Legal Issues

This AP Story says Support for the First Amendment has eroded significantly
since Sept. 11 and nearly half of Americans now think the constitutional amendment on
free speech goes too far in the rights it guarantees, says a poll released Thursday.

The sentiment that the First Amendment goes too far was already on the rise before the
terrorist attacks a year ago, doubling to four in 10 between 2000 and 2001.

The poll found that 49 percent think the First Amendment goes too far, a total about 10
points higher than in 2001.

James Nimmo passed along This ACLU Announcement on the Freedom of Information Act request filed by the ACLU demanding that the Department of Justice provide information about the pervasiveness of domestic spying.

The ACLU made the request jointly with the Electronic Privacy Information Center and the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression, which said it was concerned that the new surveillance laws threaten the First Amendment-protected activities of book publishers, investigative journalists, booksellers, librarians, and readers.

Michael Nellis writes \"The Free Expression Network has a story about a number of free speech advocate groups protesting the secrecy legislated into the act. You can read the news release

here


And a copy of the letter at PEN American,

here

\"

The following appeared in the 8/21 issue of The Seattle Times: \"Child pornography is illegal and anyone who tries to satisfy a despicable appetite via the computers of the King County Library System will be confronted and police called if needed. That fundamental message got lost in a bruising dispute between the library system and the Kent Police Department. The library filed a lawsuit against police when authorities seized two computers last month as part of an investigation that started off on the wrong foot. The library\'s lawsuit blocked police from conducting any computer search. All this morphed in some minds as the library system aiding and abetting and defending child pornography. That is just wrong...\" Read the rest.

Jen Young pointed us to Chronicle.com where they are Reporting Academic-library groups say they\'re still opposed to a model law intended to make software-licensing agreements uniformly enforceable in all 50 states, even though the legal group that drafted the measure eased some of its provisions this month. The library groups say the changes to the law, called the Uniform Computer Information Transactions Act, or Ucita, are a step in the right direction, but don\'t go far enough to protect scholars\' interests.

The text of the model law and the revisions are both available online.

The University charged the student with possession of stolen property and trespassing for videotaping a speech made by Tipper Gore. The videotaping was unauthorized and resulted in the student being placed on probation and forced to perform community service. The student is suing the University, claiming that his civil rights were violated. Read More.

There are a few stories going around today detailing how both the RIAA and the Internet Radio folks are displeased with the LibrarianOC in his decision about royalties.

Both groups maintain the librarian erred in relying on a single, atypical deal, struck several years ago with Yahoo, to set the rate for an entire industry. Webcasters say it is too high. The recording industry says it is too low.

What do you think of the Librarian of Congress?

Read the full story and then read another one.


In related news, EMI sues AOL for using music it owns.
Here\'s the story.

A Story from IA says it\'s unlikely that investigators would find incriminating information in a patron\'s records.

\"We\'re very conscious of any misperception that we\'re violating someone\'s personal rights,\" Holmquist said. \"FBI agents can\'t go out on their own and obtain whatever records they want. There are checks and balances within the system.\"

Karl Siewert QuickSubmitted This Story on a case a lawsuit over silence. John Cage and Mike Batt have both released songs made up of mostly silence, and Nicholas Riddle, director of the firm that owns the copyright to Cage\'s music, has vowed to take Batt to court over royalties to the song.

Here\'s An Interesting Story on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). Under that Act\'s provisions, the government may conduct covert surveillance of individuals only after seeking an order from a special government-created secret court. However, that court, in its first two decades, granted every one of the government\'s more than 12,000 requests.

Larry Schwartz sent us This CNET Story that says HP is using both the controversial 1998 DMCA and computer crime laws, and has threatened to sue a team of researchers who publicized a vulnerability in the company\'s OS.

Chronicle.com reports that Benjamin G. Edelman, a first-year student at Harvard University\'s law school, is the latest academic researcher to challenge the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

The American Civil Liberties Union, which is representing Mr. Edelman, last month filed a lawsuit against N2H2 Inc., a Seattle-based Internet filtering company, in U.S. District Court in Boston. The suit asks a judge to prevent N2H2 from suing Mr. Edelman under the digital-copyright law should he decide to bypass the company\'s encryption, which prevents him from discovering its complete list of blocked Web sites.

This article was in the August 5th \"The Nation,\" but here is a link to it on Working for Change. Laura Flanders writes...
\"It used to be a matter of flashing a badge and appealing to patriotism, but these days federal agents are finding it a little harder to get librarians to spy ... this time around, top librarians are on the warpath to protect reader privacy.\" Read More

Lee Hadden passed along This One from Chronicle.com that says when Congress brought copyright law into the digital era, in 1998, some in academe were initially heartened by what they saw as compromises that, they hoped, would protect fair use for digital materials. Unfortunately, they were wrong.

Recent actions by Congress and the federal courts -- and many more all-too-common acts of cowardice by publishers, colleges, developers of search engines, and other concerned parties -- have demonstrated that fair use, while not quite dead, is dying.

It seems the data people create using store\'s preferred-customer cards is being used by government agents hunting for potential terrorists. They think federal authorities are plugging the information into algorithms, using the complex formulas to create a picture of general-population trends that can be contrasted with the lifestyles of known terrorists. If your habits match, expect further scrutiny at the least. Full Story.

\"Privacy may seem like a luxury in a nation at war, but that moral concept lies at the heart of constitutionally guaranteed liberties. That\'s why so many people are willing to fight for it.\"

LLRX writes \"Frequent LLRX.com contributor Stephen Young provides an historical introduction to Congressional Research Reports (over 1,000 written reports published yearly), and a variety of avenues online to obtain copies of the small number of these documents actually made available to the public.

See the July 15 issue of LLRX.com \"

SomeOne points to this Great News.com Story that tells those who didn\'t know already, we [Librarians] are emerging as vocal advocates in a debate over who should have rights to what in the information age. It\'s an interview with the ALA legislative counsel, Miriam Nisbet.

Slashdot pointed the way to This One on U.S. Congressman Rick Boucher, who is moving to strengthen \"fair use\"
provisions under federal copyright law, said he is introducing a bill that
would essentially restrict the record industry from selling copy-protected
CDs.

He also said he would introduce a bill within the week that would update the
U.S. Copyright Office\'s Copyright Arbitration Royalty Panel (CARP), which he has criticized as being mired in outdated laws that tilt against Webcasters regarding royalties on
streaming music.

This One from WI says A survey of 1,020 libraries by the University of Illinois in
January and February showed 85 libraries nationwide had been
visited by federal agents seeking information on patrons related to
terrorism. Specific information on which libraries were contacted was
unavailable because of gag provisions in the federal law that
broadened the federal government\'s investigation powers after the
Sept. 11 terror attacks.

Washington Post has a story as well.

Hermit points to The Study, or at least the googlechache.

A Sad Story from FL says Walt Disney Co. officials have until July 30 to decide whether to challenge the Genesee District Library\'s mascot for an alleged similarity to Mickey Mouse.


Last summer, the library submitted a trademark registry request with the U.S. Patent and Trademark office for \"Book Mouse,\" a blue, large-eared rodent wearing red-rimmed glasses and a backpack. Book Mouse appears on bumper stickers and in coloring books, and even marches in local parades.

Library attorney Patric Parker said \"I don\'t think we cut into their movie profits this last year.\"

Free The Mouse.

Mary Minow has A Story over at LLRX.com that has an extensive Q&A on The Children\'s Online Protection Act.