ALAWON: American Library Association Washington Office Newsline Volume 8, Number 103 October 8, 1999 In this issue: URGENT ACTION ALERT: Calls and Letters Needed IMMEDIATELY to Fight Passage of H.R. 354, Problem Database Bill CALLS AND LETTERS NEEDED: Without an immediate and extremely strong grassroots response to fight the database bill, H.R. 354, the American public stands to loose basic, long standing public access to facts! H.R. 354, the Collections of Information Antipiracy Act, includes an exemption for education and research activities that is far too narrow, and recent improvements to the bill were not sufficient. H.R. 354 would allow companies or individuals to own lists of facts -- and even the facts themselves. One might ask: Who owns stock quotes? Who owns court decisions? Who owns baseball sports scores -- from little league to the major league? It is critically important that you contact your Representatives in the House as soon as possible and ask them to pressure House leadership to stop or postpone a vote on H.R. 354. (A vote could happen as early as next week, the week of October 12.) If it should come to the floor for a vote, Representatives should be asked to vote AGAINST H.R. 354. Emphasize that the library and broader user community DOES NOT support H.R. 354, nor do recent changes to the bill meet our concerns. (Some library advocates have reported that their congressional offices were told that H.R. 354 now met our concerns. This is NOT true!) Please call and write your Representatives, and urge other friends and colleagues to do so too. Boards of education, higher education commissioners, library board members as well as state library associations and other professional organizations should also be asked to contact Congress. Only a massive grassroots response to stop this potential vote will preserve fair use access to databases. The vote on H.R. 354, will be a messy one that should not be taken lightly when there is an alternative database protection bill, H.R. 1858, the Consumer and Investor Access to Information Act, to be considered. At the end of this ALAWON is a sample letter which you may wish to use and customize to your community or institution. You may send a letter using the ALA Legislative Action Center at http://congress.nw.dc.us/ala/elecmail.html . For further information or to share your letter and the responses you receive from your representatives, please contact Miriam Nisbet or Lynne Bradley at the ALA Washington Office at 1-800-941-8478 or e-mail mnisbet@alawash.org or lbradley@alawash.org BACKGROUND: In recent ALAWONs and other alerts about this database legislation, the library community has been asked to seek additional cosponsors to H.R. 1858. There are now 18 cosponsors on H.R. 1858. Unfortunately, 76 cosponsors have signed onto H.R. 354, Rep. Howard Coble's (R-NC) bill, so far. The House leadership has indicated that H.R. 354, the Collections of Information Antipiracy Act, will likely be considered on the House floor in the next two weeks, possible as early as the week of October 12. To stop this vote, we must emphasize the negatives inherent to H.R. 354 and tell Congress that to bring this "massively skewed" bill to a floor vote so late in this session will cause major problems. SOME OF THE PROBLEMS WITH H.R. 354: H.R. 354 is a far-reaching, overly broad piece of legislation that would: -- for the first time, protect facts and would allow a producer or publisher unprecedented control over uses of information including downstream, transformative use of facts and government-produced data contained in the database. -- allow a producer or publisher unprecedented control over the uses of information including downstream, transformative use of facts and government works in the collection; -- protect factual information; and -- provide for, in effect, perpetual protection of a collection, at least for dynamic compilations in electronic form, despite the addition of language that seeks to remedy this problem. THERE IS AN ALTERNATIVE, H.R. 1858, THE CONSUMER AND INVESTOR ACCESS TO INFORMATION ACT, SPONSORED BY REP. TOM BLILEY (R-VA): ALA and its coalition allies -- including virtually every major national library and educational organization, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the National Research Council, the Information Technology Association of America, AT&T, Dun & Bradstreet, and the several hundred companies of the Commercial Internet Exchange -- support H.R. 1858. H.R. 1858, THE BETTER DATABASE BILL, WOULD: -- preserve the fair use of information and keep factual information in the public domain; -- prevent unfair competition in the form of parasitic copying; -- promote the progress of science, education, and research; -- protect value-added publishers and their products; and -- provide safeguards against monopolistic pricing. SAMPLE LETTER AGAINST H.R. 354 TO SEND TO REPRESENTATIVES: Dear Representative ____________________: On behalf of ____, I am writing to ask for you to work against H.R. 354, the Collections of Information Antipiracy Act, and to support and cosponsor H.R. 1858, the Consumer and Investor Access to Information Act of 1999. H.R. 1858 addresses the concerns of selected database producers while ensuring access to information by members of the public. Data and information are the foundation of all research and education activities. Members of the library and education communities rely on access to information in all aspects of teaching and research including the preservation of our cultural and scientific heritage. Such access is integral to the success of the U.S. educational system and to our leadership in the global economy. For over 200 years, the information policy of this country has protected creativity not factual information. This policy has served us extremely well and allowed libraries and educational institutions and the constituencies they serve to flourish. Provisions in H.R. 1858 will continue this tradition by permitting the unfettered use of facts, information which is in the public domain while affording limited new protections to database producers necessitated by digital technology. In contrast, H.R. 354, the Collections of Information Antipiracy Act will, for the first time, protect facts and would allow a producer or publisher unprecedented control over the uses of information including downstream, transformative use of facts and government works in the collection. I urge your co-sponsorship of this important legislation. Please let me know if there is additional information that I can provide concerning H.R. 1858. Sincerely, ****** ALAWON (ISSN 1069-7799) is a free, irregular publication of the American Library Association Washington Office. All materials subject to copyright by the American Library Association may be reprinted or redistributed for noncommercial purposes with appropriate credits. To subscribe to ALAWON, send the message: subscribe ala-wo [your_firstname] [your_lastname] to listproc@ala.org or go to http://www.ala.org/washoff/alawon. To unsubscribe to ALAWON, send the message: unsubscribe ala-wo to listproc@ala.org or go to http://www.ala.org/washoff/alawon. ALAWON archives at http://www.ala.org/washoff/alawon. ALA Washington Office, 1301 Pennsylvania Ave., N.W., Suite 403, Washington, D.C. 20004-1701; phone: 202.628.8410 or 800.941.8478 toll-free; fax: 202.628.8419; e-mail: alawash@alawash.org; Web site: http://www.ala.org/washoff. Editor: Lynne E. Bradley; Managing Editor: Deirdre Herman; Contributors: Sally Benson, Mary Costabile, Peter Kaplan, Carrie Russell, Emily Sheketoff, Saundra Shirley, Claudette Tennant and Rick Weingarten.