicals had the chance to burn them. "I can say that the vast majority of the collections appear from our reports not to have been destroyed, damaged or harmed in any way," Shamil Jeppie, an expert on the documents who teaches at the University of Cape Town in South Africa, told Reuters.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2013/01/30/170680222/from-timbuktu-reports-that-manuscripts-have-been-saved.

Please feel free to pass along in part or in its entirety.
The Intersect Alert is a newsletter of the Government Relations Committee, San Francisco Bay Region Chapter, Special Libraries Association.