Freedom of Information

Justices say states can limit access to public records
“The Supreme Court on Monday said states are free to allow public records access only to their own citizens, delivering a blow to freedom of information advocates who had challenged a Virginia law. In a unanimous ruling, the court said two out-of-state men did not have a right to view the documents. Various other states, including Tennessee, Arkansas and Delaware, have similar laws, although some do not enforce them.”
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/04/29/us-usa-court-records-idUSBRE93S0N420130429

Supreme Court FOI Decision Foolish and Shortsighted
“Yesterday, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a Virginia law that generally prohibits non-Virginians from making use of its Freedom of Information law. As part of its decision in McBurney v. Young, the Court held that the Constitution’s Article IV “Privileges and Immunities” clause does not extend to a non-Virginian’s right to access public information on equal terms with Virginia citizens.”
http://sunlightfoundation.com/blog/2013/04/30/supreme-court-foi-decision-foolish-and-shortsighted/

Support for the PIDB’s Recommendations Continues to Grow
“The Public Interest Declassification Board received recognition at a recent academic conference titled The Legal and Civil Policy Implications of “Leaks” at the American University Washington College of Law.  A panel focusing on the legislative response to “leaks” discussed what impact over-classification and the current state of the security classification system have on the prevalence of leaks.”
http://blogs.archives.gov/transformingclassification/?p=467

USAID releases open data tools to increase government openness
“The U.S. Agency for International Development announced April 29 the launch of a plethora of new datasets and tools to increase transparency. The unveiling took place at the G-8 Conference on Open Data for Agriculture in Washington, D.C., and brought together G-8 countries and the New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition to discuss open data for agriculture and to create action plans for food security datasets.”
http://fedscoop.com/usaid-releases-open-data-tools-to-increase-government-openness/

Public Policy

As Works Flood In, Nation’s Library Treads Water
“The Sea Creatures, who recently sent their recording “Naked in the Rain” to the Library of Congress, probably did not ponder the impact of sequestration on their music’s journey from dream to copyright. Just as military contractors, air traffic controllers and federal workers are coping with the grim results of a partisan impasse over the federal deficit, the Library of Congress, whose services range from copyrighting written works — whether famous novels or poems scribbled on napkins — to the collection, preservation and digitalization of millions of books, photographs, maps and other materials, faces deep cuts that threaten its historic mission.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/04/books/budget-cuts-hobble-library-of-congress.html?_r=0

2013 World Press Freedom Index: Dashed hopes after spring
“After the “Arab springs” and other protest movements that prompted many rises and falls in last year’s index, the 2013 Reporters Without Borders World Press Freedom Index marks a return to a more usual configuration. The ranking of most countries is no longer attributable to dramatic political developments. This year’s index is a better reflection of the attitudes and intentions of governments towards media freedom in the medium or long term.”
http://en.rsf.org/press-freedom-index-2013,1054.html

Digital History

Are digitization and budget cuts compromising history?
“”When people say everything’s online,” says Jerry Dupont of the Law Library Microform Consortium, “they’re woefully uninformed.” Dupont, founder of the LLMC, a nonprofit law library cooperative, estimates that of the 2 million unique volumes contained in America’s law libraries, only about 15 percent are available in digital form. That figure includes access via proprietary, commercial services like Westlaw and LexisNexis. Across the country, law libraries are trying to adapt to the digital revolution and preserve historic and precedential documents. But budget cuts have hit hard at academic law libraries, which historically have hosted some of the most robust legal collections. And the pressures are creating concerns that the public will lose access to essential legal documents.”
http://www.abajournal.com/magazine/article/are_digitization_and_budget_cuts_compromising_history

Open Access

Open Access Spreads
“A bill in the California legislature would require state-funded research to be made public free of charge within a year of its publication. If it passes, the bill would create an open access policy for California’s state-funded research similar to a policy announced earlier this year by the Obama administration. The federal policy, which is not yet finalized, would apply to most federally supported non-defense research. California is not the only state moving to make public the published research it helps to fund; Illinois is weighing a similar proposal.”
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/04/29/california-weighs-its-own-open-access-plan

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.

Freedom of Information

US government sends itself a takedown notice

As you may know, works of the U.S. Government are not protected by copyright in the U.S. (17 USC §105), but we often discover copyrighted government publications that one would reasonably think would be in the public domain and, more recently, we see works that were treated as public domain in print suddenly being treated as copyrighted when they are converted to digital. No matter how clear the law is, this can lead to confusing situations.
http://freegovinfo.info/node/3920

Open access: four ways it could enhance academic freedom

The power of funding alone should not be enough to override academic freedom, argues Curt Rice, nor does open access automatically skew the world of scholarship
http://www.guardian.co.uk/higher-education-network/blog/2013/apr/22/open-access-academic-freedom-publishing

Order and Liberty: The DPLA Launches

I wasn’t entirely sure what the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) would look like when the long-awaited launch date of April 18 approached. The suspense is finally over: it looks great.
The DPLA is an effort to unify access to cultural assets of the nation and make them free to all. We are not the first country to try this; in fact we’re a bit behind, perhaps because we have a tradition of local library planning and support and because we don’t have a true national library.
http://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/library-babel-fish/order-and-liberty-dpla-launches#ixzz2SBtsGG8R

Owner, new CEO of Powell’s Books see strength in brick and mortar

It’s tough to think about how people will read in 50 years when you’re worrying about what they’ll read tomorrow. So after just a couple of years as chief executive of Powell’s Books, Emily Powell — granddaughter of the bookseller’s founder — told employees last month she would step down and focus on the Portland company’s long-term strategy in a quickly changing market.
http://www.oregonlive.com/business/index.ssf/2013/04/owner_new_ceo_of_powells_books.html

Public Policy

3D-printed guns are inevitable

NEW YORK–For months, a debate has raged in the media and on Capitol Hill about whether or not society (and the law) should allow 3D-printed guns. After listening to Cody Wilson speak for a few minutes, one can’t help but come away feeling that the national discussion is moot: 3D-printed firearms are inevitable.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-11386_3-57581053-76/3d-printed-guns-are-inevitable/

Privacy Concerns

The Dark Side of the Digital Revolution

How do you explain to people that they are a YouTube sensation, when they have never heard of YouTube or the Internet? That’s a question we faced during our January visit to North Korea, when we attempted to engage with the Pyongyang traffic police. You may have seen videos on the Web of the capital city’s “traffic cops,” whose ballerina-like street rituals, featured in government propaganda videos, have made them famous online.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324030704578424650479285218

