Vol. 11, No. 6; May 11, 1998 EFFector Vol. 11, No. 6 May 11, 1998 editor@eff.org
A Publication of the Electronic Frontier Foundation ISSN 1062-9424
See http://www.eff.org for more information on EFF activities & alerts!
The Electronic Frontier Foundation May 4, 1998
Please distribute widely to appropriate forums, no later than May 20, 1998.
Free speech and fair use supporters are asked to IMMEDIATELY contact their own Representatives, as well as House leaders, and ask them to to vote against the database bill, H.R. 2652, expected to pass or fail on the House floor on May 12, 1998. This contact shouldn't take more than TWO MINUTES per office.
Urge your Representatives to refrain from voting away your right to know and use plain facts because some companies demand special privileges to control and charge for the use of public-domain information.
Feel free to make use of the sample fax and phone "script" below.
(We regret that some readers, due to Net-related delays or for other reasons, may not receive this alert in time to act. Sometimes Congress moves quickly, leaving us with insufficient warning to issue an alert early enough for all readers to receive it in time.)
See EFF's Contacting Congress factsheet at http://www.eff.org/congress which provides links to places to look up who your legislator is if necessary, and to obtain their phone and fax numbers. Please PHONE first, FAX second. Time is short enough that some of the faxes may simply not make it in time.
If you can spare a few extra minutes, try working your way down this list of House leadership, as well as contacting your own Rep:
Party Last Name, First Name Voice Phone Fax State/Dist ----------------------------------------------------------------- R GA/06 Gingrich, Newt 1-202-225-4501 1-202-225-4656+ R TX/26 Armey, Richard 1-202-225-7772 1-202-226-8100+ D MO/03 Gephardt, Richard 1-202-225-2671 1-202-225-7452+ R TX/22 DeLay, Tom 1-202-225-5951 1-202-225-5241 D MI/10 Bonior, David 1-202-225-2106 1-202-226-1169 R OH/08 Boehner, John 1-202-225-6205 1-202-225-0704 R CA/47 Cox, Christopher 1-202-225-5611 1-202-225-9177 D CA/03 Fazio, Vic 1-202-225-5716 1-202-225-5141 D MD/05 Hoyer, Steny 1-202-225-4131 1-202-225-4300
(+ These are the most important to contact - call/fax them first.)
House leaders are, respectively: Speaker, Majority Leader, Minority Leader, Maj. Whip, Min. Whip, Republican Conference Chair, Rep. Policy Committee Chair, Democratic Caucus Chair, Dem. Steering Cmte. Chair
If you would like to both call, and send a fax, this extra action would certainly help.
For best results, try to put this in your own (short!) words, and be calmly emotive without being hostile.
IF YOU ARE A CONSTITUENT (i.e., you live in the same district as the Rep. you are contacting) make sure to say so. For example "I am a constituent, and I'm calling/writing because...."
IF YOU REPRESENT A COMPANY OR ORGANIZATION, say so: "I'm Jane Person from Personal Technologies Inc. of Austin. I'm calling on behalf of Personal Technologies to ask the Representative to...." Business interests carry a lot of weight with many legislators, especially if they are in the legislator's home district. Legislators also generally heed organizational voices over individiual ones. On this issue especially, legislators needs to hear a commercial viewpoint OPPOSING this bill.
You: [ring ring]
Legislative staffer: Hello, Representative Lastname's office.
You: I'm calling to urge Representative Lastname to REJECT the so-called "Collections of Information Antipiracy Act", H.R. 2652. This bill is missing key definitions and creates new property rights in databases and the raw data contained in them, at the expense of ALL citizens' rights to know and use plain facts and information. This bill threatens fair use and freedom of speech and press. The database industry has not proven any need for this legislation, and it is simply yet another attempt to extend copyright-like protection to public-domain material that can't be copyrighted. The bill is not responsive to WIPO treaty language and it provides for excessive and injust penalties. There is no need for this legislation, and I urge Representative Lastname to REJECT H.R. 2652. Thank you.
Staffer: OK, thanks. [click]
It's that easy.
You can optionally ask to speak to the legislator's technology & intellectual property staffer. You probably won't get to, but the message may have more weight if you succeed. The staffer who first answers the phone probably won't be the tech/i.p. staffer.
See above for how to get relevant Congressional fax numbers. Please, if you have the time, write your own 1-3 paragraph letter in your own words, rather than send a copy of this sample letter. (However, sending a copy of the sample letter is far better than taking no action!)
Dear Rep. Lastname:
I'm writing to urge you to reject the excessive intellectual property protections for database maintainers as contained in H.R. 2652, the "Collections of Information Antipiracy Act." This bill, while being touted as as a piece of antipiracy legislation, actually makes most uses of pure information contained in a database illegal without prior permission from the database maintainer. The Act does not create useful exceptions for the fair use of information, and key definitions of crucial terms, such as "collection" and "substantial part" are missing. Furthermore the penalties called for - up to $500,000 and 10 years in prison - are excessive and injust.
