From GPO Access: The Regulatory Plan and the Unified Agenda of Federal Regulatory and Deregulatory Actions, May 2003. "The Unified Agenda published twice a year (usually in April and October) in the Federal Register, summarizes the rules and proposed rules that each Federal agency expects to issue during the next six months." See this link to search and browse the current edition (2003), as well previous additions (1994 through 2002).

DVD-CCA v. Bunner, on appeal before the California Supreme Court, involves the posting of free software for the DeCSS code (to decrypt DVDs) by Andrew Bunner on his website. Prior to the beginning of this case in 2000, the DeCSS code had been published widely on sites around the world. According to SFGate.com, "California Attorney General Bill Lockyer joined the movie industry in contending that the DeCSS code was simply a burglary tool designed for breaking, entering and stealing a trade secret -- the industry-owned code designed to prevent unauthorized playback of movies recorded on digital versatile discs, or DVDs." See also this posting on the case from Freedom to Tinker.

Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren addressed a range of issues, including national security, civil liberties and cybercrime, in this speech from May 29.

According to Information Week, "Microsoft will pay AOL Time Warner $750 million and license its Web browser to AOL for seven years to settle an antitrust lawsuit brought by AOL unit Netscape Communications last year."

In Another Casualty (registration re'q), Margaret M. Jobe, Chair, Notable Documents Panel, American Library Association's Government Documents Round Table (GODORT) reviews the federal databases and resources that have been removed from the public domain by the Bush Administration in the name of national security, as well as those that may be eliminated in the near future, including AGRICOLA and the Global Legal Information Network.

The new income tax withholding tables are available, in pdf, from the IRS website, reflecting changes from the recent Jobs and Growth Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2003.

The .pro domain, launching July 1, is initially available only to licensed professionals including doctors (med.pro), lawyers (law.pro) and CPAs (cpa.pro).

S.1158, A bill to exempt bookstores and libraries from orders requiring the production of tangible things for foreign intelligence investigations, and to exempt libraries from counterintelligence access to certain records, ensuring that libraries and bookstores are subjected to the regular system of court-ordered warrants, was introduced on May 23 by Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA).

From GPO Access:
Jobs and Growth Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2003 (H.R. 2), TEXT | PDF, Signed into law on May 28, 2003, H.R. 2 amends the Internal Revenue Code to accelerate the increase to the $1,000 child tax credit to include 2003 and 2004. It also maintains the levels and the sunset established under the Economic Growth and Tax Reconciliation Act of 2001 for years following.

Also available: Conference report to H.R. 2 (H. Rept. 108-126) TEXT, PDF.

From the Center for Democracy and Technology, this analysis, Privacy's Gap: The Largely Non-Existent Legal Framework for Government Mining of Commercial Data, [pdf] May 28, 2003. Quoting from the report, "The government has argued that it should have the same access to consumer data that the private sector has, but in fact it seeks access on very different terms because the private sector is subject to strict rules when it uses consumer information - rules that do not apply to the government's proposed anti-terrorism uses."

Steven Aftergood of the Federation of American Scientists maintains an extensive resource on Bush Administration Documents on Secrecy Policy. Included are links to: Presidential Documents, Related White House Press Briefings, and Other Official Documents on Bush Administration Secrecy Policy.

The New York Times News Tracker Service through which readers may create and schedule the delivery of topic/search specific e-mail, will be migrated from free to fee. The cost: $19.95 per year for tracking ten alerts.

However, as noted by Jonathan Dube, Yahoo! Alerts remains free.

From UPI: "A proposed European constitution...calls for an elected president of Europe and a binding bill of rights, but at Britain's insistence, it drops the notion of creating a federal "United States of Europe." An edited version of the draft is available here.

The full-text of the six documents (in pdf) are as follows:

SFGate.com reported on public protests against the Patriot Act by Palo Alto librarians. In addition to the librarians, the article states that the "police chief is supporting a resolution before the Cicty Council next week that would prohibit her department from aiding the FBI in Patriot Act searches, interviews or surveillance without evidence that a crime has been committed."

Related news:

The New York Times reports on the steadily growing implementation of technology applications in courtrooms around the country, including the use of PowerPoint presentations, video and audio conferencing, the Web, and flat-screen computer monitors. For related information, see the website of the Courtroom 21 Project, "which seeks to determine how technology can best improve all components of the legal system."

From Declan McCullagh, Spam blockers may wreak e-mail havoc, and a series of informative postings (all available at this one link) at his Politechbot.com site, on spam blacklists/blocklists.

In related news, see also:

In Search Privacy: An Issue?, Part 2, Danny Sullivan evaluates the privacy policies and associated data mining applications of Yahoo and Google. Part 1 of this article is here.

Scanning Essentials for Your Office reviews applications, costs and options for creating e-records from text, pictures and images.

H.R. 2214: To prevent unsolicited commercial electronic mail. Sponsor: Rep. Richard Burr (R-NC), introduced 5/22/2003. This Act may be cited as the "Reduction in Distribution of Spam Act of 2003."

Summary from Spam Laws: "The bill would require all commercial e-mail messages to be identified as such (but not with a standard label, except for unsolicited explicit messages), and to include the sender's physical address and an opt-out mechanism. It would prohibit the use of false or misleading headers in commercial messages. State laws that prohibit unsolicited commercial e-mail, regulate opt-out procedures, or require subject-line labels would be pre-empted; laws that merely regulate falsification of message headers would remain in effect."

In related news, see also:

From AP: "A federal jury has ruled that eBay's model for selling fixed-price merchandise violates a patent filed by a Virginia attorney, a ruling that could force the online auction house to shed as much as a third of its total business. The decision: Mercexchange, LLC v. eBAY, Inc and Half.com, Inc., May 27, 2003 (pdf).

The non-profit association, EDUCAUSE, maintains a regularly updated online chart in Excel that tracks technology-related legislation for the 108th Congress. The chart indicates issue, bill number, related bill, last action (date), committee/subcommittee, and whether the bill is active. There are currently 51 entries on issues including privacy, ID theft, broadband and spam.

According to the Dot Kids Implementation and Efficiency Act of 2002, the kids.us domain will be a "haven for material that promotes positive experiences for children and families using the Internet." This task poses significant challenges to those who plan to publish and maintain "G" rated-only content beginning this September.

Related posting:
President Signs Kids Internet Law

From FAS, an excerpt from H.R. 1588, the National Defense Authorization for Fiscal Year 2004 as reported in the House (House Report 108-106, Part 1 and Part 2 (*note, these are very long documents), on the Expansion of the Defense Counterintelligence Polygraph Program.