Feds Push for Backdoor Wiretap Capabilities

Washington – The Washington Post reported today that the FBI is seeking authority to require surveillance backdoors in all popular Internet products and services.
“A wiretapping mandate is a vulnerability mandate,” said CDT Senior Staff Technologist Joe Hall. “The unintended consequences of this proposal are profound. At the very time when the nation is concerned about cybersecurity, the FBI proposal has the potential to make our communications less secure. Once you build a wiretap capability into products and services, the bad guys will find a way to use it.”
https://www.cdt.org/pr_statement/feds-push-backdoor-wiretap-capabilities

Intellectual Property

Human genome: US Supreme Court hears patents case

The US Supreme Court has heard arguments questioning whether the human genome can be claimed as intellectual property. The case relates to a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union in 2009, and centres on whether companies should be able to patent genes.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-22157410

International Outlook

World Book Night 2013: half a million free books to be handed out

20,000 volunteers will hand out half a million books tonight as part of World Book Night 2013. The event, now in its third year, aims to promote literacy and share the joy of books with people who might not normally read.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/10011224/World-Book-Night-2013-half-a-million-free-books-to-be-handed-out.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.

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.

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.

Freedom of Information

The war that never was: Most elaborate Wikipedia hoax ever as 4,500 word article on ‘Bicholim Conflict’ – a fictitious fight for Goan independence – fooled site for FIVE YEARS

It was voted a ‘good article’ – a Wikipedia badge of honor – and sat happily on the online encyclopedia for more than half a decade. But editors have lately discovered a small issue with the site’s meticulously written 4,500 word article detailing the 17th century Bicholim Conflict.
It was entirely made up.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2257482/The-war-Wikipedia-fooled-years-Bicholim-Conflict-article-elaborate-4-500-word-hoax.html

Report on NYC Public Libraries – Branches of Opportunity

Branches of Opportunity, January 2013, Center for an Urban Future – “As more and more New Yorkers turn to digital books, Wikipedia and other online tools for information and entertainment, there is a growing sense that the age of the public library is over. But, in reality, New York City’s public libraries are more essential than ever.
http://www.bespacific.com/mt/archives/032346.html

US LIBRARY GIVES AFGHAN LEADER DIGITAL TREASURES

“The Library of Congress is using a $2 million gift to digitize cultural treasures and records from Afghanistan to give to that country’s libraries and universities. The gift was announced Friday at the U.S. State Department in a ceremony with Afghan President Hamid Karzai and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. A grant from the Carnegie Corporation of New York will fund the project.”
http://www.librarystuff.net/2013/01/12/us-library-gives-afghan-leader-digital-treasures/

In this university’s laptop vending machine, the MacBooks are free

“Philadelphia’s Drexel University has installed a Macbook vending machine in the university’s Haggerty library. The kiosk dispenses MacBooks free of charge to Drexel students, staff, and faculty, who can use the machines for up to five hours at a time. The goal is simply to help students get better, safer access to technology. Students toting laptops are targets for muggers
http://www.librarystuff.net/2013/01/10/in-this-universitys-laptop-vending-machine-the-macbooks-are-free/

Public Policy

NYU Video At Risk Guidelines for Section 108 (c) Preservation

An exciting new resource developed by the Video at Risk team, this new report draws on the expertise of working video librarians, together with copyright lawyers Bob Clarida and Melissa Brown, to provide guidance on some of the thorniest questions surrounding application of Section 108 to decrepit video formats.
http://policynotes.arl.org/post/40102008798/nyu-video-at-risk-guidelines-for-section-108-c

National Cooperative Drug Discovery/Development Groups (NCDDG) for the Treatment of Mental Disorders, Drug or Alcohol Addiction (U19)

The purpose of the National Cooperative Drug Discovery/Development Group (NCDDG) Program is to create multidisciplinary research groups or partnerships for the discovery of pharmacological agents to treat and to study mental illness or drug or alcohol addiction. The objectives of this program are to: accelerate innovative drug discovery; develop pharmacologic tools for basic and clinical
http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/pa-files/PAR-13-086.html

White House – National Strategy for Information Sharing and Safeguarding

“This National Strategy for Information Sharing and Safeguarding (Strategy) aims to strike the proper balance between sharing information with those who need it to keep our country safe and safeguarding it from those who would do us harm.
http://www.bespacific.com/mt/archives/032350.html

Digital Licenses Replace Print Prices as Accurate Reflection of Real Journal Costs

“Instead of purchasing subscriptions to individual journals, librarians are pursuing licensing agreements that provide perpetual digital access to a body of content. For major institutions with research needs across multiple disciplines, this means purchasing journal bundles or packages.
http://www.bespacific.com/mt/archives/032345.html

Privacy Concerns

Privacy on the Go – Recommendations for the Mobile Ecosystem

“Today, 85 percent of American adults own a cell phone and over half of them use their phones to access the Internet. The mobile app marketplace is also booming with more than 1,600 new mobile apps being introduced every day.
http://www.bespacific.com/mt/archives/032350.html

Intellectual Property

International Outlook

EU – Digital Agenda: Turning government data into gold

News release: “The Commission has launched an Open Data Strategy for Europe, which is expected to deliver a €40 billion boost to the EU’s economy each year. Europe’s public administrations are sitting on a goldmine of unrealised economic potential: the large volumes of information collected by numerous public authorities and services.
http://www.bespacific.com/mt/archives/032352.html

U.S. Health in International Perspective: Shorter Lives, Poorer Health

“Although the United States spends more on health care than any other nation, a growing body of research shows that Americans are in poorer health and live shorter lives than people in many other high-income countries. U.S. Health in International Perspective synthesizes available research, taking an in-depth look at this disadvantage in health and lifespan.
http://www.bespacific.com/mt/archives/032347.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

Survival of the biggest: Concern about the clout of the internet giants is growing. But antitrust watchdogs should tread carefully

The four giants of the internet age—Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon—are extraordinary creatures. Never before has the world seen firms grow so fast or spread their tentacles so widely. Apple has become a colossus of capitalism, accounting for 4.3% of the value of the S&P 500 and 1.1% of the global equity market. Some 425m people now use its iTunes online store, whose virtual shelves are packed to the gills with music and other digital content. Google, meanwhile, is the undisputed global leader in search and online advertising. Its Android software powers three-quarters of the smartphones being shipped. Amazon dominates the online-retail and e-book markets in many countries; less well known is its behind-the-scenes power in cloud computing. As for Facebook, if the social network’s one billion users were a country, it would be the world’s third largest.

