ALA’s Legislative Day 2005

Published date01 July 2005
DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1108/07419050510620217
Date01 July 2005
Pages6-8
AuthorG. Arthur Mihram
Subject MatterLibrary & information science
ALA's Legislative Day 2005
G. Arthur Mihram
6LIBRARY HITECH NEWS Number 6 2005, pp. 6-8, #Emerald Group Publishing Limited, 0741-9058, DOI 10.1108/07419050510620217
The 31st Annual National Library
Legislative Day was attended by
approximately 450 registrants at the
Holiday Inn on the [Capitol] Hill in
Washington, DC on Tuesday, 3 May
2005. Actually, there is a second day of
the conference, on which many of the
registrants met in the morning in the
DirksenSenateOfficeBuildingsoasto
be briefed on the behaviour and attitude
which would be most appreciated by the
Congress-men(-women), Representatives
and/or Senators, with whom they
(individually, or collectively ± typically
as a ``statewide delegation'') would meet
that day, Wednesday, 4th May 2005.
In the context of the currently
widespread public attitude regarding
our Congress, the National Library
Legislative Day adds one more
``advocacy group'', each of which
devotes time and/or resources to lobby
Congress for support for their
organization, cause, or, more usually,
business enterprise. The District of
Columbia Library Association
constitutes a very well organized and
reasonably well-focused lobby.
Indeed, this Association is well co-
ordinated with (and within) the
American Library Association [ALA],
participating actively in both the ALA's
``Library Advocacy Now!'' program
and
its Annual Conference (New Orleans:
22-28 June 2006). The ALA also
maintains a Web-site via its Legislative
Action Center, one which provides the
E-mail addresses of each Congress-man
(-woman)
home/>.
As a reporter for the meeting this
year, I felt an obligation to remain
constrained in voicing (via questions to
any of the presenters) a criticism of the
primary goal (viz., lobbying) of the
Legislative Day: Our Congress-men (-
women) are clearly giving advantage to
the size of a lobby's constituency
(whether this be a professional
organisation or a mega-business
enterprise) in granting access to their
ears, thereby restricting access to civic-
minded individuals who may be
offering much more pertinent advice on
preserving, protecting, and/or
defending The Constitution of the
United States of America.
I'll allude to this topic only briefly
below, but should call the reader's
attention to the foci on the printed
schedule of the Day:
.(A) Congressional Appropriations;
.(B) Copyright;
.(C) The USA Patriot Act;
.(D) Key Issues: Honing the Message;
.(E) School Libraries;
.(F) Tele-communications: the E-rate;
.(G) Government Information; and
.(H) Library Services and Technology
Act [LSTA].
Perhaps to the reader this list is too
lengthy to convince him/her that the
Day had a focus, that probably it was
advocating too many issues. In any
event, this report may not be so
complete as it might have been, since
(except for the opening and closing
sessions, A and H) a pair of sessions
were conducted concurrently:
(B,C); then (D,E); then (F,G). This
reporter opted to attend the full length
of one of each pair of the concurrently
conducted session-pairs: viz., B; then
D; then F.
Session A: Appropriations/Plenary
Lauren Gibbs (Legislative Assistant,
Representative Raul Grijalva: DEM,
Ariz) and Joshua Farrelman (Assistant
Director of ALA's Washington Office
[ALA WO]) gave an overview of the
legislative process in Congress (and the
corresponding budgetary process of the
White House). Unfortunately, they
treated the issues to be discussed in the
remainder of the Legislative Day in a
very partisan way: i.e. as issues in the
realm of the Democratic, yet not the
Republican, Party.
This partisanship by the ALA
seemed to be quite uncritically accepted
by the speakers during the Day. Later,
reports of criticism of opponents of
ALA-supported legislation (such as that
of Representative Barton [REP, Texas],
of the House's Commerce Committee),
on the extension of the E-rate program
(cf. below): were presented quite
derogatorily.
Session B: Copyright
Miriam Nisbet, Legislative Counsel
to ALA WO, introduced to this Session
the ALA's stance on issues of
copyright.
The ALA is also engaged, via an
Intellectual Freedom Committee, in
matters which they relate to copyright
protection, one side of the ``Digital
Dilemma.'' Yet this side does not appear
to be usually so strongly supported by the
ALA leadership as is thatside related to a
somewhat strange interpretation of the
``fair use doctrine'', which for decades
now has been mistakenly interpreted so
as to give individuals, using widespread
copying machines, no sense of guilt
regarding their copying of a significant
portion of a copyright-registered work,
ratherthan purchasing a copyfor oneself.