Broadening the Vision for KM (PowerPoint), by Tom Bartley, Sally Gonzalez, Peter Krakaur, and Pulling It All Together, STELLA - Knowledge Matters - A KM Case Study (PowerPoint), by Jean Anne McLeod.

Understanding Online's Value Proposition, an article by writer, speaker and consultant Robert Spears, presents an overview of a diverse range of websites and online services that consumers have determined provide content that justifies a fee. This short but interesting commentary is part of an upcoming book, Strategic Convergence: The Path to Sustainable Profits.

An update on knowledge management incentives reviews the successes and failures of programs used by high profile companies such as Siemens and Hill & Knowlton to encourage and sustain employee participation in building intranets and knowledge manangement applications.

The Accidental Webmaster, by Julie M. Still, reference librarian at Paul Robeson Library, Rutgers University-Camden, Camden, New Jersey.

Firms Take Hard Line on Law Directories spotlights the growing competition among global legal publishers for a share of the lucrative legal directory marketplace, as well as highlights other online marketing and branding strategies available to high-profile firms.

Rep. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), who sponsored the Freedom to Read Protection Act, (H.R. 1157), will present the keynote at the opening session of the Joint Annual Conference of the American Library Association and Canadian Library Association, in Toronto on June 21.

PCWorld has an important article on the implications of and serious ramifications that result when powerful encryption technologies used to protect individual privacy are also exploited in increasingly sophisticated ways by groups planning terrorist acts.

Naked in Cyberspace, How To Find Personal Information Online, 2nd Edition, reviewed by Stephen Lafferty.

Updated WinZip Alters Zip Format. "WinZip 9.0, from the market leader among file-compression utilities, has entered public beta with scheduled release later this year, bringing with it a new .zip format--which means some of its functions will not be compatible with earlier versions or other programs."

Conservators Restore Rare Books Damaged In Yale Blast: Water From Sprinklers Damages About 300 Books. "About 300 rare books -- the major casualties of Wednesday's bomb explosion at Yale Law School -- are being treated by expert conservators. Librarians catalogued and bagged the books, then moved them into a blast freezer at Yale's Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. The books will wait in the freezer while librarians and conservators study how best to restore them."

Via Politechbot, the text of the Reduction in Distribution of Spam Act of 2003, (43 pages, pdf) introduced May 22 by Rep. Richard Burr, (R-NC) in another effort to stem the tide of unsolicited commercial e-mail (UCE). For other related information on state and federal anti-spam legislation that I have posted, see this link. Also see Internet.com's Special Report, Spam Reaches Epidemic Levels.

Sen. Debra Bowen's bill, SB 12, "would...prohibit a person or entity from initiating an unsolicited commercial e-mail advertisement either from California or to a California electronic mail address. The bill would also make it unlawful for a person or entity to collect electronic mail addresses posted on the Internet, or to sell or provide a list of e-mail addresses, to be used to initiate the transmission of unsolicited commercial e-mail advertisements from California or to a California e-mail address." For more information, see this SFGATE.com article.

The Alaska legislature passed House Joint Resolution 22 stating "it is the policy of the State of Alaska to oppose any portion of the USA Patriot Act that would violate the rights and liberties guaranteed equally under the state and federal constitutions."

According to the ACLU, "Alaska's resolution is the 114th of its kind to pass in a city, county or state jurisdiction around the country."

In related news see: Alaska Legislature Stands Up for Civil Liberties.

From the press release: "The House Judiciary Subcommittee on Courts, the Internet and Intellectual Property approved H.R. 1561, the United States Patent and Trademark Fee Modernization Act of 2003. The Department of Commerce’s U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) is fully funded by user fees. The new fee structure contained in the legislation will fund USPTO’s 21st Century Strategic Plan, the agency’s five-year blueprint for improving patent and trademark quality and productivity."

Experts Say Technology Is Widely Disseminated Inside and Outside Military - "Congressional efforts to rein in a Pentagon surveillance project may be ineffective because new surveillance technology is being widely disseminated both inside and outside of the military and other less visible federal offices are pursuing similar research, industry executives and computer scientists say."

An update to my April 23 posting on the Summit on Web Credibility - Here is a link to edited transcripts of presentations made at the conference, wherein Experts Discuss Paid vs. 'Pure' Search Results. Said experts are from Hewlett-Packard, Google, Overture, ConsumerReports.org and Consumer WebWatch.

See the following updates on The Eric Eldred Act website:

Kudos to Tara Calishain and co-author Rael Dornfest, whose book, Google Hacks, is on the New York Times Paperback Bestseller List!

The Chronicle of Higher Education published the text of a dialogue, New Approaches to File Sharing, between Penn State President Graham Spanier and students from throughout the country and abroad. Issues addressed included the possible institution of fees for using P2P applications via campus networks, acceptable use policies, the implementation of legitimate file sharing applications that meet the requirements of fair use within the context of research and library related activities, and other interesting perspectives on the issue.

Search Privacy: An Issue?, Part 1 Danny Sullivan details Google's privacy and data collection policies.

Business Is Toying With a Web Tool puts the spotlight on an innovative, user friendly open-source tool called a wiki, used to create inter-related web pages. Not new to the scene (the technology was first used in 1995), but perhaps ready to be embraced along the lines of blogging applications, wiki technology offers many interesting possibilities for collaborative knowledge management applications in organizations large and small. Another excellent article on this technology was written by David Mattison, so for those who are interested in this topic, please be sure to add this to your reading list, as well as this article, What's a Wiki?, and this book, The Wiki Way: Collaboration and Sharing on the Internet.

According to Dan Gillmor, "Google co-founder Sergey Brin said there were no plans to segregate weblog content from the main search engine results."

From AP: Pentagon readies massive spy system, "To thwart terrorists, the Pentagon is developing a computer surveillance system that would give U.S. agents fingertip access to government and commercial records from around the world that could fill the Library of Congress more than 50 times."

Today's Wall Street Journal article, Data Collection Is Up Sharply Following 9/11 (subscription req'd), documents examples of the rapid acceleration and increasing sophistication of text mining programs created by private contractors to populate huge, searchable database systems. Used on both a state and federal level, these systems, which are increasingly linked via network applications, are resulting in heightened surveillance of Americans citizens across many aspects of our daily activities.

The EFF reports that on May 21, Colorado Governor Bill Owens vetoed House Bill 1303, the so called Super DMCA legislation for which the Motion Picture Association provided the draft model language used in state legislatures throughout the country.