The database industry is booming and is quite lucrative for companies collecting and disseminating information. At present, the law requires database collectors to add some originality to the information collected before the collectors receive a legally recognized property right in the database. H.R. 2652 would change this, giving collectors property rights in raw information that has traditionally and properly been in the public domain. This assault on the public's fair use rights and freedom of speech and press will have dire consequences for science, medicine, journalism, political campaigning, and legal research. Additionally, the bill is simply not responsive in any way to the requirements of recent WIPO treaties. WIPO rejected such a "database giveaway".
The database industry has not demonstrated a clear need for this legislation, and the public interest is harmed by giving these companies additional rights to control plain facts and information. H.R. 2652 represents an attempt by some information collection owners to fortify their markets through manipulating the legal system (instead of through fair competition and the addition of value) by raising fears of electronic piracy of information over the Internet and through new information technologies. Congress should wait until specific and definable market failures become apparent before acting to correct them, and even then not in a way as broad and vague as that attempted in H.R. 2652.
Sincerely,
My Name Here
My Address Here
(Address is especially important if you want your letter to be taken as a letter from an actual constituent.)
For brief tips on writing letters to Congress, see: http://www.vote-smart.org/contact/contact.html The most important tip is to BE POLITE AND BRIEF. Swearing will NOT help.
Note for non-US activists: You may wish to contact the House leadership
listed above, but focus on the argument that WIPO rejected the approach
taken by this bill because it was highly controversial. Perhaps
suggests that passage of this
bill will simply undo WIPO efforts to synchronize intellectual property
law around the world, and further harm trade between the US and the EU
(and
other areas.) Avoid the argument that non-US interests, especially
commercial interests, need access to information in American-owned
databases (unless you are writing to describe a situation in which US
interests are thwarted because your
company or organization will be harmed by the bill, and you are working
with US companies in some kind of joint effort). US legislators see the
US as an intellectual property leader, in competition with the globe, and
would probably like the idea that US monetary interests are boosted at the
expense of foreigners.
H.R. 2652, the "Collections of Information Antipiracy Act", introduced by Rep. Howard Coble (R-NC), expands the rights of database creators and maintainers, at the expense of YOUR rights to know and use plain and available facts and information. The bill has been put on the fast track, and is up for a "suspension rules" vote, by the entire House in which it cannot be amendmed to fix its flaws (but can only pass with a 2/3 majority vote.) An exception is that the principal sponsor can amend it at will (probably not for the better). A lot of big money is behind this legislation, so the danger of its passage is high. Concerns that it would undermine science were enough to get the vote postponed last week, but this argument seems to have been insufficient to kill the bill. Congress needs to hear from YOU, and especially needs to hear from US companies that would be harmed by this legislation.
The bill, the latest in a long series of efforts by certain commercial interests to extend copyright-like protections to that which belongs to the public and cannot be copyrighted, authorizes enormous civil and criminal penalties (up to $250,000 and/or 5 years in prison for a first offense; $500,000 and/or 10 years in prison for subsequent convictions!) against anyone who uses uncopyrightable, public domain data collected in a database without the express consent of the company that controls that database.
The Act, backed by major database maintainers such as Microsoft, Reed Elsevier, and West Publishing, is designed to create a new crime against those who extract or commercially use a "substantial part" of a collection of information gathered, organized or maintained by another person "through a substantial investment of money or other resources" so as to harm the data collector's "actual or potential" market for a product or service that incorporates that collection of information.
The main problem with the bill is that key terms are either not defined or are poorly defined, leaving huge loopholes that render literally all information, data, and facts vulnerable under the Act. For example, even though the bill is titled the "Collections of Information Antipiracy Act," the term "collection" is not defined. "Substantial part" is not defined. The terminology is vague enough that just about anything could be considered a "substantial part" (cf. court decisions regarding digital sampling of one song for sound effects in another; generally if the sound bite is recognizable at all it is considered "substantial" and still owned by the original creator. It is unlikely that we can rely on the courts to narrowly interpret this legislation should it pass.)
And "information" is defined as "facts, data, works of authorship, or any other intangible material capable of being collected and organized in a systematic way," an extremely broad definition that could include just about anything! The legislation amounts to a roundabout form of censorship that could severely harm journalism, medicine, scientific inquiry, academia, consumer watchdogging, the Freedom of Information Act, the democratic political process itself, and many other areas and avenues of inquiry about, and/or use of, raw information and facts.
Unfortunately, while Congress has been feeling intensifying pressure from the database maintainers to pass this legislation, they have not been hearing from those opposed to the bill. YOUR immediate action is needed to stop it from passing the House.
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