The digital revolution these giants have helped foment has brought huge benefits to consumers and businesses, and promoted free speech and the spread of democracy along the way. Yet they provoke fear as well as wonder. Their size and speed can, if left unchecked, be used to choke off competition. That is why they are attracting close scrutiny from regulators.

http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21567355-concern-about-clout-internet-giants-growing-antitrust-watchdogs-should-tread

Digital Rights Activists Gather in Auckland, New Zealand Next Week for the 15th Round of TPP Negotiations

Next week, the 15th round of Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement (TPP) negotiations will begin in Auckland, New Zealand. Hundreds of delegates and private representatives from the now 11 participating nations will gather at a luxury casino to discuss this multi-faceted trade agreement. EFF, KEI, and the Stop the Trap coalition will also join dozens of other public interest groups to sound the alarm over the TPP’s intellectual property (IP) chapter that could likely prompt countries to enact restrictive copyright enforcement laws that would have huge ramifications for users’ access to digital content and information. As we mentioned previously, countries continue to join the negotiations with no end in sight.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/11/digital-rights-activists-gather-auckland-new-zealand

Another fair use victory for libraries

We knew some time ago that the second complaint filed in the copyright infringement case brought against UCLA by the the trade association AIME over streamed digital video had been dismissed. But last week Judge Consuelo Marshall filed her order that explained the grounds of that dismissal (PDF). What we have learned is that this case is a slight victory for fair use in libraries.  On the specific issue we do not have clear guidance, just an affirmation that fair use arguments for streamed digital video are not unreasonable or obviously wrong.  But it is helpful to see this ruling as part of an overall picture, one in which all three cases claiming copyright infringement by academic libraries which were defended on the basis of fair use have now been decided at the trial court level and NO INFRINGEMENT HAS BEEN FOUND.

http://blogs.library.duke.edu/scholcomm/

Public Policy

Senate Passes Amendments to Shed Light on Contractor Misbehavior

The Senate has approved several amendments to the National Defense Authorization Act (S. 3254), which will bring greater transparency and accountability to federal contracting. The amendments would strengthen whistleblower protections for federal contractors and grantees, require the Defense Department to publish its "revolving door" database of senior department officials who seek employment with defense contractors, and require the Defense Department to conduct an annual study on defense contracting fraud.

http://www.ombwatch.org/senate-passes-amendments-to-shed-light-on-contractor-misbehavior

Open Access

Scientists Seek New Credibility Outside of Established Journals

The Open Access movement continued gaining steam in 2012. A third iteration of the Research Works Act was quashed, the number of universities adopting official open access policies continued to grow, dozens of new open access journals were launched, and a petition calling for public access to all federally funded research gathered enough signatures to get the attention of the White House. But Open Access is only one part of a larger shift taking place in the academic world—particularly the sciences—says Richard Price, founder and CEO of academia.edu. Price argues that academia is moving toward a system where the credibility of research, publications, and ultimately researchers themselves, is gauged not by the prestige of the journal in which works are published, but by the usage, citations, and professional feedback that the works generate online.

http://www.thedigitalshift.com/2012/11/research/scientists-seek-new-credibility-outside-of-established-journals/

United Nations Development Programme opens data on over 6,000 projects in transparency drive

The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) today launched a new online portal allowing open, comprehensive public access to data on UNDP’s work in 177 countries and territories, fulfilling a commitment to full transparency by 2013 above and beyond international standards. The new portal, open.undp.org, comprises comprehensive programmatic information – from income and expenditures to activities and results – on more than 6,000 active UNDP projects, as well as those that financially closed in 2011, along with more than 8,000 outputs or results.  Users can sort projects by focus areas, funding sources, and locations and extract detailed data related to budgets, implementing organizations, and targeted results in areas from governance and rule of law to crisis prevention and recovery.

http://www.undp.org/content/undp/en/home/presscenter/pressreleases/2012/11/29/undp-opens-data-on-over-6-000-projects-in-transparency-drive/

Privacy Issues

Heart Gadgets Test Privacy-Law Limits

The small box inside Amanda Hubbard’s chest beams all kinds of data about her faulty heart to the company that makes her defibrillator implant. Ms. Hubbard herself, however, can’t easily get that information unless she requests summaries from her doctor – whom she rarely sees since losing her insurance. In short, the data gathered by the Medtronic Inc. implant isn’t readily accessible to the person whose heartbeat it tracks. The U.S. has strict privacy laws guaranteeing people access to traditional health files. But implants and other new technologies – including smartphone apps and over-the-counter monitors—are testing the very definition of medical records. At the same time, companies including Medtronic are pushing to turn the data into money. The company is contemplating selling the data to health systems or insurers that could use it to predict diseases and possibly lower their costs. At a July industry event, a senior Medtronic executive, Ken Riff, called these kinds of data "the currency of the future."

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203937004578078820874744076.html?mod=djemalertNEWS

NASA Suffers More Data Breaches

NASA has announced that the theft of an unencrypted laptop has compromised the personal information of a "large number" of NASA employees and contractors. A similar theft earlier this year exposed the data of thousands of Kennedy Space Center employees. The federal agency said that by the end of the year all NASA laptops must have full-disk encryption. The recent developments follow a 2010 United States Supreme Court case, NASA v. Nelson, in which a federal contractor challenged NASA’s overly broad collection of personal information. EPIC filed an amicus curiae brief (PDF) in support of the contractor Robert Nelson, arguing that there were insufficient legal protections and that NASA’s systems are vulnerable to data breaches. Robert Nelson is among the employees and contractors who this week received a notice from NASA about the data breach. For more information, see EPIC: NASA v. Nelson and EPIC: Privacy Act.

http://epic.org/2012/11/nasa-suffers-more-data-breache.html

Leahy Reaffirms Strong Support of Warrants for Content

Senator Leahy, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, has released a manager’s amendment (PDF) that reaffirms the underlying premise of the legislation that the Judiciary Committee will mark up on Thursday: Law enforcement officials need a warrant in order to access the contents of electronic communications. (A section-by-section summary of the manager’s amendment is here.) If the manager’s amendment is adopted the Leahy bill will establish a clear, consistent, easy to apply warrant rule. It will protect consumer privacy, remove the uncertainty law enforcement currently faces, and foster the growth of U.S. cloud computing companies, which will be able to promise their clients that the information they store in cloud will be as secure against government access as information stored locally.

https://www.cdt.org/blogs/greg-nojeim/2711leahy-reaffirms-strong-support-warrants-content

Digital History

Building a Digital Public Library of America

The Boston Public Library, America’s first publicly funded municipal library, will host a celebration in April, 2013 to launch the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA): an ambitious, broad-based effort to establish a new library platform for our digitally-mediated age.