Mark Stamp provides a thorough, enlightening commentary on DRM, examining applications, value and the associated controversy on the topic as it impacts commercial and consumer users in the areas of privacy and copyright.

The USA Today reported on the status of Oregon House Bill 3101 which would eliminate state funding for libraries that refuse to install net filters for public access use of the Internet. Apparently "legislative counsel said it (the bill) is unconstitutional," placing at least a temporary hold on this legislative initiative.

Today the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, & Transportation held a hearing on Spam (Unsolicited Commercial E-Mail). "Description: Members will hear testimony relating to potential legislative, technical, and other approaches to curtailing unwanted spam. Senator McCain will preside." The committee provides the full-text of available testimony via this main link.

See also, Microsoft Proposes Law on Junk E-Mail, Spammer Urges Congress to Pass Anti-Spam Law, and Gates Sends Letter on Spam to Congress.

On May 20, the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), submitted to Congress, as required by the Technology, Education, and Copyright Harmonization Act of 2002, its report, Technological Protection Systems for Digitized Copyrighted Works (pdf).

On May 20, the Subcommittee on Courts, the Internet, and Intellectual Property conducted a markup of H.R. 1417, the "Copyright Royalty and Distribution Reform Act of 2003."

See also the following statements on CARP made before the Subcommittee on Courts, the Internet, and Intellectual Property Committee on the Judiciary, April 1, 2003

Miriam Drake, Professor Emerita, Library, Georgia Institute of Technology has published part one of a two part article, Government Doublethink: Protection or Supression in Information, in which she reviews and addresses government efforts, through regulation and policy initiatives, to remove a range of documents from the public arena based on national security concerns.

From the FTC press release: Prepared Statement of the Federal Trade Commission on The Fair Credit Reporting Act, Presented by J. Howard Beales, III, Director, Bureau of Consumer Protection, Before the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, United States Senate: Text of Commission Testimony [PDF 64KB].

From a May 20 Judiciary Committee news advisory: "House Judiciary Committee Chairman F. James Sensenbrenner, Jr. (R-Wis.) and Ranking Member John Conyers, Jr. (D-Mich.) released the answers received last week from the Justice Department regarding the USA PATRIOT Act and the war on terrorism. Chairman Sensenbrenner and Rep. Conyers wrote Attorney General John Ashcroft on April 1, 2003 requesting information on these issues."

Also from the Judiciary Committee, links to the following documents from the May 19 oversight hearing, "Anti-Terrorism Investigations and the Fourth Amendment After September 11: Where and When Can the Government Go to Prevent Terrorist Attacks?"

Noah Shachtman's Wired article reveals plans for a huge new database project, purportedly under development, called LifeLog (from DARPA, sponsors of the Total Information Awareness System, renamed the Terrorism Awareness Information Program), comprised of information compiled "by tracking where people go and what they see."

In an associated reference, on May 16 I posted information on a sweeping UK data mining program which bears distinct similarities to the proposed LifeLog program.

The NSA has proposed a FOIA exemption for "files that document the means by which foreign intelligence or counterintelligence is collected through technical systems." Also via FAS, see the text of the proposed exemption, the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2004, S. 747.

From OMBWatch, "The Senate language, included in the proposed FY 2004 Defense Authorization Act (S. 1050, sec. 1035), would exempt all "operational files" of the NSA from public disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). "

Big news day concerning DARPA's Total Information Awareness Program, which according to this press release, is now called the Terrorism Awareness Information Program. This change coincides with the agency's report to Congress delivered today, with links to associated documents as follows:

And from the spin cycle, see these related news articles: Pentagon Tries To Reassure Congress On Surveillance Program; TIA report addresses privacy concerns; Congress urged to watch privacy; and Military Says Computer Dragnet to Include Limits.

From Thomas R. Bruce, Co-Director, Legal Information Institute, Cornell Law School:

"As part of some extensive (and ongoing) renovation of our Supreme Court collection, we've added RSS feeds that offer summaries of recent decisions. There are two: http://supct.law.cornell.edu:8080/supct/rss/0.91/supct_today.rss
Actually the less-useful of the two feeds, this one takes in decisions handed down "today" (that is, in the midnight-to-midnight period we're currently in).

It's empty much of the time, but is intended as the basis for a notification system - http://supct.law.cornell.edu:8080/supct/rss/0.91/supct_recent.rss
This offers recent decisions of the Court. "Recent" is defined somewhat differently depending on whether the Court is in session or not; this may sound a little complex, but it amounts to what most people would expect anyway. During the period from July 1 (when the Court goes away for the summer) until the first decision is handed down in the new fall term (after October 1), the feed shows the decisions from the previous June. At all other times -- that is, when the Court is sitting -- it shows any decisions from the 30 days just past. Given past patterns of behavior by the Court, I am guessing that this may result in a few spots during the late Fall and in early January when the feed is empty, but perhaps not. Both feeds are updated within minutes of decisions being handed down by the Court."

Released yesterday, an "itemized database of approximately 43,000 Einstein and Einstein-related archival items: writings, professional & personal correspondence, and digitized manuscripts of his scientific writings, non-scientific writing, travel diaries." See http://www.alberteinstein.info/

"The city Department of Consumer Affairs has begun posting decisions on consumer protection and licensing issues at www.citylaw.org, the Web site of New York Law School's Center for New York City Law. More than 600 administrative law judges’ decisions, from January 2003 to the present, are available on the site, and the department plans to add more on a monthly basis." This information is from Crain's New York Business.

Fact Sheet, Operation E-Con: Cracking Down on Internet Crime, released by the DOJ on May 16, 2003. "Since its inception, Operation E-Con has conducted over 90 investigations involving 89,000 victims and estimated losses of more than $176 million....To date Operation E-Con has executed over 70 search and seizure warrants that have led to 130 arrests and convictions and over $17 million in seizures and recoveries."

From the American Libraries Association (ALA) DMCA Section 1201 Anti-Circumvention Rule site: "On May 9, the U.S. Copyright Office concluded a round of hearings in Washington, D.C. pursuant to its rulemaking, under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 (DMCA), to determine potential exemptions to the Section 1201 prohibition on circumvention of technological measures that control access to copyrighted works. The five major U.S. library associations were represented at three of the Washington hearings by their outside counsel, Jonathan Band, of Morrison & Foerster, who testified in support of several exemptions that the libraries have requested through the written comments submitted to the Copyright Office."

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), joined by "45 organizations (including the American Library Association) - 27 consumer and privacy groups and 18 ISPs and ISP associations," filed a 35 page brief (pdf) on May 16 with the U.S. Court of Appeals, D.C. Circuit, suporting Verizon's continued refusal to reveal the name of a customer who used the ISP to distribute music via a file sharing application, as demanded by the RIAA.

