EFFector, Vol. 11, No. 15; Oct. 5, 1998

EFFector Vol. 11, No. 15 Oct. 5, 1998 editor@eff.org

A Publication of the Electronic Frontier Foundation ISSN 1062-9424

Electronic Frontier Foundation Sep. 5, 1998

ALERT: Join Blue Ribbon Campaign and Fight "Son of CDA"

Please redistribute this alert to friends that would appreciate it, and to APPROPRIATE forums.

No less than three versions of the Coats/Istook "Son of CDA" or "CDA II" Internet censorship bills are being considered soon for passage by Congress. Please join the Blue Ribbon Campaign today to help spread the word and raise opposition to this unconstitutional, unhelpful and badly-written legislation.

If you support free speech on the Net, please show that support visually and actively by posting the Blue Ribbon for Online Freedom of Expression on YOUR web pages. It's really easy. Full instructions are available (along with sample HTML you can just copy-and-paste right into your Web page), along with action alerts and background information, at the Blue Ribbon Campaign site, at:
http://www.eff.org/br

Next, please contact your own Representatives and Senators and urge them to vote against ANY Internet censorship provisions. The committees and hearings have run their course, and Congress only has a few legislative days left in which to pass - or abandon - all pending legislation. Don't waste any time! If you are unsure who your legislators are or how to contact them, you can simply follow Action Item #1 at the Blue Ribbon page to send a free fax to your legislators via the web, or for phone and other contact info, see EFF's "Contacting Congress" Factsheet, at:
http://www.eff.org/congress

Even after the CDA II battle is over, threats to the intellectual freedom online will surely continue to appear, locally, nationally, and globally. So please keep your Blue Ribbons up. Our Blue Ribbon icon automatically changes to an "ALERT" icon when censorship threats are afoot, and will instantly update on your page, if you link to our copy as per the instructions on the site.

If you run a commercial web site, please also consider joining the campaign. There is probably no better way of spreading the word than by online organizatoins and companies providing this grassroots action network on their own sites for all of their visitors to notice. If your site would like to contribute banner ad space in the style of an online public service announcement, please contact us at eff@eff.org.

Non-U.S. activists: A) Keep track of Net censorship issues locally, and publicize them. Let us know, and we'll help spread the word. B) Consider working with other concerned Net users in your area to set up your own localized Blue Ribbon Campaign page, and let us know about it so that we can link to it. Make sure it is regularly maintained. C) To help stop the U.S. censorship laws, there's not a whole lot you can do. About the only foreign voice Congress will pay much heed to in this debate is going to be from members of the business sector that are working in close partnership with U.S. companies - stress that your company has U.S. partners, and that that these bills would impede the growth and utility of the Internet and increase transborder liability and legal uncertainty, threatening not only your business but that of your U.S. partners. If you aren't in such a situation, try pressuring your government to in turn pressure the US government to stop trying to gag and blindfold the Net. It's a long shot, but perhaps worth a little effort. Most of your activist energy, however, should probably be spent in your own area. If your lawmakers have not already passed a censorship law, it's a safe bet they are thinking about it.

Cutoff date: Please do not distribute this alert after Jan. 1999. Check the Blue Ribbon Campaign site for newer information.

Oct. 5, 1998 DFC/EFF

ALERT: Contact Copyright/Database Bill Conference Committee - Last Chance!

URGENT!!! HELP PRESERVE THE FUTURE OF FAIR USE AND DATABASE ACCESS: IT'S "NOW OR (PERHAPS) NEVERMORE"

Tentative Deadline: Oct. 6, 1998 - If you receive this alert after Oct. 6, please check http://www.dfc.org for the status of this legislation and/or an updated alert.

It's official. The "Digital Millennium Copyright Act" (H.R. 2281/S. 2037) is now before a Senate/House Conference Committee that's poised to act fast. It could meet for the LAST time as early as Tuesday, Oct. 6.

Even if you've never contacted Congress before, now is the time to phone and fax all members of the Conference Committee listed below (especially if you are a constituent) to ask that they:

(1) SUPPORT **no less protection for fair use** than that afforded by the House's version of the bill (H.R. 2281). the Senate's version (S. 2037), contains no fair use protection at all); AND

(2) OPPOSE the inclusion of any "database protection" legislation in the final version of the bill. Title V of the House bill attempts to grant intellectual property legal protection to databases and the information they contain, even if they are just basic, public facts. The Senate bill does not meddle in this area.