Such an attitude has led the ALA
leadership to support Senate bill S16
(just signed by President Bush in April
2005), which makes a subscription/
license to (and use of) Clear-Play not a
copyright violation: Clear-Play is a
software programme/application which
permits one who has rented or who
owns a DVD recording to filter out ±
quite automatically ± portions thereof
which are deemed objectionable. One
can apparently ``filter as you view'' the
DVD. The movie/video production
companies are apparently suing the
producers of Clear-Play, even though
the Library of Congress's US Copyright
Office's stance on the issue is that use
of Clear-Play is NOT a copyright
violation.
Unfortunately, the use of Clear-Play
by an individual or library patron is not
truly a ``fair use'' issue on two counts:
First, the Congress failed, in passing the
Copyright Act of 1976, to appreciate
that a recording of a performance
(whether of a play or of a musical/sound
event) does not properly belong to that
Constitutional category of authors and
inventors: ``to promote the progress of
Science and the useful arts, by securing
for a limited times to authors and
inventors the exclusive right to their
respective writings and discoveries''.
Did this Act of Congress merely reflect
the fact that Congress had already
accepted to yield to the wealthier
(recording, cinema, TV-broadcasting)
rather than to the wiser.
Second, the ``fair use'' notion which
librarians and many of us patrons tend
to be accepting as a ``right'' is probably
the result of Congress's failure not to
recognize ± at the time of the advent of
copying machines ± that ``to copy a
copyright-registered document is to
violate the copyright protection due to
the work's owner(s)''. Fair use was
intended to allow one writer to extract
and ask a publisher to print a quite
limited quote from an earlier author,
usually an authoritative one, so as to
confirm for his/her own reader that
there is likely to be merit for his/her
own conclusion. The reader is directed
to Mihram and Mihram (1998) and to
Roush (2005).
Miriam Nisbet mentioned another
issue of likely interest to the LHTN
reader: viz., ``orphan works'' ``lost or
outdated works'', by which is meant
``any copyright-protected work for
which the rights-holder is difficult to
specify''
index.html.>. She raised the very
important issue of the archival
responsibility of libraries: Digitised
works will be creating a difficulty with
regard to their preservation. Today's
medium of recording may not be
retrievable using tomorrow's computer!
The ALA would do well to emphasise
very strongly that their responsibility
for archival preservation is being
compromised by electronic recording
and computer-retrieving industries,
since they have been left essentially
unregulated. The participation of ALA
in the Coalition for Networked
Information (CNI ) did
not seem to have been featured during
the Day: A sincere ALA ``lobbying
effort'' on this issue could be of
significant value to our nation.
Probably only one third of the
registrants attended this Session (B),
with nearly two thirds attending the
concurrent Session: C, the USA Patriot
Act. A reader might note the quite
bipartisan effort of Senators Craig
[REP, Idaho] and Durbin {DEM, Ill.] in
reforming the Patriot Act (Loven,
2005).
Session D: Key Issues, Telling the
Library Story
Stephanie Bates, an advocate for
National Public Radio, spoke on having
one's message (in conversations with
legislators re libraries) appreciated,
noting that currently there are 66 bills
introduced in Congress with the word,
``library'' in the title.
Her presentation, rather humorous in
its conveyance, advised participants re
their conduct when in Congressional
offices. Of greatest import was ``to be
specific''.
She raised the issue of current-day
concerns about privacy, presently
prompted by ± and likely extensively
addressed in Session C ± the ALA's
interpretation of its ethics code's
restraint on librarians' peering into or
caring about whichever holdings a
patron requests, uses, or borrows. If this
interpretation reveals an oversight by
the ALA (that court-supported criminal
investigations do not violate the US
Constitution's constraint on
governmental searches and seizures),
then the ALA should avoid taking a
rather righteous attitude with regard to
privacy.
Session F: Tele-communications and
the E-rate
Barbara Pryor, Sr. Legislative
Assistant for Education, Office of
Senator Jay Rockefeller (DEM, W.V.),
noted that the earlier-passed e-rate
program. which was introduced by Sen.
Rockefeller in order to ensure that ready
access to e-mail would be provided to
rural and low-income areas. The e-rate
has provided a lower tele-
communicationsrate for public locations
(e.g. publiclibraries) who provide e-mail
access, usually with filters to assist in
restraining access to materials deemed
``objectionable'' locally.