From the International Association of Law Libraries, this calendar of upcoming events provides links to topical CLE programs around the world for law librarians/info professionals and attorneys that will take place in 2003-2007, as well as links to past events from 2002. The site is maintained by Lyonette Louis-Jacques, Foreign and International Law Librarian and Lecturer in Law, D’Angelo Law Library, the University of Chicago Law School.

Geoffrey Nunberg, senior researcher at the Center for the Study of Language and Information at Stanford University, is the author of this new article, As Google Goes, So Goes the Nation. Also see Getting It Right: Verifying Sources on the Net.

From InfoWorld, a review of an open source anti-spam application that may be useful to a wide user community. "SpamBayes knows spam - Outlook add-in really works to block spam, and it's free." For more information, see the SpamBayes website, and this technical background document.

Officials Who Failed to Put Hijackers on Watch List Not Named. "Seven months after telling Congress he would do so, George J. Tenet, the director of central intelligence, has yet to provide the names of agency officials responsible for one of the most glaring intelligence mistakes leading up to the attacks of Sept. 11, according to Congressional and agency officials. Soon after the attacks, the mistake emerged, showing that the Central Intelligence Agency had waited 20 months before placing on a federal watch list two suspected terrorists who wound up as hijackers." See also Post-11 Watch-List Acquires Life of Its Own.

The ACLU published a report on May 16, Total Information Compliance: The TIA's Burden Under the Wyden Amendment, in anticipation of the required release to Congress tomorrow of a DARPA report detailing the the program's data mining technology applications, the impact on citizen privacy, and overall project spending.

From the New York Times, Big Brother Is Tracking You. Without a Warrant. "But as cameras (from commercial imaging satellites) take ever-closer aim at domestic targets, the legal, political and ethical issues remain unresolved." This article also references, Body of Secrets: Anatomy of the Ultra-Secret National Security Agency.

From Seth Finkelstein's Infothought blog, this informative posting on Internet software filtering company N2H2's current 10Q filing which includes the following language: "Free speech and privacy concerns could adversely affect the demand for our Internet filtering solutions."

On a related issue, see my April 10 posting: U.S. District Judge Richard G. Stearns (MA) dismissed a lawsuit by the ACLU on behalf of Harvard law student and cyber-activist Ben Edelman who argued a first amendment right to create software to decrypt an Internet blocking program by N2H2.

Tara Calishain of Research Buzz fame authored a new book, Google Hacks: 100 Industrial-Strength Tips & Tools.

Penn State President Graham Spanier has assumed a high-profile role in attempting to broker an agreement in the escalating battle over student use of networked file sharing applications and the increasingly aggressive entertainment industry response to pursue, identify and punish individuals who they believe are engaged in digital piracy. Mr. Spainer has apparently suggested that the issue could be mitigated by the payment of a yearly downloading fee to the recording industry.

From Microdac News, several recommendations for directories and glossaries of search engine terms, including Search Engine Directory (free) and the Search Engine Yearbook ($$).

From the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), this new survey (abstract only available free), Use of the Internet and E-mail for Health Care Information concludes that "Although many people use the Internet for health information, use is not as common as is sometimes reported."

On May 15, the Committee on Government Reform held a hearing titled "Overexposed: The Threats to Privacy and Security on File Sharing Networks." Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT) Associate Director Alan Davidson's testimony presented a two-pronged position - privacy and digital rights: "A broad public education effort and better software practices are needed in order to inform people about the risks of file sharing while preserving the benefits of this valuable technology."

Also see Peer-To-Peer Systems Can Create Privacy Risks for more information.

From this month's InfoToday 2003, a pdf handout, "Knowledge Management at the Library," from the Northern Suburban Library System, a "consortium of over 650 academic, public, school, and special libraries" in Illinois.

From Privacy International's Know Your Data Campaign:

"Many of the companies that supply Britain’s communications services – the landline services, cable companies, mobile operators and Internet Service Providers – are accumulating a vast amount of personal information about their customers. This "communications data", which is currently stored for up to seven years, may relate to all the calls you have made and that you received, who you are in contact with, the geographic location of your mobile calls, the emails you have sent and which you received, the websites you have visited, the television programmes you have watched, personal financial data and other personal information about you and your family. Combined, this extraordinary array of data creates a comprehensive dossier on the contacts, friendships, interests, transactions, movements and personal information of almost everyone in the UK."

See also the Foundation for Information Policy Research website, Scrambling for Safety 6, for links to related government and public interest documents. In addition, also see this article, UK gov seizes data on 100m calls, 1m users, a year.

"The Department of Commerce's United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) is the first federal agency to fully comply with the provisions of Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, as amended, requiring that all federal agencies' electronic information is accessible to people with disabilities and is comparable to the information and access provided to those without disabilities."

U.S. District Court Judge Susan Illston, Northern District of California, in a hearing of 321 Studios v. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios (C-02-1955.e), is reported to be substantially persuaded in favor of copyright holders as she considers whether it is fair use for consumers to continue to purchase and use a $50 (after rebate) DVD duplication software application which the movie industry contends circumvents the DMCA and should be banned. See my previous post on 321 Studios, and this Reuters article on new industry lawsuits against five more companies that market DVD copying software.

Promoting Innovation to Prevent the Internet from Becoming a Wasteland. "Markle Foundation President Zoë Baird joins two dozen prominent attorneys, public officials, journalists, industry leaders, public interest advocates, and academics in examining the state of communications policy and media output more than four decades after Minow's celebrated speech."

Staff Manager's Issues Report on Privacy Issues Related to Whois (13 May 2003).

The FTC issued a press release today announcing the filing of 45 criminal and civil actions (state and federal) in conjunction with the SEC, the Postal Service and other state law enforcement agencies, in an aggressive and wide ranging campaign against "Internet scammers and deceptive spammers." Links are provided to the full-text copies of the eight lawsuits filed in district courts, and descriptions are provided concerning the specific scams.

EPIC published an FBI memorandum (pdf) the organization obtained via a FOIA lawsuit that details how commercial database services are used in accordance with DOJ guidelines to facilitate data mining and "intelligence investigations."

From Thinkers to Clickers: The World Wide Web and the Transformation of the Essence of Being Human, by M.O. Thirunarayanan, associate professor, Florida International University in Miami). "The growing popularity of the World Wide Web is slowly but surely transforming the lives of human beings who are beginning to make the sad transition from being thinkers to becoming clickers."

