Act Now: AALL Virtual Lobby Day

Later this afternoon, law librarians from Washington, DC and the surrounding area will head to Capitol Hill to meet with their members of Congress as part of AALL’s first-ever Local Advocate Lobby Day.  Participants will discuss a number of issues relevant to law librarianship, including funding for the Government Printing Office and Library of Congress, access to government information, and privacy.

You can help to magnify the impact of these meetings  and expand AALL’s influence in Congress by participating in our Virtual Lobby Day. Visit our Legislative Action Center to take action on our priority issues. You’ll find sample letters that you can easily customize and send to your members of Congress with a click of a button.

Want more information on our issues? The Government Relations Committee (GRC) recently released a number of new Advocacy One-Pagers on key legislation like the Electronic Communications Privacy Act Amendments of 2013, Fair Access to Science and Technology Research Act, and Library of Congress Funding for Fiscal Year 2014.  We’ve also created Lobby Day talking points to help you craft your message.

We hope you will take a few minutes today to advocate for yourself, your profession, and your patrons. Thanks for all that you do to raise the profile of AALL and law librarians everywhere.

New Website for State Online Legal Information

 By Elizabeth

The Digital Access to Legal Information Committee (DALIC) has created a new website to host information about the status of online legal materials in every state with respect to authentication, official status, preservation, permanent public access, copyright, and universal citation.

The new website brings together information from AALL’s National Inventory of Legal Materials and updates AALL’s Preliminary Analysis of AALL’s State Legal Inventories, 2007 State-by-State Report on Authentication of Online Legal Resources, and 2009-2010 State Summary Updates. State pages will be updated as information changes. DALIC members will monitor the site and periodically check in with AALL’s state working groups to ensure the accuracy of the information.

DALIC also welcomes your additions or updates to information about legal materials in your state. If you have information to offer, please fill out our online form. A member of DALIC will contact you to verify the information you provide.

Library Associations Support Appropriations Requests of Government Printing Office and Library of Congress

By Elizabeth

Last week, AALL President Jean Wenger submitted written testimony on behalf of AALL, Medical Library Association (MLA), and Special Libraries Association (SLA) to the House Committee on Appropriations Subcommittee on Legislative Branch in support of the Fiscal Year (FY) 2014 appropriations requests of the Government Printing Office (GPO) and the Library of Congress (LC). AALL, MLA and SLA urged the subcommittee to fully fund the appropriations requests of GPO and LC.

For Fiscal Year 2014, GPO is asking for a modest 1.2 percent increase above FY 2013 levels so that it can grow its digital systems and make necessary information technology and infrastructure repairs. This request would also enable GPO to continue to support the 200-year-old Federal Depository Library Program.

The Library of Congress plans to ask for an increase in funding only to reflect inflation, which will help ensure the Library is able to maintain mission-critical services. AALL, MLA, and SLA strongly supports several of the Law Library of Congress’s initiatives, including the classification of the remaining approximately 480,000 volumes to Class K Law Classification. The Library of Congress is in urgent need of more storage space for its collection and requires funding for the construction of a new storage facility, known as Modular (Mod) 5 at the Library’s 100 acre campus at Ft. Meade, Maryland. LC also requires sufficient funding to support the vital work of the Copyright Office, which includes the composition of policy studies that aid Congress in legislative deliberations.

The budget battle continues as Congress will return from its two week recess on Monday and must work to reconcile the Senate and Houses’ dramatically different spending plans. President Obama is expected to present his administration’s budget proposal on April 10, two months after the February deadline. Read more in the April issue of our Washington E-Bulletin.

April Washington E-Bulletin

The April issue of the Washington E-Bulletin is now available on AALLNET.

IN THIS ISSUE
Vol. 2013, Issue 04

A LOOK AHEAD

• Spring Arrives, Congress Recesses
• Meet Your Member

ACT NOW

• Tell your Representative to Oppose CISPA

AALL IN THE STATES

• Update on UELMA

ROUNDUP AND REVIEW

• CRS report on FOIA policy options
• Recent AALL online advocacy trainings
• Sunshine Week Recap
• Judge Finds National Security Letters Unconstitutional
• The Kirtsaeng Decision and Libraries
• Petition for Public Access
• GPO not Charging for FDSys
• Register for the Legislative Advocacy Training

Tell your Representative to Oppose CISPA

By Elizabeth

The Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) has been reintroduced in the House of Representatives (H.R. 624) and contains the same dangerous provisions that would allow companies to liberally share sensitive personal information with the government for purposes unrelated to cybersecurity and without meaningful oversight. Last year, CISPA passed the House of Representatives but was not taken up in the Senate. The White House threatened to veto CISPA in 2012.

AALL has joined a coalition of groups dedicated to government openness and accountability to encourage Congress to oppose CISPA. Please write your Representative today and urge him/her to oppose CISPA, which would create a gaping new exemption to existing privacy law.

CISPA would grant companies more power to obtain “threat” information, including private communications of users, and to disclose that data to the government without a warrant. The bill also unnecessarily cuts off all public access to cyber threat information before the public and Congress have had the chance to understand the types of information that are withheld under the bill.

For more information, see our recent letter of concern to Chairman Rogers and Ranking Member Ruppersberger of the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and letter to Michael Daniel, White House Cybersecurity Coordinator, urging the White House to renew its promise to veto the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA).

You can write to your Representative using our Legislative Action Center.