In its first iteration, the DPLA will bring together digital resources that are today distributed around the country and make them easily accessible and useful. Today, digital library materials are scattered in ways that no single librarian or patron could find them all. It would be prohibitively expensive for the DPLA to bring together materials from every single library, archive and museum in the country. Instead, the DPLA plans to connect existing state infrastructure to create a system of state (or in some cases, regional) service hubs, each offering standardized digital services to local institutions, including digitization and metadata services, and serving as an on-ramp for all by aggregating metadata and data from local institutions to feed into a new DPLA network.

http://www.thedigitalshift.com/2012/11/digital-libraries/building-a-digital-public-library-of-america/

International Outlook

Syrians Use Old and New Tools to Stay Online During Internet Shutdown

Information coming out of Syria has slowed to a trickle in the wake of Thursday’s country-wide communications shutdown, which included nearly all Internet traffic and intermittent cellular network and landline outages. Earlier today, Renesys reported that the last five networks that had survived the initial outage were off the air. In the meantime, experts have cast a skeptical eye on the Syrian Ministry of Information’s claims that the outage is the result of sabotage by "terrorists," a term that the Assad regime has frequently used to describe the opposition.

Even under these adverse conditions, some Syrians have found ways to get online, stay in touch with family and loved ones abroad, and keep the world appraised of events on the ground at a time when fighting has escalated and reliable intelligence is scarce. Dlshad Othman, a Syrian activist and IT specialist, estimates that the number of people online in Syria at the moment is probably "less than 1,000," yet Global Voices reports that videos of protests are still finding their way online.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/11/day-2-syrias-internet-shutdown

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.

Public Policy

PACER Federal Court Record Fees Exceed System Costs

The federal government has collected millions from the online Public Access to Court Electronic Records system, or PACER – nearly five times what it cost to run the system. Between fiscal years 2006 and 2010, the government collected an average of $77 million a year from PACER fees, according to the most recent federal figures available.

Critics have derided PACER, saying the government has increased user fees over the years without making the system easier to use. The fees, some say, act as a deterrent to public access. "Given the lack of oversight for what the fees are being used for, the incentive for the courts is to raise fees," said Stephen Schultze, associate director of Princeton University’s Center for Information Technology Policy.

http://californiawatch.org/money-and-politics/pacer-federal-court-record-fees-exceed-system-costs-18685

GAO finds NTIS’ fee-based model no longer viable or appropriate. FGI has suggestions

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) has just published a report analyzing the National Technical Information Service (NTIS). This report is an update of a 2001 GAO report on the dissemination of technical reports. It offers quite a bit of information as to the scope of work done by the NTIS and the costs associated with that work.

GAO’s conclusion states:
…Charging for information that is freely available elsewhere is a disservice to the public and may also be wasteful insofar as some of NTIS’s customers are other federal agencies. Taken together, these considerations suggest that the fee-based model under which NTIS currently operates for disseminating technical information may no longer be viable or appropriate.
…In light of the agency’s declining revenue associated with its basic statutory function and the charging for information that is often freely available elsewhere, Congress should consider examining the appropriateness and viability of the fee-based model under which NTIS currently operates for disseminating technical information to determine whether the use of this model should be continued.

http://freegovinfo.info/node/3817

Come to CityCamp Oakland

On December 1, all roads will lead to Oakland, CA for CityCamp Oakland — an unstructured conference where municipal employees, department heads, technology folks, developers, journalists and engaged citizens will talk about technology and local government. Organized by OpenOakland, the City of Oakland and other local organizations, CityCamp Oakland will show how innovative technology and open data can improve civic engagement, increase efficiency and government transparency while connecting residents to the city of Oakland. The Camp will be at the City Hall.

http://sunlightfoundation.com/blog/2012/11/19/come-to-citycamp-oakland/

Digital History

Giving Digital Preservation a Backbone

Libraries used to be the main stewards of the cultural and scientific record. But in the era of digital storage "cloud computing," the institutions best-positioned to manage vast quantities of data are often companies such as Google and Elsevier. That is a big problem, said James Hilton, the chief information officer at the University of Virginia, in a talk on Thursday here at Educause. For all their current stability and rhetorical commitments to preserving their records, Google and Elsevier cannot be trusted with the task of digital preservation in the long term, said Hilton. Part of Hilton’s agenda here was to draw attention to the Digital Preservation Network, a consortium of universities that is attempting to build a framework for keeping digital artifacts viable as institutions and technologies rise and fall around them.

http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/11/09/educause-call-digital-preservation-will-outlast-individual-institutions-and

JSTOR provides free access to Wikipedia editors via pilot program

One of the challenges facing the volunteer editors of Wikipedia is finding reliable sources to use as reference material – in our [Wikipedia's] last editor survey, 39 percent named this as one of the largest problems hindering their contributions. To address this issue, the Wikimedia Foundation is collaborating with JSTOR, a service of the not-for-profit organization ITHAKA, to provide 100 of the most active Wikipedia editors with free access to the complete archive collections on JSTOR, including more than 1,600 academic journals, primary source documents and other works.

http://blog.wikimedia.org/2012/11/19/jstor-provides-free-access-to-wikipedia-editors/

Libraries

FBI removes files during raid of Detroit Public Library

FBI agents raided the Detroit Public Library system and the home of its chief administrative officer on Tuesday, removing financial records from the agency that’s been beset by controversy, officials confirmed. Nine agents arrived at the library’s main offices on Woodward at 8 a.m. They left shortly after 11 a.m. carrying three cardboard boxes and what appeared to be computer equipment.

Tuesday’s raid follows money problems that forced the system to close two branches and lay off 80 of 364 staffers – and persistent questions about spending. In a series last year, The Detroit News exposed allegations of misspending, mismanagement and nepotism. Among other purchases that were questioned, the library bought 20 lounge chairs for $1,100 apiece at a time it was cutting staff. Numerous contracts also have been called into question, as well as hiring practices, The News has reported.

http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20121120/METRO/211200394

Charge Amazon, Starbucks and Google unpaid tax to fund libraries, says Winterson

A fiery Jeanette Winterson has called for the hundreds of millions of pounds of profit which Amazon, Starbucks and Google were last week accused of diverting from the UK to be used to save Britain’s beleaguered public libraries. In an impassioned speech at the British Library this evening, the award-winning author of Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit said: "Libraries cost about a billion a year to run right now. Make it two billion and charge Google, Amazon and Starbucks all that back tax on their profits here. Or if they want to go on paying fancy lawyers to legally avoid their moral duties, then perhaps those companies could do an Andrew Carnegie and build us new kinds of libraries for a new kind of future in a fairer and better world?"