Blawg Search, in beta, allowers users to view and search postings (listed as "top stories" and "new stories") from 68 (as of this afternoon) legal blogs, including beSpacific. The site also indicates when the page was refreshed. With cookies activated, users may list preferences for content that includes number of results, sorting results by relevance or date, and time period.

Tom O'Connor writes about the release of a new e-filing application that is a joint venture between Microsoft and BearingPoint Inc. (formerly KPMG). The service is currently being tested under contract with the state of Texas, and is based on the open-source LegalXML standard.

From the French company indicateur.com, a searchable directory called Google'World, "To find easily and quickly any type of information about the world according to Google." See this review for more information.

PCWorld reports on a scam used against Bank of America customers which lured them via an unauthorized e-mail message to a fake site used to capture their personal data. The article also references a site that collects links to fake banks and examples of bank scam e-mails from around the world, called Scam o Rama.

From FAS Congressional Watch, Members Say Pentagon "Transformation" Involves Unprecedented Exemptions from Oversight, letter from Reps. Waxman, Skelton, Obey and Spratt, May 13.

"As ranking members of committees charged with overseeing the Department of Defense (DOD), we are writing to raise serious objections to the Department's legislative "transformation" proposal, also known as the Defense Transformation for the 21st Century Act of 2003 (pdf). The Pentagon submitted this 200-page proposal to Congress on April 11. This proposal would impede Congress' oversight abilities in numerous ways."

This interesting article from ComputerWorld, Blogs play a role in homeland security, talks about an enterprise blog software application that has been deployed by the Western States Information Network (WSIN), within the Oregon Criminal Justice Division, for law enforcement related efforts on terrorism and drugs.

In addition, the article also mentions how bTrade Inc. is leveraging blogging in their marketing operation.

Overview of State Accessibility Laws, Policies, Standards and Other Resources Available On-line, updated April 2003, "provides an overview of the states that have published on-line their laws, policies, standards or guidelines, and other resources related to accessibility of websites, application development, IT procurement, and public hardware (i.e., the core areas)." The sponsor is the Information Technology and Technical Assistance Training Center at the Georgia Institute of Technology.

From the HHS Office on Civil Rights, this comprehensive resource, Medical Privacy - National Standards to Protect the Privacy of Personal Health Information, includes documentation for consumers, general background information, HIPAA regulations & standards, compliance & enforcement, educational materials, and HIPAA-related links.

SearchDay has a review of a new book, Building & Running a Successful Research Business, by Mary Ellen Bates.

How Regional Is Google News? documents the sources and overlapping content as well as accompanying photos provided on the newly released Google international news services for Canada, the UK, India and New Zealand. And not that this should come as a surprise, but in related news, Search engine ratings: Google 55.2 percent global usage share according to OneStat.com.

From the IEEE International Conference on Information Technology: Computers and Communications, which took place April 28-30, this link to the abstract (full-text available for purchase) of The Effects of Search Engines and Query Operators on Top Ranked Results, in which the authors "examine whether the use of query operators changes the documents retrieved by three popular Web search engines."

Via Internet Law Blog, this "table listing the monetary awards that companies have received because they were either victorious in an IP infringement lawsuit, or they negotiated deal in the absense/presence of a infringement lawsuit, or related technology litigation such as antitrust," by Gregeory Aharonian. The chart organizes the information according to the following categories: Amount, Year, Parties, Legal Action, Technology, and Reference. The date range for the cases is 1969 to present.

"Senator Charles E. Schumer today urged the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to issue a consumer advisory alert, warning all consumers to be wary of products advertised through the unsolicited commercial e-mail known as spam." See the press release here.

From afterdawn.com, "A federal appeals court has extended the 14-day deadline for Verizon to give up its subscriber's personal details to RIAA. The 14-day limit was set by a district court at the end of April." See my previous posting, Verizon Must Identify Customer In Privacy Case.

Cybercrime's Scope: Interpreting "Access" and "Authorization" in Computer Misuse Statutes, links you to the abstract and here is the link to download the entire paper (pdf), by Orin S. Kerr, George Washington University - Law School. From the abstract: "In the last twenty-five years, the federal government and all fifty states have enacted new criminal laws that prohibit unauthorized access to computers. ...This Article presents a comprehensive inquiry into the meaning of unauthorized access statutes."

The GSA Office of Intergovernmental Solutions just released a study, High Payoff in Electric Government Report, from its Intergovernmental Advisory Board. Major areas identified as exemplifying the success of such initiatives include: "serving constituents, reducing operating costs, consolidating operations and promoting local/regional features."

Law Provides Needed Tools, by Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT), member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Op-ed column from May 12 USA Today.

The scale, scope and challenges inherent in the successful implementation of large-scale e-gov initiatives is well defined by this article, NASA rethinks Web site approach, which states that "the agency has more than 3,000 Web sites hosting 4 million pages of information," which it is now working to make accessible via the main website.

From Spamabuse.net, this link to spam e-mail blocking and filtering applications/services (free and commercial) available to Windows, Mac and Linux users.

The Institute for Government Innovation at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government announced the five winners of their prestigious Innovations in American Government Awards. Referred to as the 'Oscar' for government sites, FirstGov is among this year's distinguished list.

From the Washington Times, Hill assumes oversight role on airline screening: "Congress has given itself special oversight authority to track a new airline screening process criticized by some lawmakers as an infringement on privacy and civil liberties." This article refers to the enrolled version of S. 165 (pdf), an act to improve air cargo security, which passed the Senate on May 8. Senator Wyden had added a provision requiring the Department of Homeland Security to issue a written report to Congress on the impact of CAPPS II on citizen privacy and civil liberties.

On May 8, Senate Select Intelligence Committee Chairman Pat Roberts introduced S. 1025: "An original bill to authorize appropriations for fiscal year 2004 for intelligence and intelligence-related activities of the United States Government, the Community Management Account, and the Central Intelligence Agency Retirement and Disability System, and for other purposes." See also the accompanying report No. 108-44.

See Google Branches Out Again with Overseas News, Google News comes to UK, and via Research Buzz, with cascading attribution as follows:

"A tip of the hat to Microdoc for announcing that Google's got a new international version of their news search at http://news.google.com.au. (The Microdoc story is at http://tinyurl.com/bj8y) A tip of the hat to MFagan, who found additional international news sites at http://news.google.ca/ (Canada) and http://news.google.co.nz/ (New Zealand). (See the Webmaster World discussion at http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum3/12870.htm). And a tip of the hat to me for finding the one for the UK (http://news.google.co.uk/). There's also one for India; see http://news.google.com/india."

