Expect Resistance & Library Autonomous Zone

The
June 29 edition of the Watcher, the newsletter of
OMB Watch, has an article about the public release of Environmental Protection Agency’s Toxic Release Inventory data and publications. The article notes:

While EPA posted the TRI data online, it no longer publishes a full Public Data Release (PDR), which includes
easy-to-understand overviews of the data, detailed analysis, and supporting tables and information. Additionally,
EPA no longer makes the companion State Fact Sheets report available in hard copy; this tool provides state-bystate
data summaries, maps and other information.

The PDR serves as the official governmental figures on toxic releases. It is used by a large segment of the public
through libraries and other avenues. It has been printed and widely disseminated each year since inception of
the TRI program, in compliance with legal requirements to produce an annual report. For the first time ever in
the TRI history, EPA is downsizing the PDR from the two-volume report, spanning hundreds of pages, to a sixpage
report.

EPA claims the public can access the same information previously available in PDRs from the online data. Not
only is this a complicated and arduous task, but much of the information from the PDR cannot be obtained
through the online services offered by EPA. Moreover, given there are updates to the TRI data throughout the
year, there will be no “official” figures to use for comparative purposes. Thus, any future analyses will likely be
criticized because numbers are unlikely to match in any two research efforts.

The Right To Know Network has
published an easy-to-use
version of the data.

OMB Watch - FBI Used Controversial Patriot Act Provision

The FBI applied to use a section of the USA Patriot Act less than a month after Attorney General John Ashcroft stated it had never been used, according to new documents. Section 215 allows the government to track the public’s reading habits in bookstores and libraries…

Comments to the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) Advisory Committee on the Enforcement of Industrial Property Rights (ACE/IP) on Social Aspects of Enforcement of Intellectual Property Rights by James Love.
28 June 2004.

James Love is the Director of the
Consumer Project on Technology (CPTech). Among the topics he addresses are:

• The relationship between privacy and copyright enforcement.
• The relationship between affordability and infringement
• The relationship between enforcement and control of anticompetitive practices.
• Enforcement abuses.
• The relationship between development of poor countries and enforcement.
• Cost benefit analysis for enforcement in developing countries.
• Collection societies and the free distribution of works.
• Special problems poised by technological protection measures

The Importance of…: The Obsessively Annotated Introduction to the INDUCE Act by Ernest Miller.
June 24, 2004.

More here on the Inducing Infringement of Copyrights Act of 2004 (S.2560). Here is a lengthy statement by Orin Hatch, scrupulously, humorously, seriously, obsesively annotated by Ernest Miller.
Enjoy.

“Ernest Miller pursues research and writing on cyberlaw, intellectual property, and First Amendment issues. Mr. Miller attended the U.S. Naval Academy before attending Yale Law School, where he was president and co-founder of the Law and Technology Society, and founded the technology law and policy news site LawMeme.”

Foreign Lobbyist Database Could Vanish
By Kevin Bogardus.
Center for Public Integrity, June 28, 2004.

Justice Department officials say a huge database that serves as the public’s lone window on lobbying activities by foreign governments has been allowed to decay to a point they cannot even make a copy of its contents.

This item from the Center for Public Integrity, which conducts investigative research and reporting on public policy issues in the United States and around the world, combines elements of digital preservation problems with access to government information through the Freedom of Information Act. Although the system still works and employees can retrieve information, “the Justice Department’s Foreign Agent Registration Unit said it was unable to copy its records electronically.” The records are not available online to the public.

The records are available in paper “as long as those seeking it know the precise files they want” and are prepared to pay fifty cents a page; individual documents may be hundreds of pages each.

The system’s document handling software, itself an antique, operates on Microsoft Windows 95.

LibraryLaw Blog: Library computer authentication

Library Law Blog points to and comments on an article,
To Use That Library Computer, Please Identify Yourself,
By Scott Carlson. Chronicle of Higher Education
June 25, 2004 Volume 50, Issue 42, Page A39
[subscription required for online access].
Marc Rotenberg of the Electronic Privacy Information Center is quoted in the article:

Authentication cannot be compared to library checkout policies, he argues. Library patrons may have to reveal their names when they borrow books, but they can read their choice of books from the shelves without ever having to identify themselves

Anti-Piracy Bill Creates Split In Technology Community
by Sarah Lai Stirland.
National Journal’s Technology Daily, June 25, 2004, PM Edition. [subscription required]

Battle lines are drawn again and this useful, short story from National Journal gives a good overview of the players. On the one hand are the Business Software Alliance (BSA), the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), and other entertainment industry organizations. On the other are Consumer Electronics Association (CEA), Public Knowledge, and Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF).
At issue is legislation that “says anyone who intentionally induces others to infringe copyrights can be held liable.” The bill is the
“Inducing Infringement of Copyrights Act of 2004″ (S.2560).

In related news, “The U.S. Senate has passed a bill allowing the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), in addition to copyright holders, to file civil lawsuits against alleged copyright pirates.” The “The Protecting Intellectual Rights Against Theft and Expropriation (PIRATE) Act of 2004″ sponsored by Senators Patrick Leahy and Orrin Hatch. See
U.S. Senate approves antipiracy bill
By Grant Gross, IDG News Service. InfoWorld, June 25, 2004.

Microsoft, Apple snub consumer freedom coalition By Andrew Orlowski, The Register,
Published Wednesday 23rd June 2004 04:07 GMT.

…when Apple’s head lawyer for its iTunes Music Store told EFF attorney Fred Von Lohmann last month that it would keep DRM even if it didn’t have to, its true strategy became clear: DRM is a competitive weapon, and its customers are collateral damage….

…With the exception of ASCII, Bill Gates has never seen a file format he didn’t create that he didn’t want to own. It’s the nature of The Beast….

Silicon Valley - Dan Gillmor’s eJournal - Opinion Laundering Thrives

Gillmor comments on Tim Lambert’s interesting piece, When Think Tanks Attack (23 Jun 2004), which posits that the many think tanks that oppose open source are funded by Microsoft. Gillmor calls this general trend of interest groups hiding behind others “opinion laundering.”

The Importance of…: The Broadcast Flag Treaty - Draft Available

Ernest Miller’s April posting on his Corante blog
“The Importance of…” covers the World Intellectual Property Organization’s draft Treaty for the Protection of Broadcasting Organizations and the “broadcast flag” provisions. Lots of links to background, commments, and full text of relevant provisions. This would give broadcasters more legal rights than copyright ever did. A “really a nasty bit of work.”

More recent information as well as a whole thread
of items at Miller’s broadcast flag category of his blog.