Winterson was referring to the meeting at parliament’s public accounts committee last Monday which saw executives from the three companies vigorously quizzed by MPs over their tax affairs, and accused of diverting UK profits to tax havens.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/nov/19/amazon-starbucks-google-libraries-jeanette-winterson

Intellectual Property

The Copyright Reform Report That Wasn’t

Last Friday, the House Republican Study Committee (RSC) released a policy brief titled "Three Myths About Copyright Law and Where to Start to Fix it," lauded by the tech community and cause for celebration among copyright reform advocates. Less than 24 hours later – and after what we can assume was severe backlash from the content industry – the brief was retracted, with RSC Executive Director Paul Teller issuing a statement that the memo had been "published without adequate review." It’s safe to assume that the RSC was flooded with calls from entertainment and content industry lobbyists.

http://aallwash.wordpress.com/2012/11/20/the-copyright-reform-report-that-wasnt/

Freedom of Information

Some Things Never Change: Governments Still Present Biggest Threat to Open Internet

Some things change, but others stay the same. While the types of threats facing Internet users worldwide have diversified over the past few years, from targeted malware to distributed denial of service attacks, one thing has remained constant: governments seeking to exert control over their populations still remain the biggest threat to the open Internet. Which countries are the worst offenders? Unsurprisingly, the United States once again tops the list (though, followed by Germany and Brazil. The three countries have almost consistently dominated the top since the creation of the Transparency Report in 2010. Other notable offenders for 2012 include Argentina, Turkey, and India. It is noteworthy that all of the countries at the top of the list are democracies.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/11/some-things-never-change-governments-still-present-biggest-threat-open-internet

Open Access

Fastcase Announces Partnership with Hawaii State Bar Association to Provide Free Access to Legal Research Library

Today the Hawaii State Bar Association (HSBA) and legal publisher Fastcase announced a partnership to provide members of the state bar with free access to Fastcase’s nationwide legal research system. This partnership is the latest in a growing number of bar associations that are offering the Fastcase benefit – 23 state bar associations representing more than 500,000 lawyers now subscribe to Fastcase as a free benefit for their members.

The HSBA is the sixth in a growing number of state bar associations upgrading from the Casemaker legal research benefit to Fastcase, and the eighth state overall that has switched to Fastcase, including two states that switched from Versuslaw and LexisNexis. No state bar association has ever switched from a Fastcase benefit to another provider.

http://www.prweb.com/releases/FastcaseHawaii/HSBA/prweb10148440.htm

International Outlook

EU Parliament Endorses Internet Openness, Transparency Ahead of WCIT

The European Parliament today approved a Joint Resolution calling on EU Member States to promote and protect Internet openness at the upcoming World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT). The resolve of the Parliamentarians who drafted the resolution deserves recognition. The result is a strong statement of confidence in the civic and economic value of the open Internet, as well as the virtues of transparent, inclusive models for Internet governance. The public’s ability to submit comments in the drafting process is testimony to the work of Dutch MEP Marietje Schaake, a steadfast advocate for civil liberties in the digital age.

https://www.cdt.org/blogs/ellery-biddle/2211eu-parliament-endorses-internet-openness-transparency-ahead-wcit

Take Action!

Journalism is Not Terrorism: Calling on Ethiopia to #FreeEskinder Nega

Eskinder Nega, an award-winning journalist who has been imprisoned for over a year, appeared briefly in court to appeal the terrorism charges levied against him. Eskinder has unwaveringly denied the charges, maintaining that blogging about human rights abuses and democracy is not a form of terrorism. In July, Eskinder was sentenced to 18 years in prison for his reporting. In court this week, his appeal was cut short: according to one report EFF received from partners working on his case, Eskinder was not allowed to read his defense statement and the appeal was rescheduled to November 22. We are continuing to seek confirmation about the status of the trial. For now, we’re asking concerned individuals to join us in calling on the Ethiopian government to live up to the promises in their own Constitution and free Eskinder Nega.

While many journalists have either fled Ethiopia or been silenced by repressive policies, Eskinder Nega has become a national symbol for press freedom. Here’s how you can get involved:
• Sign PEN American Center’s petition, which automatically an email to Prime Minister Meles Zenawi and Minister of Justice Berhanu Hailu.
• Send appeals by mail to Ethiopian officials and their local Ethiopian Embassy or Consulate.
• Tell your friends on Facebook and Twitter. Suggested Tweet:
Journalism is not terrorism. Join @PenAmerican and @EFF in fighting to #FreeEskinder Nega.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/11/journalism-not-terrorism-calling-ethiopia-freeeskinder-nega

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.

Privacy Issues

The New York Times Reminds Us the NSA Still Warrantlessly Wiretaps Americans, and Congress Has the Power to Stop It

Last week, the New York Times published two important op-eds highlighting how the National Security Agency (NSA) has retained expansive powers to warrantlessly wiretap Americans after Congress passed the FISA Amendments Act in 2008. And unlike in 2005—when the exposure of the NSA’s warrantless wiretapping program provoked widespread outrage—Congress is now all but ignoring ample evidence of wrongdoing, as it debates renewing the FISA Amendments Act before it expires at the end of this year.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/08/ny-times-reminds-us-nsa-still-warrantlessly-wiretapping-americans-and-congress-has

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Intellectual Property Issues

Impatience over lack of action on intellectual property theft

The European Union’s Observatory on Counterfeiting and Piracy is set to be given enhanced enforcement capabilities in order to fight IP infringements. According to The Federation Against Software Theft (FAST) the new powers could start to come into effect in March 2013.
However FAST points out that a stronger fight against IP breaches is long overdue.

http://www.iwr.co.uk/business/3011367/Impatience-over-lack-of-action-on-intellectual-property-theft

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Public Policy

Overhaul of Federal Record-Keeping Ordered By NARA, Office of Management and Budget

A major overhaul in the way federal departments and agencies manage and preserve their records was ordered today by the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) and the Office of Management and Budget (OMB).
In a directive that carries out a presidential memorandum to reform records management for the 21st century, NARA and OMB said that all agencies must begin to manage their records, including emails, in electronic format by the end of the decade.
The directive also requires each agency to designate a high-ranking agency official to oversee its records management programs and to ensure that all appropriate staff receive records management training.

http://www.archives.gov/press/press-releases/2012/nr12-145.html

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Open Access

Wiley joins open access group

John Wiley & Sons has joined the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association. OASPA represents the interests of open access journal publishers globally in all scientific, technical and scholarly disciplines and enables exchange of information, setting standards, advancing models, advocacy, education, and the promotion of innovation.
In early 2011 Wiley launched Wiley Open Access, an open access journal program, which contains eleven journals. Wiley Open Access provides open access publication in peer-reviewed journals where all published articles are immediately freely available to read, download and share.

http://www.iwr.co.uk/academic-and-humanites/3011369/Wiley-joins-open-access-group

