Art Libraries Society of North America 31st Annual Conference Wyndham Baltimore Inner Harbor

Art Libraries Society of North America 31^st Annual Conference
Wyndham Baltimore Inner Harbor, Baltimore, Maryland - March 20-26, 2003

Public Policy Committee Meeting

March 21, 2003

Submitted by James Mitchell and Vanessa Kam.

Committee Members for 2003:

Roberta Geier; Roger Lawson (NINCH and DFC liaison); Cara List; Barbara Rockenbach; Tim Shipe; Rina Vecchiola; Tony White; Cynthia Wolff.

Co-Chairs: Vanessa Kam; James Mitchell.

Executive Board Liaison: Laura Schwartz.

Attending meeting:

Roberta Geier; Vanessa Kam; Roger Lawson; Cara List; James Mitchell; Barbara Rockenbach; Laura Schwartz; Tony White; Cindy Wolff.

(Recorder: Barbara Rockenbach.)

Membership

Introduction of new members, co-chairs, and Board liaison; recognition of outgoing members (not present) Jonathan Franklin and Maryly Snow.

Review of 2002, by outgoing co-chair Barbara Rockenbach.

See Committee's annual report, submitted to Executive Board on February 3, 2003. (http://www.arlisna.org/arlismembers/2002pubpol.htm)

PrALiNe (Progressive Art Librarians' Network)

Vanessa organized the first meeting of this affiliate of the Progressive Librarians' Guild at this year’s annual conference, to be held on Monday, March 25, 3:00–4:00 p.m. The aims and actions are not yet defined but Vanessa will give the membership an update sometime after the conference.

Review of Legislation and Issues

To better coordinate the Committee's investigation of the policy issues identified as priorities, members agreed to accept individual assignments. This will involve taking the lead on researching those issues, monitoring specific listservs, preparing statements for Executive Board approval, and reports for communication with the ARLIS/NA membership (on arlis-l or published in Update, etc.).

UCITA

Committee members have not heard any major news recently, and the Affect website (an affiliate of the DFC, of which we have been a member) has not been updated in about two years. It was decided that the Public Policy Committee will not work on this issue actively unless we hear of significant new developments.

Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 (DMCA)

A number of bills have been introduced in Congress to ameliorate provisions of the law that had raised objections from library groups. Roberta Geier will research these further, in particular following up on a press release issue by ARL last Fall.

Digital Media Consumers' Rights Act (DMCRA): introduced as HR 107 in January 2003 by Rep. Rick Boucher; had also been introduced in the previous session (107^th Congress); would help to restore the historical balance in US copyright law between rights of copyright owners and users. Fair use is addressed, as are infringement and circumvention. The Committee agreed that we should support individual and Society support of this bill.

Benefit Authors without Limiting Advancement or Net Consumer Expectations (BALANCE) Act: introduced by Rep. Zoe Lofgren in the previous Congress as the Digital Choice and Freedom Act; would amend DMCA anti-circumvention provisions to ensure that consumers could time-shift and space-shift digital content.

Childrens Internet Protection Act of 2000

This law required the use of filtering software to restrict access to the Internet at libraries receiving federal funding. A constitutional challenge has been raised by ALA; arguments were heard in the Supreme Court (US v. ALA, 02-361) in March of this year, and a decision is expected sometime this summer. Information on this will form part of the expanded censorship section of the Committee's website. Cara List will investigate this.

USA Patriot Act

Vanessa reported on the ARL teleconference "Safeguarding our Patrons' Privacy" that she attended on December 11, 2002. Lawyers and librarians spoke about how to respond if approached by the FBI. The importance of establishing policies and procedures, and communicating them clearly to staff and students, was stressed. The University of Illinois may be conducting a survey on how many libraries have been approached by the FBI.

Information has also been recently released about the Justice Department's plans for "USAPA 2," which would propose new legislation to expand their domestic surveillance powers even further.