This New York Times article, Library's robot is a real page-turner, available via the International Herald Tribune, describes a fascinating, ambitious, costly, technically challenging and also interesting from the perspective of fair use, project underway at the Stanford University Libraries. Using a robotic book scanner from 4DigitalBooks™, the libraries are undertaking projects to digitize their bound materials, but are also working on unbound materials as well. For more details, see this May 7 report from Stanford (pdf) - Robotic Book Scanning at the Stanford University Libraries and Academic Information Resources: Report on the Status of Digitization Facilities and Services for Bound Library Materials. In addition, here is a link to a November 26, 2001 article from the Wall Street Journal Europe on this digital robot.

A new 28 page ACLU report (pdf), Freedom Under Fire: Dissent in Post-9/11 America, documents instances of "censorship, surveillance, detention, denial of due process and excessive force" on the part of the government. See the press release here.

Two new articles of note from the May 2003 issue of First Monday: Creating the Digital Future by Robert T. Coonrod, President and CEO of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), and What is a library anymore, anyway?

The Federal Trade Commission’s Bureau of Consumer Protection announced its sponsorship of new workshops on "Technologies for Protecting Personal Information" to be held on May 14 and June 4, 2003. "The workshops are intended to explore the role of technology in helping consumers and businesses to protect consumer information." The agenda for the May 14 workshop is available here.

Although I already posted a link to this article on May 7, Google CEO Has No Near Term Plans for IPO, I did not pick-up on a statement highlighted by The Register in an article posted today. Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt stated: "Soon the company will also offer a service for searching Web logs, known as "blogs."

The House Committee on Financial Services, Subcommittee on Financial Institutions and Consumer Credit, held a hearing on May 8, The Importance of the National Credit Reporting System to Consumers and the U.S. Economy. See this link for full-text access to the opening statements of Representative Carolyn Maloney and Representative Rubén Hinojosa, as well as testimony from seven individuals presenting government, academic and lobbying/advocacy positions related to reauthorization of the Fair Credit Reporting Act. In addition, here is a link to the testimony of Wayne A. Abernathy, Assistant Secretary for Financial Institutions, U.S. Department of the Treasury.

On May 8, the Senate passed, 90 - 4, S. 113, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance bill "to amend the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 (FISA) to cover individuals, other than United States persons, who engage in international terrorism without affiliation with an international terrorist group."

See the text of the floor debate from the Congressional Record, via the terrific Federation of Amerian Scientists site (FAS) here. In addition, FAS has posted other important related resources as follows:

Keith Berkland, applications development manager for Dickstein Shapiro Morin & Oshinsky LLP, has been a pioneer in the implementation and support of enterprise-wide KM solutions for the firm. See this KM World article for details about his work.

From Duke University School of Law, the Winter/Spring 2003 issue of Law & Contemporary Problems has 13 full-text articles on public domain issues, including Mapping the Digital Public Domain: Threats and Opportunities and Reconciling What the First Amendment Forbids with what the Copyright Clause Permits: A Summary Explanation and Review. The articles and essays in the issue result from the Conference on the Public Domain, Duke Law School, November 9—11, 2001.

Several sources have recently reported on the White House refusal to release data and related sources on events that led up to the 9/11 attacks which comprise a 800-plus page Congressional study completed last December. Reasons for the unwillingess to provide the public with access to the currently 'secret' report range from the need to maintain national security to aversion to potential public hearings.

A.B. No. 68, the Online Privacy Protection Act of 2003, was amended in Assembly on April 28 and passed by the Committee on Business and Professions on May 7. The bill "requires an operator of a commercial website that collects personally identifiable information about individuals visiting its website or online service, who are located in California, to conspicuously post its privacy policy on the website."

Roll Call has an article, GAO Seeks New Name, Image (subscription required), in the print and online versions, in which David M. Walker, the Comptroller General of the United States states he "wants to change the name of Congress' investigative arm to Government Accountability Office, saying the current name doesn't fit its job description. The new name would "better reflect what we do and who we are..."

The Center for Digitial Government has published a new 26 page report in pdf, Digitial Cities 2002, Best of Breed Programs, that spotlights 11 specific projects undertaken by cities throughout the country to deliver a diverse range of specific enhanced digital solutions and services to government employees and citizens.

Comments of Charles E. Parker, Chair of The American Library Association's E-rate Task Force, before the Federal Communications Commission Public Forum on Improving Administration of the E-rate Program, May 8th, 2003.

See the FCC press release here, and Fraud, waste in school Internet program, from CNN, as well as Schools, Libraries Call for More E-Rate Reforms.

This commentary, Search Engines Make Us Dumb, no doubt reflects the perspective of many seasoned online (pre-Web) researchers. There is a steadily growing reliance, among consumers and professionals in many communities, on search engines (or just Google for that matter) as the penultimate tool to search, locate, and analyze data which is then disseminated as the answer to a specified query.

According to the article's author: "We, not search engines, have the ability to search, i.e. to contextualise entities, to perceive and react to an innate taxonomy of our natural language, to rank according to a variety of intangible criteria."

Pentagon Library Back Home After Difficult Journey. The Pentagon Library, which sustained significant damage during the 9/11 attack, finally returned from temporary quarters to a new facility within the Pentagon itself. Best wishes to all the librarians whose long-term efforts and commitment contributed to the re-opening.

Judge Thomas W. Thrash Jr., U.S. District Court, Northern District of Georgia, granted EarthLink an injunction and a $16.4 million judgment against Howard Carmack, who engaged in ID theft and fraud to deliver over 800 million spam e-mails last year via the hundreds of accounts he established with the ISP. How much EarthLink can expect to collect....nil.

For reference, see the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act of 1986, 18 USC 1030.

In a related update, see this May 14 article from News.com, 'Buffalo Spammer' nabbed in New York which says that "New York state authorities have arrested the e-mail marketer "Buffalo Spammer," in the state's first criminal case against a junk mailer."

Nothing new here, but nevertheless worth noting that Time.com has an article, Checking What You Check Out, on opposition to the Patriot Act by librarians across the country. See also my topical resource on the issue here.

Also note this posting from the Volokh Conspiracy that states the Time article erroneously interprets Section 215 of the Patriot Act.

The newly redesigned District of Columbia portal has implemented JeevesOne's natural language search. See also this FCW review of the site's new features, cost and user community.

H.R. 21, the Unlawful Internet Gambling Funding Prohibition Act, sponsored by Rep. Jim Leach (R-Iowa), was passed by the House Committee on Financial Services yesterday.