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Digital History

The Born Digital in the Archives: One Curator’s Experience

The late Jonathan Larson went through many drafts when composing what became the hit-musical RENT. The tragic end to his life is well known – he died suddenly at age 35 in 1996 shortly before the off-Broadway opening of the musical. What may not be well known is that these early drafts of RENT and other artifacts from Larson’s life and career were hidden for years, existing only on floppy disks and now-obsolete software programs.
Working to solve this digital preservation dilemma became the focus for Doug Reside, Digital Curator of the New York Public Library, along with Mark Horowitz, Senior Music Specialist in the Library of Congress Music Division and curator of the Jonathan Larson collection.

http://blogs.loc.gov/digitalpreservation/2012/08/the-born-digital-in-the-archives-one-curators-experience/

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Freedom of Information

Presidential Claims of Executive Privilege: History, Law, Practice, and Recent Developments

Presidential claims of a right to preserve the confidentiality of information and documents in the
face of legislative demands have figured prominently, though intermittently, in executive congressional relations since at least 1792. Few such interbranch disputes over access to information have reached the courts for substantive resolution. The vast majority of these disputes are resolved through political negotiation and accommodation. In fact, it was not until the Watergate-related lawsuits in the 1970′s seeking access to President Nixon’s tapes that the existence of a presidential confidentiality privilege was judicially established as a necessary derivative of the President’s status in our constitutional scheme of separated powers.
There have been only four cases involving information access disputes between Congress and the executive, and two of these resulted in decisions on the merits.
President Obama formally invoked executive privilege for the first time on June 20, 2012, over documents sought by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform in its ongoing investigation into Operation Fast and Furious.

www.fas.org/sgp/crs/secrecy/R42670.pdf (Note: PDF file)

GOP Platform Moves from Light to Dark

As the Republican nominating convention gets into full swing, there has been much discussion about the rightward shift by the party and its platform. But the GOP’s newfound hostility toward disclosure of money in politics does not reflect a move from center to right. It’s a move from light to dark.
The GOP platform adopted yesterday left no question that the party fully embraces unlimited, unregulated, undisclosed money in our elections. "We support repeal of the remaining sections of McCain-Feingold, support either raising or repealing contribution limits, and oppose passage of the DISCLOSE Act or any similar legislation designed to vitiate the Supreme Court’s recent decisions protecting political speech in Wisconsin Right to Life v. Federal Election Commission and Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission."

http://sunlightfoundation.com/blog/2012/08/29/gop-platform-moves-from-light-to-dark/

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International Outlook

(Court-Ordered) Notice-and-Takedown: the Chilean Approach

In 2010, Chile updated its copyright law with a novel approach for protecting Internet intermediaries from liability for their users’ copyright infringement. Though modeled on the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), the law differs in one crucial respect: While a cornerstone of the US law is its private notice-and-takedown system, the Chilean law requires that rightsholders secure a court order before content must be taken down.
Today, CDT released a short report on the Chilean law, examining the balance the law strikes among the rights of copyright-holders, intermediaries, and Internet users. As we explain in the paper, the law offers greater certainty to intermediaries as to when content should be removed, and court oversight may well prevent some of the mistakes we have seen under the US system.
On the other hand, some rightsholders have expressed dissatisfaction with the law, since having to go to court significantly raises the burden on them when requesting takedowns.

https://www.cdt.org/blogs/andrew-mcdiarmid/2808court-ordered-notice-and-takedown-chilean-approach

Jordanians Protest Internet Censorship Law With SOPA-Style Blackout

The United States, Russia, and Malaysia have all recently protested proposed Internet censorship laws by having websites "go dark," to demonstrate what the web would look like without them. Today Jordanian netizens have launched their own Internet blackout.
More than a hundred and fifty websites have gone dark to protest a draft bill to amend the Press and Publications Law, framed by the government as anti-pornography legislation, but which activists say will restrict Internet freedom and negatively affect the rights of Jordanian citizens.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/08/jordanians-protest-internet-censorship-law-sopa-style-blackout

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Libraries

Librarians are Completely Awesome

Here’s the thing about librarians: they are the only people I know who are incredibly excited TO DO YOUR WORK FOR YOU. As online resources become more complex, we need wise humans to help act as guides. Librarians know how to do that better than you do. Ask them for help. They also, typically, are warm, curious, helpful people.
For any doctoral students out there thinking of starting a new research project, I strongly encourage you to make your university reference librarian your first stop. I’ve had great luck with municipal librarians and with government archivists as well.
It takes a village to raise a research project.

http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/edtechresearcher/2012/08/librarians_are_completely_awesome.html

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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.

Digital History

Alexandria 2.0: One Millionaire’s Quest to Build the Biggest Library on Earth

Here’s the problem with libraries. They catch on fire really easily. As such, they were the prized targets of the invading hordes of antiquity. They were one-man, one-torch jobs. But the hordes didn’t prize the library only for how powerfully it burned. Back in those days, if you wanted to kill a culture, you killed its library. All it took was one chucklehead with a flaming stick to annihilate thousands of years of accumulated knowledge. And it happened often.

"If this is what happens to libraries, make copies," says Brewster Kahle. Kahle took the library of libraries – the internet – and made a couple of copies of it, and keeps making copies.

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/08/brewster-kahle/

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Freedom of Information

British charity calls for ’50 Shades of Grey’ book burning

A British charity has called for a burning of the book "50 Shades of Grey" by E.L. James. Wearside Women in Need, which focuses on domestic violence, has asked readers to drop off books for a planned bonfire on Nov. 5.
A mega-bestseller, "50 Shades of Grey" features Anastasia, a naive college student who has an affair with a handsome billionaire who introduces her to sado-masochistic sex. Random House, which published the book in Britain, insists the sex in the book is not abusive but "entirely consensual."

http://www.latimes.com/features/books/jacketcopy/la-jc-british-charity-calls-for-50-shades-of-grey-book-burning-20120823,0,5503067.story

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Publishing

The Best Book Reviews Money Can Buy

TODD RUTHERFORD was 7 years old when he first understood the nature of supply and demand. He was with a bunch of other boys, one of whom showed off a copy of Playboy to giggles and intense interest. Todd bought the magazine for $5, tore out the racy pictures and resold them to his chums for a buck apiece. He made $20 before his father shut him down a few hours later.
A few years ago, Mr. Rutherford, then in his mid-30s, had another flash of illumination about how scarcity opens the door to opportunity.
In the fall of 2010, Mr. Rutherford started a Web site, GettingBookReviews.com. At first, he advertised that he would review a book for $99. But some clients wanted a chorus proclaiming their excellence. So, for $499, Mr. Rutherford would do 20 online reviews. A few people needed a whole orchestra. For $999, he would do 50.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/26/business/book-reviewers-for-hire-meet-a-demand-for-online-raves.html?_r=2&hp&pagewanted=all