It's also urgent that both of your Senators -- even though neither may be on the Conference Committee -- be asked to contact Senate conference committee leaders Orrin Hatch (R-UT) and Patrick Leahy (D-VT) immediately to relay the two critical messages above. For on-line sample letters, e-mail connections to your Members of Congress and more background information, please visit the ALA Washington Office Web site at:
http://congress.nw.dc.us/ala/

With your help this past week, we have made headway, especially on the "database protection" front: 15 Senators have now written Conference Committee members urging that the database bill be "delinked" from the larger and substantively unrelated WIPO copyright package. They are:

If you live in any of these Senators' states, please be sure to fax and phone your thanks to these Senators right away. They are under heavy pressure from database protection proponents to withdraw their objections to this seriously flawed legislation. Your immediate support and thanks will help them hold the line! For more information on how to find out who your senators are and contact them, see:
http://www.eff.org/congress

"DIGITAL MILLENNIUM COPYRIGHT ACT" CONFERENCE COMMITTEE MEMBERS

[* These legislators have changed their fax numbers and the new numbers are not yet publicly available. Constituents may be able to coax a new fax number out of staffers during a voice call.]

With less than two weeks, and even fewer "legislative days", remaining in the 105th Congress, now is the time that the wheels within the wheels either mesh to produce legislation that gets to the President's desk . . . or don't. NEA, together with its many partners in the library community, and the Digital Future Coalition are fighting hard to assure that the last minute deals that are the hallmark of this end-of-Congress environment don't reverse progress made to date in protecting public access to information or catapult unripe proposals into law which could jeopardize such access. Both of these dangerous scenarios could easily become reality with respect to the major intellectual property legislation on which libraries have worked so hard in this Congress. That's why your letters now are so critical. The details of database protection and WIPO treaty implementation legislation can be complicated, but the key concepts underlying educators' work on these bill are as familiar as common sense:

(1) DATABASE: Both the Departments of Commerce and Justice and the FTC have submitted analyses to Congress expressing major concerns, including potential unconstitutionality, with the "Collections of Information Antipiracy Act" (S. 2291/H.R. 2652/H.R. 2281 Title V). This database protection legislation could radically restrict access to non-copyrightable information. Thus, it should not be rushed through Congress at the last minute without Senate hearings, whether as a separate bill or as part of the "Digital Millennium Copyright Act" (H.R. 2281), a bill to implement the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) copyright treaties, with which it was merged by the House in August. ALA other public- and private-sector organizations and companies wrote to Judiciary Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch last week asking him to defer action on this controversial measure until the next Congress. A copy of this joint letter is posted on the Internet at:
http://www.dfc.org/issues/database/jntltr/jntltr.html

(2) WIPO: Legislation to implement the WIPO treaties was first passed by the Senate as S. 2037 without any provision for the future protection of fair use and various other kinds of lawful access to information now afforded by the Copyright Act. In the House, however, efforts by key members of the Commerce Committee succeeded in writing basic access safeguards into H.R. 2281 as approved by the full House in early August. When the Senate and House meet to determine the final form of WIPO treaty legislation, as they will soon, the House bill's protections for fair use and other kinds of lawful access to information must be incorporated in the finished product.

For detailed assessments of the pending database legislation (S. 2291/H.R. 2652) and of the pluses and minuses of the version of the WIPO treaty bill adopted by the House in early August (H.R. 2281) please point your browser to the Digital Future Coalition Web site:
http://www.dfc.org

The Digital Future Coalition (DFC), of which EFF is a member, is 42 non-profit and for-profit entities that are committed to fighting for balanced intellectual property law (copyright) in the digital era.

As always with short-notice alerts, we regret that some readers will not receive this in time to act. Congress is moving *very* quickly on many issues of late, and it is not always possible to issue alerts with several days of lead time, unfortunately.

Sep. 4, 1998 CPT/EFF Alert

U. S. Senate Bill (S. 2288) to "Reform" Laws on Distributing Government Information to the Public Needs Strengthening

Please Call Your Senators to Urge Them to Amend the Bill to Require the Federal Government to Place its Most Important Documents on the Internet

The U. S. Senate may vote soon on a bill, the Government Publications Reform Act (S. 2288), that would re-write much of the federal law governing the distribution of federal government information to the public. The bill boasts of its purpose to "broaden, strengthen, and enhance public access to all Government publications," and would set federal government policy for the 21st century. However, it would do little to expand public access to the most important federal government documents, and would not require the federal government to place these documents on the Internet.

Although Congress was quick to put the Starr report on the Internet, Congress keeps off the Internet many of the most useful congressional materials, including the most important texts of bills and committee reports (especially draft versions) Congressional Research Service (CRS) documents, full congressional voting records and many congressional hearing records.