See also Hearing on Proposals to Regulate Illegal Internet Gambling, Senate Banking Committee, March 18, 2003, and GAO-03-89 Report, December 20, 2002, Internet Gambling, An Overview of the Issues.

The FirstGov portal has undergone its third redesign since the site's introduction September 2000, although the new lingo according to this press release (thanks Tara) is that the site has been 'refreshed.' From the release: "The new refreshed site allows users to go straight into a Citizen Gateway, which provides easy access to government services and information from federal agencies and state and local governments. Those wanting information for use in business can click onto the Business and Non-Profits Gateway. Likewise, federal employees have their own gateway -- Federal Employees-- as do governments -- Government-to-Government."

Ohio State University (OSU) has shut-down dormitory-based computers running a network used to share music files with 3,000 students. The students were using a legal P2P file sharing application called Direct Connect. From the OSU student newspaper, the Latern, Raid pulls plug on illegal network, which states, "A group consisting of a computer crime specialist, a detective and a university police officer went to each four residence hall rooms Monday night - armed with search warrants - looking for the evidence."

Via Metafilter, news that New York's Mayor Bloomberg was behind the launch of the newly designed MyNYC.gov Portal. This well crafted site provides updated news banner headlines about issues including public health and transportation, a quick search engine to locate city services and facilities, straight-forward links to the Mayor's office, agency services, elected officials, live traffic cameras, and news about the city. Good job!

According to this resource, "In 1961, Congress designated May 1 as Law Day, a time for Americans to reflect on the rule of law in a constitutional republic." I missed the exact date on this one, but nevertheless thought it worth mentioning. Here is the link to Law Day, U.S.A., 2003, By the President of the United States of America A Proclamation: "NOW, THEREFORE, I, GEORGE W. BUSH, President of the United States of America, in accordance with Public Law 87-20, as amended, do hereby proclaim May 1, 2003, as Law Day, U.S.A. I call upon all the people of the United States to observe this day with appropriate ceremonies and activities." See also this ABA link.

Here is a recent review of the Librarian's Internet Survival Guide: Strategies for the High-Tech Reference Desk by Irene E. McDermott (reference librarian/systems manager at the San Marino Public Library in California).

Google: An engine of change; Inside Google; Google CEO Has No Near Term Plans for IPO; and All Eyes on Google.

From the May 5 USA Today (reg. req'd), an interesting article provides some background about and carefully crafted "no comments" from the three of the four students who settled file-sharing infringement cases with the RIAA. In related news from the same paper, see also Piracy has its hooks in. This article details the win/lose scenarios of various anti-piracy efforts undertaken to date by the entertainment industry, and points out the the need for new business models as well as consumer acknowledgement of the invariable consequences of the fee vs. free battle.

European Digital Rights (EDRi), a non-profit coalition of privacy/advocacy groups based in Brussels, launched a campaign against the transfer of European travellers' Passenger Name Records (PNR) to U.S. Customs. See the following related documents:

California Assembly Bill 1143, as amended April 30, "would establish new procedures for the production by an Internet service provider or online community host of identifying information regarding a consumer.." The bill is now under consideration by the Committee on Judiciary.

Canadian Privacy Law Deadline Approaching: "Beginning Jan. 1, 2004, all companies that collect, use or disclose personal information about Canadian citizens during the course of commercial activities will have to comply with Canada's Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act."

From Steven Aftergood, May 6 Secrecy News (from the FAS Project on Government Secrecy): "The total amount of intelligence spending for 2002 should be declassified over the objections of the Central Intelligence Agency, a federal court was told May 5 in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit sponsored by the Federation of American Scientists."

See FAS FOIA Lawsuit for Disclosure of 2002 Intelligence Budget Total, Steven Aftergood v. Central Intelligence Agency, Case No. 02-1146 (RMU), D.C. District Court.

"TexasLawHelp.org is a project of the Texas Access to Justice Commission and the Texas Equal Access to Justice Foundation, in partnership with participating legal aid organizations." Users may locate information according to county or zip code, and services are provided on issues that include: civil rights, disability, health, immigration, employment and housing. From the site's description:

From the National Security Archive: "The proposed FY 2004 Defense Authorization Act (S. 747) would throw a cloak of secrecy over valuable National Security Agency ("NSA") records now released under the Freedom of Information Act, including important historical records on the use of signals intelligence and cryptology in U.S. defense history."

For related information, see NSA's FOIA/PA Home Page Freedom of Information Act/Privacy Act website.

Homeland Security Privacy Suit Dismissed: "U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly earlier this week signed a dismissal agreement between the Justice Department and the Washington-based Electronic Privacy Information Center, which had sought records about the office's activities."

According to this article, Bradley University has joined over 200 other universities participating in the ultra-high speed broadband Internet2 consortium. This project is a collaboration between academia, government and industry, and not available to the public. According to Jeff Huberman, dean of Bradley's communications school, "Boundaries become irrelevant with Internet2. It's an entirely different playing field." Does Internet2 raise the prospect of an expanded battleground over P2P file-sharing on campuses?

The May 1, 2003 edition of the Subject Index to Literature on Electronic Sources of Information, by Marian Dworaczek, is now available. It "deals with all aspects of electronic publishing and include print and non-print materials, periodical articles, monographs and individual chapters in collected works. This edition includes over 1,500 indexed titles and is updated continuously." The site has no search engine, and information is arranged alphabetically.

See these two articles, one free and the other from the New York Times ($$), that discuss how a user community "unintentionally left out of the so-called digital revolution has been the severely disabled."

Contrary to the EU Data Protection Directive (pdf), a recent study determined that approximately 44% of European websites surveyed lack required privacy protection policies. The results indicated the greatest complaince was evidenced by UK sites and the worst by French sites.

The entertainment industry is working with software developers, such as Overpeer Inc., to create applications that will thwart P2P filing services and networks. Although such efforts pre-date the recent decision in favor of filing sharing companies Grokster and Morpheus, the focus on a software solution appears to have a renewed purpose and impetus. According to Overpeer's CEO Marc Morgenstern, "We intervene on behalf of our clients to protect their content from piracy."

See also, Heading off film piracy - Movie trade group staying one step ahead in lobbying efforts.

Point: The Truth About The Peer to Peer Privacy Prevention Act, by Rep. Howard L. Berman. "In July, three colleagues and I introduced H.R. 5211, the Peer to Peer Piracy Prevention Act. The bill ensures that copyright owners won't face liability for using reasonable, limited self-help to prevent the theft of their works on peer-to-peer (P2P) networks."