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Public Policy

FEC Approves Wireless Companies to Cut Campaign Text Donations

Today [Aug. 22, 2012], the Obama Campaign announced it was launching a text-to-donate fundraising campaign. Last week, the Federal Election Commission approved this type of fundraising for federal campaigns. During the review of the rules, wireless carriers asked for permission to block any campaigns that "espouse views that may harm the wireless service providers’ brands." While the FEC did not include this language in its advisory opinion, it did grant carriers wide latitude to refuse service by measuring a campaign against the carriers’ own "established business requirements."
The Federal Election Commission has granted wireless carriers the ability to cut off text message fundraising to candidates that take positions counter to the carriers’ business interest.

http://www.publicknowledge.org/fcc-approves-wireless-companies-cut-campaign-text-

EFF Tells Obama’s IP Czar To Stand Up For Internet Users

Recently, EFF sent comments to Victoria Espinel, the Obama Administration’s "IP Czar," to help shape how U.S. tax dollars are spent on enforcing copyright, trademark, and patent laws for the next two years.
EFF said that when the government encourages (or goads) private companies into making private "voluntary" agreements to cut down on online infringement, the government should insist on the same protections for free speech, privacy, transparency, and due process.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/08/eff-tells-obamas-ip-czar-stand-internet-users

FCC Broadband Report Shows That Broadband Deployment, Adoption, and Competition are Still Inadequate

Today [Aug. 21, 2012], the FCC issued its Eighth Broadband Report. 19 million Americans still do not have access to wired broadband. The Internet is the primary way that many Americans communicate, stay informed, and manage their lives. Yet many others have access to wired broadband, but don’t subscribe to it. The broadband that is available to them may be too slow, and not much of an improvement over their wireless or dial-up connections. Or it may be too expensive. Or they just might not see its value. Whatever the causes, more needs to be done to close the broadband gap.

http://www.publicknowledge.org/fcc-broadband-report-shows-broadband-deployment-ad

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Open Access

How to #FreeTHOMAS: A report on implementing bulk access

Today we are pleased to release a report on improving public access to legislative information. The report is the result of a collaborative effort that was prompted by the House Leadership’s recent statement endorsing bulk access and the questions raised in a committee report accompanying the House Legislative Branch Appropriations Bill. The report is the latest in the ongoing, multi-year effort to improve how Congress releases legislative information to the public. It provides a roadmap to implementing bulk access to legislative information.

http://sunlightfoundation.com/blog/2012/08/24/how-to-freethomas-a-report-on-implementing-bulk-access/

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International Outlook

Syrian Activists Launch Petition to Reform Export Controls on Technology

EFF has long contended that existing export controls – maintained by the Departments of Treasury and Commerce – hinder the ability of activists in countries like Syria to communicate. Restrictions on the use of hosting services, antivirus tools, and even circumvention technology make the already-unsafe Syrian Internet even less safe for users. Meanwhile, the Syrian government has repeatedly circumvented sanctions for the purpose of surveilling citizens. These controls are not only ineffective, they’re counterproductive.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/08/syrian-activists-launch-petition-reform-export-controls-technology

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Privacy Issues

Better Policies for De-Identified Health Data

The staggering amount of personal health data now being collected for treatment or billing purposes has a life beyond the doctor’s clipboard. That data is collected, stripped of personally identifying information ("de-identified") and re-used in ways that are vital for medical breakthroughs, improving patient care, or predicting public health trends. And it’s just as valuable when used for targeted marketing campaigns or eliminating inefficiencies in the healthcare industry.
HIPAA restricts uses of identifiable health information for secondary purposes; but information that is de-identified per HIPAA standards is largely not subject to federal regulation. As a result, de-identified health data is in high demand.

https://www.cdt.org/blogs/deven-mcgraw/2108better-policies-de-identified-health-data

CA Location Privacy Bill Passes Assembly

Location privacy scored a victory today when the California Assembly overwhelmingly passed an EFF-sponsored location privacy bill, SB 1434, on a bipartisan vote of 63-11.
The bill would require law enforcement to obtain a search warrant anytime it requests location information from an electronic device. It codifies the Supreme Court’s decision from earlier this year in United States v. Jones, which ruled that the installation of a GPS device for purposes of law enforcement investigation requires a search warrant. Having passed both chambers of the California legislature by a combined vote of 93-17, and assuming the Senate concurs with the version of the bill passed by the Assembly, the bill will soon land on the desk of Governor Jerry Brown.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/08/ca-location-privacy-bill-passes-assembly-next-stop-governor-brown

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Intellectual Property Issues

Who inherits your iTunes library?

Many of us will accumulate vast libraries of digital books and music over the course of our lifetimes. But when we die, our collections of words and music may expire with us.
Someone who owned 10,000 hardcover books and the same number of vinyl records could bequeath them to descendants, but legal experts say passing on iTunes and Kindle libraries would be much more complicated.

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/who-inherits-your-itunes-library-2012-08-23

UNESCO Says Monopolization of Information Puts Barriers to a Better Life

Governments are pushing for stronger intellectual property measures that excessively favor entertainment and pharmaceutical industries through international fora such as World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) – by trying to create new rights for Broadcasters, and more pressingly, through international agreements such as the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) and the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP). Many in civil society are fighting back and are calling attention to the crucial need to enable and facilitate content to enter the public domain. UNESCO has been a big supporter of this initiative, standing up against the privatization of knowledge and the great risk it poses to improving quality of life around the world.
Information, media, and educational professionals, as well as government executives and members of the public met at the International Conference Media and Information Literacy for Knowledge Societies in Moscow, Russia last June. UNESCO, the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA), and other state and non-state agencies held this conference in order to raise awareness of the significance, scale, and topicality of media and information literacy advocacy.
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/08/unesco-says-information-monopoly-puts-barriers-to-better-life

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Libraries

Former Library of Congress auditor says he was harassed, then fired for being gay

Peter TerVeer was an up-and-coming auditor for the Library of Congress’s inspector general’s office. His boss liked him so much he tried to set him up with his single daughter, TerVeer says.
But when the boss discovered TerVeer was gay after learning from his daughter TerVeer "Liked" a Facebook page for same-sex parents, the supervisor harassed him with religious-based homophobia – and eventually got him fired, TerVeer alleges in a federal lawsuit.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/federal-eye/post/former-library-of-congress-auditor-says-he-was-harassed-then-fired-for-being-gay/2012/08/22/8ef9b088-ec82-11e1-9ddc-340d5efb1e9c_blog.html

NY Library To Adopt Ad-Supported Toilet Paper

Toilet paper printed with advertisements will appear in the bathrooms of the Port Chester-Rye Brook, NY, Public Library in October. The paper is 100 percent recycled, two-ply, and printed with soy-based ink. Venues that use the paper receive it for free, making it a potentially attractive way for cash-strapped libraries to reduce spending. (Advertisers pay $99 for 20,000 advertisements that appear on approximately 160 rolls.)

http://lj.libraryjournal.com/2012/08/managing-libraries/ny-library-to-adopt-ad-supported-toilet-paper/

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.

