_________________________________________________________________ ALAWON Volume 7, Number 106 ISSN 1069-7799 September 15, 1998 American Library Association Washington Office Newsline In this issue: (136 lines) COPYRIGHT CLASHES LIKELY TO DEFINE FINAL WEEKS OF 105TH CONGRESS; LETTERS TO SENATORS ON DATABASE AND WIPO BILLS NEEDED NOW. _________________________________________________________________ COPYRIGHT CLASHES LIKELY TO DEFINE FINAL WEEKS OF 105TH CONGRESS; LETTERS TO SENATORS ON DATABASE AND WIPO BILLS NEEDED NOW. ACTION: Please write or call your Senators this week to urge: (1) no Senate action on controversial database protection legislation; and (2) strong support for including the House's version of fair use protection in any final version of WIPO copyright treaty legislation. Please write to both of your Senators this week in support of preserving the critical balance between protecting information and affording reasonable access to it as key Committees struggle with two "intellectual property" bills: the "Collections of Information Antipiracy Act" (S. 2291/H.R. 2652) and the "Digital Millennium Copyright Act" (H.R. 2281). MESSAGES: Please ask both of your Senators to write, and speak personally, to Judiciary Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch (R-UT) and Ranking Member Patrick Leahy (D-VT) requesting that they: (1) DEFER Senate action until the next Congress on any special interest database protection legislation, including the "Collections of Information Antipiracy Act" (S. 2291/H.R. 2652), AND that they remove this controversial legislation from the "Digital Millennium Copyright Act" (H.R. 2281) with which it was merged by the House early last month (see ALAWON V. 7, NO. 91 of August 6, 1998); AND (2) NOT accept any version of "fair use" protection weaker than that adopted in the House version of H.R. 2281 when the House and Senate meet to reconcile their different versions of the "Digital Millennium Copyright Act" in the next few weeks. *** SPECIAL NOTE: Because of their leadership roles, it's especially important that: . . . UTAH and VERMONT residents write directly to Mr. Hatch and Mr. Leahy; and . . . MISSISSIPPI and OKLAHOMA residents contact Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-MS) and Deputy Leader Don Nickels (R-OK); and . . . ARIZONA and SOUTH CAROLINA residents reach Sens. John McCain (R-AZ) and Ernest Hollings (D-SC). Letters may be addressed to your Senator (Hon. __full name__); United States Senate; Washington, DC 20510. BACKGROUND: With less than a calendar month, 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. ALA, together with its many partners in the library community and the Digital Future Coalition, is 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 librarians' work on these bill are as familiar as common sense: (1) DATABASE: Both the Departments of Commerce and Justice have submitted analyses to Congress expressing major concerns, including potential unconstitutionality, with the "Collections of Information Antipiracy Act" (S. 2291/H.R. 2652). 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) to implement the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) copyright treaties with which it was merged by the House in August. ALA joined 37 other public and private sector organizations and companies that 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. FURTHER DETAILS: 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 http://www.dfc.org or, as always, contact Adam Eisgrau of the ALA Washington Office. _________________________________________________________________ ALAWON is a free, irregular publication of the American Library Association Washington Office. To subscribe, send the message: subscribe ala-wo [your_firstname] [your_lastname] to listproc @ala.org. To unsubscribe, go to http://www.ala.org/washoff/ subscribe.html or send the message: unsubscribe ala-wo to listproc@ala.org. ALAWON archives at http://www.ala.org/ washoff/alawon. Visit our Web site at http://www.alawash.org. ALA Washington Office 202.628.8410 (V) 1301 Pennsylvania Ave., NW, #403 202.628.8419 (F) Washington, DC 20004-1701 800.941.8478 (V) Lynne E. Bradley, Editor Deirdre Herman, Managing Editor Contributors: Adam M. Eisgrau Claudette W. Tennant All materials subject to copyright by the American Library Association may be reprinted or redistributed for noncommercial purposes with appropriate credits. _________________________________________________________________