Ms. Pryor provided me a copy of
Senator Rockefeller's paper (2005),
summarizing his call for an extension of
the E-rate program, soon to expire
under a sunset clause of the earlier
legislation, the Tele-communications
Act of 1996. The Senator calls for the
extension under the notion of
``universal [Internet] service''. 'Tis a
shame that this very call is not couched
in terms of a Constitutionally-mandated
duty of Congress: viz., ``to provide for
post-offices and post-roads'', even in
our Age of Tele-communications.
That is, Congress has a duty to
provide a (non-exclusive) National
Electronic Postal Service (Mihram and
Mihram, 2000a, b).
Indeed, in this context, Senator
Rockefeller's call for the E-rate as a
part of the ``universal [Internet]
service'' is no more than the natural
implementation in the ``electronic
postal service'' of ``rural free delivery''
from the earlier postal service.
Session H: The Library Services and
Technology Act (LSTA)
Joshua Farrelman (Assistant
Director, ALA WO) spoke on the
LSTA, which supplies grants for
demonstration projects and would grant
each state a grant of at least $340K. The
LSTA was presented in this plenary
(and concluding ) Session as the ALA
lobbying issue. It did not become clear
to this auditor, now writer, as to why the
ALA was so opposed to a National
Identity Card and/or a corresponding
National Data Bank. Perhaps their
objection is founded on the
aforementioned short-sighted notion of
the privacy of patrons, or of fears of its
abuse.
On privacy: we should note that our
own publications ± in the library-
associated literature ± (Mihram and
Mihram, 1998; 2000a) have indeed
noted that a properly implemented
National Electronic Postal Service
could be enhanced by accompanying
legislation which would make
mandatory the maintenance (by any
computer granting access to electronic
data files of ``personally sensitive''
LIBRARY HITECH NEWS Number 6 2005 7
information) of a log-record of the
``electronic postmark'' of every request
made to the computer for access to its
files.
The log-record would include not
only the files/info requested by but also
those returned to the requesting
computer, together with postmark-
laden digital watermarking so as to
preclude further distribution (without so
reporting) or re-transmission of the
sensitive data: under threat of
punishment under law.
The log-record would need be
periodically (monthly, quarterly,
annually) reported to the individual
whose data had been either requested or
disclosed. (Of course, properly
authorized criminal investigations
would be excluded from this periodic
reporting.)
In this way, the privacy and the
access which we all wish to secure and
to permit can be respectfully protected
and provided. A quite analogous
procedure could be instituted for
copyright-registered materials in order
to provide copyright protection
therefor.
Concluding remarks
The Legislative Day event is
sponsored by the District of Columbia
Library Association and the American
Library Association, as well as by other
contributors, including some state
library and media associations. The
ALA's Legislative Day can surely point
to pieces of legislation for which their
lobbying effort has proved successful:
e.g. the Museum and Library Services
Act of 1996.
Next year, the (32nd) Annual
National Library Legislative Day will
be held on Monday (+Tuesday), 1-2
May 2006, also at the Holiday Inn on
the Hill in Washington, DC.
REFERENCES
Loven, J. (2005), ``Bush: Patriot Act
provisions not to be allowed to expire'',
San Diego Union Tribune (Associated
Press), 10 June, p. A6.
Mihram, D. and Mihram, G.A. (1998),
``Tele-cybernetics: standards and
procedures for protecting the copyright of
digitised materials,'' Computers in
Libraries, Medford, NJ, pp. 196-203 (on
archives).
Mihram, D. and Mihram, G.A. (2000a),
``Resolving two congressional duties'',
Computers in Libraries, Medford, NJ,
pp. 195-204 (on copyright and electronic
post offices).
Mihram, G.A. and Mihram, D. (2000b),
``Tele-cybernetics: on some necessary
governmental roles in the internet and the
web,'' WEBNET 2000, Association for
Advancement of Computing in Education,
Norfolk, VA, pp. 396-401.
National Academies of Science and
Engineering (2000), DIGITAL DILEMMA:
Intellectual Property in the Information
Age, National Academy Press,
Washington, DC.
Rockefeller, Sen. J. (2005), ``Written
Statement for the Senate Commerce
Committee Hearing on Universal
Service,'' Office of the Senator,
Washington, DC, 11 April.
Roush, W. (2005), ``The infinite library,''
Technology Review, May.
Dr G. Arthur Mihram (dmihram@
usc.edu) is an author/consultant in
Princeton, NJ.
8LIBRARY HITECH NEWS Number 6 2005

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