Counterpoint: How the Motion Picture and Recording Industries are Losing the Copyright War by Fighting Misdirected Battles, by Peter K. Yu.

Marylaine Block reviews a new book by Mary Minow and Tomas A. Lipinski which focuses on the many legal issues that confront today's libraries, including the Patriot Act, fair use, web filtering, censorship and web site accessibility. The Library's Legal Answer Book is targeted at the public library community, but this work by two expert lawyer/librarian authors, complete with extensive legal citations, will no doubt be of interest to special and law libraries as well.

On April 23, the Florida House passed HB 415: Relating to Internet Access in County and Municipal Libraries. The related Senate Bill, CS/SB 1250: Relating to Public Libraries/Computers has been referred to the Criminal Justice Committee.

Creating a Unified Digital Campus to Satisfy the Needs of 21st Century Learners:.."institutions must strive to unify all of their disparate technology applications and systems into a single digital campus." From the Michigan Virtual University.

See Search Engines by Search Features by Greg Notess for a useful comparison of search engines according to their specific features (Boolean Capabilities and Constraints, Proximity, Truncation & Stemming, Case Sensitivity, Field searching, Limits and more).

"The U.S. Public Policy Committee of the Association for Computing Machinery sent a letter to the Director of the Office of Management and Budget offering comment on their work to develop privacy guidelines for e-communications between government agencies and the public." From the letter: "In particular, we are offering comments on the development of public web site privacy practices that utilize standardized machine-readable format protocols."

Knowledge in a Click! by Robert J. Ambrogi references a number of websites and portals focused on KM applications related to or specific to the legal environment.

The recording industry agreed to settlements of the copyright infringement lawsuits, filed separately against four college students on April 3, in federal courts in New York, Michigan and New Jersey.

According to AP, the fines are as follows: "Princeton University student Daniel Peng and Michigan Tech student Joseph Nievelt each agreed to pay $15,000 in damages to the RIAA. At Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Rochester, N.Y., student Jesse Jordan agreed to pay $12,000, and fellow Rensselaer student Aaron Sherman agreed to pay $17,500." Payment will take place on an installment plan over the next three years, none of the students admitted guilt to the allegations, but they have agreed not to engage in any future on-campus networked file sharing activities.

The spin on the settlements and related details are available through various sources:

Andrew Adkins, director of the Legal Technology Institute at the University of Florida, is the author of
Knowledge Management: Simple Concept, Difficult Reality (reg req'd). He describes what he terms the "big six" pieces of KM software as well as recommended guidelines to launch and implement a successful KM program.

The Chronicle of Higher Education reports that the New Jersey Institute of Technology "has banned the use of file-sharing programs on the institute's network." Efforts to educate the community about the consequences of using P2P applications did not result in changes in behavior, according to the Dean of Students. Is this the beginning of a trend to ban such activities on college campuses throughout the country?

WHO WAS, WHOIS, AND WHO WILL BE: Domain Name Ownership Research Tools by Mark Goldstein.

The Center for Information Technology and Dispute Resolution and the Markle Foundation have announced the launch of the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy Database, which "provides Internet users worldwide with free access to precedents regarding disputes over Web addresses, giving parties the tools necessary to better prepare for Web-based cases than ever before. The database will be updated on an ongoing basis, making it the most complete resource available." Current Decisions in Database: 5005. Domain names: 8409.

Via the FAS Project on Government Secrecy, news that Attorney General Ashcroft has submitted a report "pursuant to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978, Title 50, United States Code, Section 1807, as amended," as acknowledged in this letter. The letter states, "1228 applications were made to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court for electronic surveillance and physical search. The Court initially approved 1226 applications in 2002."

In related news, see this article, A Recent Judicial Reprimand of Attorney General Ashcroft Exposes a Pattern of Gag Order and Ethics Violations By His Office, and this AP article.

Why Blogs Haven't Stormed the Business World is a commentary on the inherent impediments to implementing enterprise-wide blogging tools due to issues such as application interoperability, the volume of data involved, and the hierarchy used for information storage.

From Eyeteeth, this interview with professor and author Siva Vaidhyanathan, whose books include The Anarchist in the Library, which details the impact of peer-to-peer networks on the dissemination of information, and Copyrights and Copywrongs: The Rise of Intellectual Property and How It Threatens Creativity.

His comments about libraries and the Patriot Act include the following: "What we’re doing though is making librarians choose among their values. Librarians believe very strongly in recordkeeping and in maintaining archives. It’s part of the historical record; that’s half of what they do. But the other half of what they do is serve and protect their patrons. The federal government has made librarians choose between retaining records that might be useful, for instance in budgetary discussions not to mention historical research, and protecting their patrons, so their patrons don’t feel intimidated by the books they choose to read or by the potential of oversight of the books they choose to read. There are a lot of librarians around the country right now who are taking a very noble and strong stand against this situation, and I think we need to celebrate them and support them in this effort."

The majority of states attorneys general expressed their opposition to federal anti-spam legislation during the course of the FTC's three-day Spam Forum currently underway in Washington, D.C. "The states are concerned because both proposals (on the federal level - the CAN SPAM Act and the REDUCE Spam Act) would supersede any state laws, even if those state laws are stronger, said Washington Attorney General Christine Gregoire. Some state laws, for example, allow people to sue spammers. That right would vanish, the attorneys general said if some of the legislation Congress is now considering became law."

See also these related articles: Experts: Spam Volume Threatening E-Mail's Future, and Spam Solutions Hard to Find, and Business Users Offer Clear Definition of Spam and Overwhelmingly Support New Anti-Spam Bill in Congress. In addition, please see the text of Senator Charles E. Schumer's (NY) speech to the Spam Forum here.

This statement now appears on the United Press International (UPI) site: "Thank you for coming to the UPI Web site. With the exception of selected articles, our content is no longer available for public view. For subscription inquiries, please contact the UPI sales staff."

The RIAA launched yet another new anti-piracy campaign, this time using instant messaging (IM), to communicate with millions of individual users it has identified as sharing music files using KaZaA and Grokster. According to the Chronicle of Higher Education, the target group, college students, will be contacted in an "educational outreach effort" which also includes an explicit warning to discontinue file-sharing activities. From the text of the RIAA message: "When you break the law, you risk legal penalties. There is a simple way to avoid that risk: DON'T STEAL MUSIC, either by offering it to others to copy or downloading it on a "file-sharing" system like this. When you offer music on these systems, you are not anonymous and you can easily be identified."

The screen shots of the RIAA message are here and here.