In this issue...

1.       Orphan Works Report
2.       Net-neutrality
3.       Geographic Society and NARA
4.       EPA Library Closures
5.       Federal Research Public Access Act of 2006
6.       Library of Congress to Delay Decision                  
7.       Affecting Bibliographic Records
8.       Library Groups Support of Public Access Act Expands
9.       Digital Rights Management Findings Reported
10.     European Podcasters team up
 

U.S. Copyright Office's Orphan Works Report
SLA, in collaboration with the Library Copyright Alliance (LCA), continues to participate in dialog with members of U.S. Congress expressing support of legislation that will alleviate the problem of orphan works.  The U.S. Copyright Office produced a report and a proposal for legislation that was informed by input from the LCA. Professor Lawrence Lessig of the Stanford University Law School, wrote a thoughtful letter concerning the U.S. Copyright Office report on orphan works in which he complimented the report for collecting and presenting evidence concerning the existence of an orphan works problem.  However, Professor Lessig critiqued the report's proposed legislative solution, and offered an alternative approach. Unfortunately, the LCA felt that Professor Lessig's proposals raise serious concerns, and stand little chance of enactment.  In response, LCA prepared a detailed document which re-defined the Alliance's position and compared Lessig's proposal with the LCA supported legislation. Read the full LCA response to professor Lessig's letter. 

The U.S. Copyright Office completed its study of problems related to "orphan works"?copyrighted works whose owners may be impossible to identify and locate. As requested by Senator Orrin Hatch and Senator Patrick Leahy, the Office submitted its Report on Orphan Works to the Senate Judiciary Committee on 31 January 2006. Full Report.

Net-neutrality: SLA endorses S. 2360, the Internet Non-Discrimination Act of 2006. 
The U.S. House of Representatives passed its telecommunications bill, H.R. 5252, in May 2006 without adequate net neutrality protections. Now the fight has moved to U.S. Senate. On 28 June, the Senate Commerce Committee passed its own telecom bill, S. 2686. While an amendment to the bill that would have added meaningful net neutrality safeguards failed 11-11, this tie vote marks a significant political victory and gives the effort new momentum. The debate now shifts to the full Senate, where SLA and its allies will be working to get strong net neutrality language in any bill that the Senate considers.   

SLA, in conjunction with the AALL, ALA and ARL delivered a letter endorsing S. 2360, the Internet Non-Discrimination Act of 2006, which deals with the controversial issue of Net-neutrality. Together, these associations represent over 139,000 libraries as well as millions of library patrons.  The letter was delivered on 26 March 2006, and explained that, "Assuring network neutrality is important as the digital world spawns an international knowledge-based economy.  Important steps must be taken to prevent interfering with blocking, degrading, altering, modifying or changing traffic on the Internet and prohibiting priority lanes where some content providers can purchase faster access to end users" while those who don't or cannot pay the fee are left in the slow lane."  SLA will also continue to monitor the progress of the telecommunications bill and will continue bring up-to-date develops as they occur. For a clever look at this issue from the technology side read this opinion article written by Andrew Orlowski posted on The Register.

Library Groups  File Federal Appeals Court Brief on National Geographic Society Copyright Infringement Case
On 6 June, 2006, SLA in conjunction with ALA, AALL, ARL, MLA, and the Society of American Archivists filed a friend of the court brief in support of the National Geographic Society's (NGS) right to re-publish works in a digital format without seeking permission of authors or other contributors.  The case, Greenberg v. National Geographic Society, involves an allegation by photographers and authors that NGS violated copyright when it published past issues of its magazine on CD-ROM without first seeking permission.  The brief was filed in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit.  The brief supports NGS in  that as long as digital versions place photographs and articles in the same context as the print original, there is no infringement of copyright.   Read the full brief.

National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) and Google
On 6 July 1006 SLA signed and delivered a letter to Dr. Allen Weinstein, Archivist of the United States, in association with AALL, ALA, and ARL to support with concern the agreement between the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) and Google to digitize records in the possession of NARA.  The Associations support NARA working with Google to make the records of the United States government more easily accessible by the public. Conversely, the associations also share a, "deep concern about the ownership ? physical and legal ? of both the underlying documents and the subsequent digital data files."  The letter continues to outline their position, "We believe that such ownership must remain with NARA and the U.S. Government."  Read Letter. 

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Library Closures: Take Action Today!
In his proposed budget for Fiscal Year 2007, U.S. President Bush deleted $2 million of support for Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) libraries, amounting to 80% of the agency's total budget for libraries. Without waiting for Congress to act, EPA has begun shuttering libraries, closing access to collections and reassigning staff.  Read what SLA has done surrounding this issue and how you can help!