A Win for Libraries in Kirtsaeng v. Wiley

By Emily

In a victory for libraries and consumers, the U.S. Supreme Court today issued a 6-3 opinion in favor of petitioner Supap Kirtsaeng, a Thai student who resold textbooks lawfully purchased by his family at bookstores in Thailand. AALL’s Copyright Committee chair Tracy Thompson-Przylucki wrote on the Copyright Committee blog:

In its opinion in Kirtsaeng v. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., a decision released today, the U.S. Supreme Court has determined that the first sale doctrine is not subject to any geographical limitations (Justice Ginsburg dissents). The Court’s decision means that purchasers of works produced outside of the U.S., if the works are lawfully subject to U.S. Copyright protections, are entitled to invoke the first sale doctrine to justify their subsequent sale, lease or loan of those works. This is an important victory not just for consumers like Kirtsaeng, but for libraries and library users.

AALL is a member of the Owners’ Rights Initiative, which released the following statement from Executive Director Andrew Shore:

ORI is gratified by the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in favor of Supap Kirtsaeng in this important copyright case. This decision is a landmark win for consumers, small businesses, online marketplaces, retailers and libraries nationwide and an affirmation of the ORI motto, ‘you bought it, you own it.’ This decision definitively affirms the first sale doctrine, cementing the right of consumers and organizations to sell, lend and give away goods that they bought and own, regardless of where those goods were made.

While we are energized by this decision, we expect that some will continue attempts to eliminate owners’ rights, reduce competition in the marketplace and restrict the global trade of authentic goods. ORI will continue to be vigilant and diligent in protecting owners’ rights now and in the future and we expect policymakers to do the same.

For more information about the case, please see AALL’s issue brief by Amy Ash, member of the Copyright Committee and George H. Pike, 2011-2012 chair of the Committee. AALL submitted an amicus brief in support of Kirtsaeng with Public Knowledge, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Special Libraries Association, and U.S. PIRG.

Sunshine Week in Review

By Elizabeth

As Emily recently shared, last week marked the ninth annual Sunshine Week, a time to reflect on the state of public access to government information and work together to make our government more transparent. In addition to the release of two new reports to which AALL contributed, we were busy celebrating Sunshine Week at events across Washington, DC.  Read on for event recaps and a few exciting legislative developments.

On Wednesday, the Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing entitled “We the People: Fulfilling the Promise of Open Government Five Years After the OPEN Government Act.” Under the leadership of Chair Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and Ranking Member Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA), the committee expressed frustration with federal agencies’ inability to comply with a 2007 open government law that Congress enacted to accelerate processing of Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests. On the first of two panels, witnesses included Miriam Nisbet, Director the Office of Government Information Services, which was created by the OPEN Government Act, and Melanie Pustay, Director of the Office of Information Policy at the Department of Justice. On the second panel, consisting of open government advocates, speakers charged Pustay with exaggerating the progress of the Obama administration. While agencies have improved the processing of FOIA requests by reducing average processing times and cutting down on the backlog of requests, the information available to requestors is still unsatisfactory. Full releases of documents declined to the lowest level on record in 2012, while 52 out of 99 federal agencies have not changed their freedom of information regulations to meet the requirements of the OPEN Government Act of 2007. The Justice Department has been particularly problematic, testified Thomas Blanton, director of the National Security Archive at George Washington University. Pustay contended the new regulations were optional.

At the same time as the Senate hearing, the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform hosted its Sunshine Week event, a hearing entitled “Addressing Transparency in the Federal Bureaucracy: Moving Toward A More Open Government.” Committee Chair Representative Darrell Issa (R-CA) and Ranking Member Elijah Cummings (D-MO) used Sunshine Week as the impetus for introducing draft legislation to amend FOIA.  The draft bill, which AALL supports, is ”designed to strengthen transparency by ensuring that legislative and executive action to improve FOIA over the past two decades is fully implemented by federal agencies,” said Rep. Issa.

Representative Wm. Lacy Clay (D-MO) also reintroduced legislation on Wednesday aimed at enhancing transparency. H.R. 1104, the Federal Advisory Committee Act Amendments of 2013, would strengthen the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA), landmark legislation authored by Rep. Clay, Rep. Cummings, and Rep. Gerald Connolly (D-VA). “This bill opens up the Federal Advisory Committee selection and oversight process by providing greater transparency and ensuring real independence for appointees,” said Rep.  Clay.  “The act also imposes much tougher standards to ensure that committee members are insulated from political pressure to influence their recommendations.  Finally, my act would require any FACA appointee selected by the President or an agency to provide expert advice to fully comply with all conflict of interest rules and federal ethics laws.”

Other Sunshine Week events included a timely panel discussion on secrecy, security, and classification reform, hosted by the Brennan Center for Justice. Panelists heard from Public Interest Declassification Board (PIDB) Chair Nancy Soderberg on the PIDB’s recommendations for a classification system overhaul and responded to the proposals. The issue of how the US government treats state secrets has gained much attention in recent weeks as the White House has come under intense pressure to make public OLC memos on the targeted drone program—in part thanks to a 13-hour filibuster by Senator Rand Paul (R-KY).

We concluded Sunshine Week by co-sponsoring the annual National Freedom of Information Day conference at the Newseum, which brought together groups concerned with freedom of information and open records, including FOI advocates, government officials, lawyers, librarians, journalists and educators. This year’s program invited members of the Obama administration to engage in conversation with open government advocates over the progress seen in the President’s first term. The late internet activist Aaron Swartz was this year’s recipient of the ALA James Madison Award, while winners of Sunshine in Government Award included Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) for his commitment to openness and transparency, and Environmental Protection Agency employees Tim Crawford and Larry Gottesman, who created FOIAOnline.