The Government Publications Reform Act would not place these important materials on the Internet. That's right. The bill aiming to be our Twenty-First Century government records policy amazingly simply "forgets" that the Internet exists! Senators need to amend the bill on the Senate floor to require the federal government to place these documents online for public access, as well as create and make available a database of all federal court decisions since the founding of the United States, using a public (not commercial and monopolized) citation system.

Taxpayers deserve to read the federal government documents that we pay for. Americans ought to have easy access to the laws that we are supposed to obey. Fortunately, the Internet is an efficient and inexpensive technology for distributing government information to the public. The marginal cost of disseminating government information over the Internet is essentially zero. Congress ought to use this technology to distribute the core documents of our democracy to the public, and without additional cost to readers.

Although the Government Publications Reform Act would provide some executive branch documents to federal depository libraries, it would do little to fix Washington's two-tiered system of information distribution. That system provides many Washington lobbyists, and their predominantly corporate clients, with excellent access to important congressional documents. Meanwhile, most citizens cannot easily, if at all, obtain the congressional documents they need to advocate on their own behalf.

An ironic example of the bill's loopholes came to light this week during its consideration before the Senate Rules Committee. On September 28, the bill was voted out of the Rules Committee, as amended by a Chairman's Mark. However, the Chairman's Mark, which made significant changes to the bill, was not available on the Internet, nor would the bill require that chairman's marks be placed on the Internet in the future.

We must urge our Senators to amend the Government Publications Reform Act to heed the warnings of James Madison: "A popular Government, without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a Prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy; or, perhaps both. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance: And a people who mean to be their own Governors, must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives."

On September 28, the Senate Rules Committee amended S. 2288 to remove a serious flaw in the bill which would likely have given the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) authority over the U. S. Government Printing Office (GPO). OMB has a dismal record of ensuring that government documents are distributed to the public. OMB authority over GPO could have injured the distribution of government documents via the Internet and to the federal depository libraries. The new version of the bill would establish the new GPO "as an independent entity in the Federal government, independent of executive agencies" which would make GPO less vulnerable to the destructive meddlings of OMB.

Please call your senators to urge them to amend S. 2288 to require the federal government to place its most important documents on the Internet, including:

The Congressional switchboard phone number is (202) 224-3121. For more information on contacting your Senators, see EFF's "Contacting Congress" Factsheet, at:
http://www.eff.org/congress

Cutoff Date: Please do not distribute this alert after Nov. 1, 1998. See the CAP Web site for updated information on public access to Congressional and other documents.

This Electronic Frontier Foundation alert is based on an original by the Congressional Accountability Project (CAP). CAP can be reached at:
http://www.essential.org/orgs/CAP/CAP.html

Administrivia

The Electronic Frontier Foundation
1550 Bryant St., Suite 725
San Francisco CA 94103-4832 USA
+1 415 436 9333 (voice)
+1 415 436 9993 (fax)

Reproduction of this publication in electronic media is encouraged. Signed articles do not necessarily represent the views of EFF. To reproduce signed articles individually, please contact the authors for their express permission. Press releases and EFF announcements may be reproduced individually at will.

To subscribe to EFFector via email, send message body of:
subscribe effector-online
to listserv@eff.org, which will add you to a subscription list for EFFector. To unsubscribe, send a similar message body, like so:
unsubscribe effector-online

Please ask ask@eff.org to manually remove you from the list if this does not work for some reason.

IN THE 143nd ISSUE OF EFFECTOR:

Electronic Frontier Foundation Sep. 5, 1998

ALERT: Join Blue Ribbon Campaign and Fight "Son of CDA"

ALERT: Contact Copyright/Database Bill Conference Committee - Last Chance!

URGENT!!! HELP PRESERVE THE FUTURE OF FAIR USE AND DATABASE ACCESS: IT'S "NOW OR (PERHAPS) NEVERMORE"

LATEST NEWS:

IMMEDIATE ACTION TO TAKE:

"DIGITAL MILLENNIUM COPYRIGHT ACT" CONFERENCE COMMITTEE MEMBERS

BACKGROUND:

FURTHER DETAILS:

Sep. 4, 1998 CPT/EFF Alert

ALERT: Contact Senators to Demand Online Access to Public Documents

U. S. Senate Bill (S. 2288) to "Reform" Laws on Distributing Government Information to the Public Needs Strengthening

Please Call Your Senators to Urge Them to Amend the Bill to Require the Federal Government to Place its Most Important Documents on the Internet

Introduction

WHAT TO DO:

Administrivia