Since learning of this issue, SLA public policy staff members have visited Capitol Hill and the EPA offices to actively voice The Association's opposition to this proposed move to close the network of 27 libraries and information centers within the EPA. 

SLA representatives are still at work on this issue and to date have held meetings with staff from the EPA and the U.S. House of Representative as well as conducted outreach with U.S. Senators stating our strong disagreement with the Bush Administration's decision. 

How YOU can help:

Let your voice be heard! Write a letter to your Senators requesting they reinstate the EPA Library Budget. The SLA Legislative Action Center  is an excellent and easy to use tool that allows for easy identification of your elected representatives, provides the important talking points surrounding this issue that are needed to write a compelling letter, and delivers the letter directly to the representatives' office. 

According to a press release from the Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) Representatives for 10,000 U.S. scientists at the EPA are also joining the fight and asking Congress to stop the Bush administration from closing the agency's network of technical research libraries. The EPA scientists, representing more than half of the total agency workforce, contend thousands of scientific studies are being put out of reach, hindering emergency preparedness, anti-pollution enforcement and long-term research.

Please take a moment to write and share YOUR opinion on the EPA Library closures. 

SLA strongly supports the Federal Research Public Access Act of 2006
In a 12 July 2006 joint letter to Senator Susan Collins (R-ME), SLA with other library associations, expressed strong support of the Federal Research Public Access Act of 2006 (S. 2695). This legislation would promote widespread, affordable, and effective dissemination of scientific and scholarly research results.  The letter explains how, "Federally funded research is a public resource collected at public expense. Importantly, increased access to this research accelerates the pace of discovery and innovation and fosters economic growth." Other talking points and supporting arguments are outlined in the full letter. Read Letter.

SLA and AALL Request Library of Congress to Delay Decision Affecting Bibliographic Records
On 26 May, 2006 SLA and AALL wrote to Dr. Billington, Librarian of Congress, and the Joint Committee on the Library, urging the Library of Congress to delay its decision to discontinue providing series authority control for bibliographic records beyond the scheduled implementation date of June 1, 2006.  This delay will allow libraries and librarians sufficient time to assess the possible consequences of this decision on libraries and their users, to determine if there are appropriate alternatives, or to develop and present modifications to this decision.  Read original letter. On 12 July SLA received a reply.  View the reply letter from the Library of Congress. 

Library Groups Support of Public Access Act Expands
On 3 August, 2006, Library groups, including SLA, commended 23 provosts for joining the recent surge of support of the Public Access Act.  Just one week after more than two dozen leading universities declared their strong support for the Federal Research Public Access Act of 2006 (S.2695).  The Federal Research Public Access Act was introduced on May 2, 2006 by Senators John Cornyn (R-TX) and Joseph Lieberman (D-CT). It requires federal agencies that fund over $100 million in annual external research to make electronic manuscripts of peer-reviewed journal articles that stem from their research publicly available on the Internet. The U.S. government funds an estimated 50% of university research, making this a particularly important cause for the higher education community.  Read Press Release. 

Digital Rights Management Findings Reported
The All Party Parliamentary Internet Group (APIG) in the United Kingdom recently released its report into Digital Rights Management. The inquiry received over 90 written submissions from consumers, "think tanks", libraries, print media publishers, the film and music industries and lawyers. An oral evidence session was organized at the House of Commons in February when a cross selection of the respondents were invited to give evidence to APIG officers.  Read about the key points in the report on APIG website.

European Podcasters Team Up To Lobby (WIPO)
According to a press release issued by UK Podcasters on 19 June 2006, Podcasters across the world came together to emphatically reject the re-drafted Broadcast Treaty. The UK Podcasters Association has been joined by the Irish Podrepbod and German Podcastverband to lobby World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) in a pan-European effort to assert podcasters' rights at the WIPO meeting in Barcelona Wednesday, June 21st, presenting a petition.  View the press release.

The petition reads, "This treaty as it stands gives broadcasters (not creators or copyright holders) the right to tie up the use of audiovisual material for 50 years after broadcasting it, even if the programs are in the public domain, Creative Commons licensed, or not copyrightable. We consider this to be an infringement of the right of the originator of a work to determine its form of license, future usage and copyright status. Further, the extension of the Broadcast Treaty to include Podcasting does not take into account the many forms of the new medium of podcasting which do not correspond to broadcast models." Continue reading the petition.