Open Access

OCLC recommends Open Data Commons Attribution License

OCLC is recommending that member institutions that would like to release their catalog data on the Web do so with the Open Data Commons Attribution License (ODC-BY). The license allows users to share, copy, distribute, modify, transform and build upon a database, provided that users "attribute any public use of the database, or works produced from the database, in the manner specified in the license," according to ODC’s simple language summary.

http://www.thedigitalshift.com/2012/08/metadata/oclc-recommends-open-data-commons-attribution-license/

Intellectual Property Issues

Embedding copyright-infringing video is not a crime, court rules

Embedding a copyright-infringing video on another Web site is not illegal, a court ruled yesterday.

Judge Richard Posner ruled at the U.S. Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals that MyVidster, a social video bookmarking site, did not infringe the copyright of Flava Works, a porn production company, when it embedded copyright-infringing versions of Flava Works content from third-party Web sites.

Both Google and Facebook filed papers in support of MyVidster. They argued that sites such as theirs should be seen as intermediaries only, and that they should not be held liable if someone uploads copyrighted material to their servers, claiming Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) safe harbor.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-57485976-38/embedding-copyright-infringing-video-is-not-a-crime-court-rules/

Public Policy

Citizens United Hearing: A Conversation about Democracy and Transparency

The Project On Government Oversight has had a longtime interest in more transparency about federal contractors, including their influence through campaign spending and lobbying. Since the 2010 Citizens’ United vs. FEC ruling, that problem has only worsened.

The reason is that the ruling now allows federal contractors, along with other corporations and unions, to influence elections with unlimited campaign spending and not nearly enough disclosure.

On July 24, more than 400 people attended a Senate Judiciary Subcommittee hearing on responses to Citizens United and the rise of Super PACs. Subcommittee members and guest panelists called for greater inclusion of average American citizens in the campaign financing system and more disclosure of campaign spending. "Half of all super PAC money being spent in presidential elections [come] from 22 people, millionaires and billionaires buying their way in," said subcommittee chairman Dick Durbin (D- Ill.) in his opening remarks. "Can we still proclaim to be the world’s model for free elections with open debates when we allow 22 wealthy individuals to control the terms of that debate and silence the voices of others?"

http://pogoblog.typepad.com/pogo/2012/08/citizens-united-hearing-a-conversation-about-democracy-and-transparency.html

How to Count Regulations: A Primer for Regulatory Research

The regulatory process is a politically charged arena, where the perception of over-regulating, or not regulating enough, can become a political liability.
However, one should look skeptically towards assertions about the degree of rulemaking, especially when those assertions include specific numbers. These claims are often based on research that can be structured so as to intentionally mislead. And beyond the political motivation in how one measures regulatory action, there are also many opportunities for genuine methodological error.
Despite recent improvements, the presentation of information on federal regulations is currently very convoluted: four different government websites present overlapping and incomplete pictures of the regulatory process. Sunlight Labs has been trudging through these sites for months, and we’d like to share what we’ve learned.

http://sunlightfoundation.com/blog/2012/08/08/how-to-count-regulations-a-primer-for-regulatory-research/

Census Bureau Releases Its First Mobile App Providing Real-Time Statistics on U.S. Economy

The U.S. Census Bureau today released its first-ever mobile application, "America’s Economy," which will provide constantly updated statistics on the U.S. economy, including monthly economic indicators, trends, along with a schedule of upcoming announcements. The app, which is currently available for Android mobile device users, combines statistics from the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Census Bureau, Bureau of Economic Analysis, and the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics.

http://www.census.gov/newsroom/releases/archives/miscellaneous/cb12-149.html

Privacy Issues

FTC Approves Final Settlement With Facebook

Following a public comment period, the FTC has accepted as final a settlement with Facebook resolving charges that Facebook deceived consumers by telling them they could keep their information on Facebook private, and then repeatedly allowing it to be shared and made public. The settlement requires Facebook to take several steps to make sure it lives up to its promises in the future, including by giving consumers clear and prominent notice and obtaining their express consent before sharing their information beyond their privacy settings, by maintaining a comprehensive privacy program to protect consumers’ information, and by obtaining biennial privacy audits from an independent third party.

http://www.bespacific.com/mt/archives/031004.html#031004

FTC Gets Record Settlement from Google for Privacy Violation

The Federal Trade Commission today announced it has reached a record $22.5 million settlement with Google relating to charges that the company misled users of Apple’s Safari browser by telling them it would not place tracking "cookies" or show them targeted ads. In doing so, Google violated the terms of an earlier FTC privacy settlement. The FTC also charged that Google had implied to its users that it followed the Network Advertising Initiative’s self-regulatory code of conduct.

https://www.cdt.org/pr_statement/ftc-gets-record-settlement-google-privacy-violation

International Outlook

CDT Supports Brazil’s "Bill of Rights" for Internet Users

Tomorrow, a special committee in Brazil’s Congress will vote on the Marco Civil da Internet, a "bill of rights" for Internet users. If passed, the law would represent a paramount advance in country’s digital policymaking agenda.

The Marco Civil da Internet, or Civil Regulatory Framework for the Internet, establishes a clear set of rights and responsibilities for users, sets strong net neutrality principles, and shields Internet intermediaries from liability for illegal content posted by users.

The Marco Civil is also unique in that it was developed in a highly participatory style. Lawmakers were not the only entities involved in drafting the law–academic experts, civil society groups, and Internet users had a critical role in developing the law’s text as well.

https://www.cdt.org/blogs/ellery-biddle/0708cdt-supports-brazils-bill-rights-internet-users

Digital History

U. Nevada Library Offers 3D Printing Across the Board

The DeLaMare Science & Engineering Library at the University of Nevada, Reno, has become the first academic library in the U.S. to offer 3D printing and scanning services to all students and the community at large. Using specialized software to create 3D drawings, students can now print these objects on one of two 3D printers at DeLaMare – a Stratsys uPrint acquired in May and a 3DTouch, which can also produce multicolored objects.

http://lj.libraryjournal.com/2012/08/academic-libraries/u-nevada-library-offers-3d-printing-across-the-board/

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.