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The next Copyright Office orphan works session is this Tuesday at UC Berkeley. I'm planning on attending - introduce yourself to me if you're a blogger (or bloggee).
http://www.copyright.gov/orphan/
Berkeley, California
Tuesday, August 2, 2005
Boalt Hall School of Law, University of California - Berkeley, Goldberg Room
9:00 AM - 5:00 PM P.D.T
First, I have to tell you I am at 35000 feet above Baffin Island in a Scandinavian Airlines Airbus that offers Internet access. $9.95 for an hour or $29.95 for the full flight (10 hours for me). I had to try it out, even tho I've been knocked off twice already. Everyone around me is watching her own movie or killing space invaders. Not like the US planes I've been on at all.
Anyway, if you're in the San Francisco Bay area, come hear a panel on RFID sponsored by the Berkeley Public Library Monday night, August 1. I'll be there, addressing library privacy law.
The announcement is at the Berkeley Public Library website, which says that BPL "is holding a Community Informational Forum on Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) at the South Berkeley Senior Center, 2939 Ellis Street, Berkeley, on Monday, August 1, 2005, 6:30-9:00 pm. For accessibility questions and more information, call (510) 981-6121, TTY 510-548-1240.
Come learn how RFID works, in general, and how it functions in a library setting. One group of expert panelists will address issues of RFID technology such as: What It Is, Uses & Experience; Software Technology; and Public Health and Ergonomic Issues. A second group of expert panelists will address RFID policy issues such as: Privacy; Security; Best Practices. There will be time set aside for questions and comments from the community."
p.s. if there are any techies reading this, here's a bluetooth question: I'm using a bluetooth keyboard with a pocketpc on board the airplane. If I limit my pocketpc's bluetooth to paired devices, am I vulnerable to nearby laptops picking up my keystrokes? I don't think I can limit the keyboard itself or can I? It's a thinkoutside stowaway keyboard. At the moment my pocketpc detects two laptops with bluetooth in the vicinity.
The Society of American Archivists has announced the publication of a new title that looks great: Privacy and Confidentiality Perspectives: Archivists and Archival Records. The editors, Menzi L. Behrnd-Klodt and Peter J. Wosh, are two highly-respected archivists, and Menzi is also a lawyer. According to Nadine Strossen,
President of the ACLU, the essays in the book "explore the legal, ethical, administrative, and institutional considerations that shape archival debates concerning the administration of access to records containing personal information. It is essential reading for archivists, records managers, archival educators and students who wish to gain a deeper understanding of this difficult archival issue-and it is bound to stimulate broader reflection and debate."
Ordering information is available here. I can't wait to get my copy.
The strange, twisting legal saga of Ted Kaczynski, aka the Unabomber, continues to unwind. The Appeals Court for the Ninth Circuit recently ruled that Kaczynski's papers should be sold and the money paid to his victims in part to settle the $15 million in restitution he owes them. The government had pointed out that the papers and memorabilia would be worthless if it wasn't for Kaczynski's crimes, and Kaczynski shouldn't be allowed to profit from them. Kaczynski wanted the papers to go to the Labadie Collection at the University of Michigan, where his other papers are housed.
The ruling will do little to preserve the documentation. As it notes, "the property would be quite valuable to scholars, archivists, and, unsavory as that prospect might be, collectors." Perhaps the Labadie Collection will be able to muster the funds necessary to purchase the collection at the market price set by memorabilia collectors, but it is more likely that the collection will be scattered to the winds. The First Amendment claims raised in the amicus brief filed by the ACLU of Northern California and the Society of American Archivists were not included in the final decision.
This is a very tough case. Kaczynski's victims obviously deserve compensation - but must it be at the cost of the historical record? Perhaps the district court, which now must oversee the sale, will figure out a way to balance both interests.
Scott Carlson, the always excellent writer for the Chronicle of Higher Education, has an excellent overview of orphan works issue in the current issue. See "Whose work is it, anyway?" (currently free, but I don't know for how long). If you go to http://chronicle.com/chronicle/, you can even find a photograph of yours truly.
The first of the public forums on orphan works are taking place in Washington yesterday and today, but it doesn't appear as if C-SPAN is televising them, and I haven't found anyone blogging from it.
An interesting struggle is shaping up in Upper Arlington, Ohio. Can a library board remove free gay newspapers from the mass of materials distributed at the entrance of the public library? According to an article in the Gay People’s Chronicle, one of the publications that a patron requested be removed, both a preliminary report to the library board and a legal opinion from the Franklin County prosecutor’s office suggest that the papers must stay unless they are obscene, pornographic, or harm minors. The article suggests that the only way to limit legally the distribution of otherwise legal material would be to stop the distribution of all free publications.
It would appear that public libraries need to act carefully when the issue of removing publications comes up.
There are few topics that are more confusing to librarians than the issue of electronic course reserves, and so I held out high hopes for a new article in the current issue of the Journal of Academic Librarianship (JAL). "Copyright Procedures and the Deciphering of Fair Use in the Creation of Reserves at Major University Libraries," by Thomas H.P. Gould, Tomas A. Lipinski, and Elizabeth A. Buchanan (found at http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.acalib.2005.02.001 for those of you with a subscription to ScienceDirect) promised to be a useful addition to the literature. Lipinski, after all, is the co-author (with our own Mary Minow) of the invaluable The Library's Legal Answer Book.
The conclusion of the article is fine - namely that those libraries that set rigid limits on how much of a copyrighted work they will copy for reserves do not understand the case law or relevant guidelines. Overall, though, there are better sources of information on course reserves.
In February, the first version of a bill regulating RFID in California, Senate Bill 682, was introduced. See LibraryLaw's previous posting. The key issues identified by the Assembly were:
1) Should the government issue identification documents (IDs) that can broadcast personal information without implementing security protections to limit both the ID's ability to broadcast information and what information might be broadcast?
2) Should the government prohibit the use of "contactless integrated circuit" technology (RFID) in widely-used government documents, at least until the current safety measures have been implemented?
The first version of Senate Bill 682 would have prohibited any school, including universities, from issuing students cards that use a contactless integrated circuit or other device that broadcasts personal information or enables personal information to be read remotely. It also prohibited public libraries from issuing RFID library cards. The ban would have been in place for three years.
The most recent amendment of the bill, on July 7, deleted all references to the University of California, California State universities, and community colleges. And today's San Francisco Daily Journal reports that the new UC Merced campus library will issue library cards with RFID technology to allow self-checkout of books.
Opponents of RFID technology are worried that anyone with a reader can activate the personal information on a card with RFID, lessening personal privacy and increasing the opportunities for identity theft. Proponents are sure that technology can fix the problems that technology creates. Students at UC Merced will be the guinea pigs.
Helen Adams, The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, coauthor with Bob Bocher, Carol A. Gordon and Liza Barry-Kessler of Privacy in the 21st Century: Issues for Public, School, and Academic Libraries (hot off the press), explains why post-secondary librarians argue that FERPA protects library records while school librarians argue that FERPA does not even cover library records. Both sets of librarians want privacy for their users, but come to opposite interpretations of FERPA.
Here is Helen's blog post, written for LibraryLaw Blog:
The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) of 1974 has protected the confidentiality of student “education records” in K-12 and post-secondary schools in any school receiving federal funds for over twenty years. It gives parents the right to inspect and review the minor student’s education records and request changes where inaccuracies are found.. While the application of the law to various situations has continued to evolve through case law, one area critical to student privacy remains unclear. Are K-12 school library records considered “education records,” and do they fall under the jurisdiction of FERPA? Library records are not specifically listed either in the definition of “education records” within the law or its explanatory materials.