The Freedom to Read Protection Act (HR 1157) was introduced in March 2003 by Rep. Bernie Sanders. It would amend USAPA to restore the previous warrant requirements for access to library records. Vanessa Kam will take the lead on investigating these developments, which will form the basis for a new privacy section of the Committee's website. She may contact the ACLU as part of her research.

Free Trade Area of the Americas Agreement

Draft treaty language was distributed in early January of this year which included stringent IP provisions, including those regarding length of copyright term and the enforcement of technological protection measures (as in the DMCA). The status of these treaty negotiations is unclear to us, but we hope to increase our monitoring of events on the diplomatic level, including researching the effects of globalization and the international political economy of intellectual property law.

James will lead this effort for the Committee. Tony will also attempt to follow this issue by subscribing to the IFLA copyright listserv.

Several lower priority issues that were also discussed briefly at the meeting included:

the Restore Freedom of Information Act (S. 609), introduced March 12 regarding exemptions made by Homeland Security to the Freedom of Information Act; database legislation, which had been a contentious issue in the previous two Congresses, but seems not to be active now; and the "Eldred Act," a potentially significant development from Lawrence Lessig's idea of a "copyright tax" as a way to limit the term of protection, but which seems not to be an actual bill yet.

Diversity

In anticipation of the upcoming Diversity Forum, being held later at the conference, we discussed possible public policy issues. Recent governmental action (i.e., the University of Michigan case) has been concerned with academic admissions policies rather than employment practices (or any other library issues).

Vanessa Kam volunteered to lead the Committee's investigation of these issues, to the degree that it seems relevant to the broader Society debate on diversity.

ARLIS/NA 2002-2005 Strategic Plan Action Items:

1. Establish guidelines for kind and quantity of involvement in political action and lobbying allowable under IRS 501 tax status. (III D)

The Committee discussed checking with ALA, who may have established a separate lobbying arm, for appropriate guidelines. Laura Schwartz did so after the conference, and found published guidelines that help to clarify things.

2. Identify other agencies and associations with shared interests in legislative/policy matters; link with groups, as appropriate, to co-author and/or co-sign position statements; provide descriptive annotations on other groups’ committees, working groups, etc. (III D)

In addition to existing affiliations, we will look into closer contacts with IFLA and the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). James will forward information to the other Committee members about ARL's new SCHOLCOM listserv.

3. Create, disseminate, and update regularly a list of legislative topics and issues of a particular concern to arts and image professionals; draft position statements consistent with ARLIS/NA interests; publicize endorsed statements or other documents describing the Society’s position on legal issues and legislation via the ARLIS/NA Web Site and Society publications. (III D)

Previously, most of the Committee's communication with the ARLIS/NA membership has been via arlis-l. This year, we will attempt to regularly publish a series of short "legislative updates" on single issues in ARLIS/NA Update, starting with Cara on CIPA. Co-chairs James Mitchell and Vanessa Kam will serve as "column editors."

4. Assign individual committee members to monitor specific web sites and listservs and report activities to membership via the ARLIS/NA Web Site and ARLIS-L; refer items requiring action/responses to Executive Board. (III D)

As noted above, we have formalized assignments by issues and topical areas. To summarize:

Vanessa: USAPA and privacy; diversity
Roberta: DMCA
Cara: CIPA and censorship
Roger: DMCA/CTEA.
James: international developments
Cindy and Cara: scholarly publishing

5. Create a "recommended reading" list on topics such as intellectual property, telecommunications, censorship and make available via the ARLIS/NA Web Site. (III D)

In progress on website.

6. Create communication links and define responsibilities shared among Public Policy Committee, Diversity Committee, Collection Development Committee, and ARLIS/NA Chapters to identify issues and topics with legislative agendas. (III D)

We are in regular contact with other committee's, liaisons, and chapters, as needed.

NINCH

Roger gave a quick NINCH update, including the imminent elimination of their Executive Director position (David Green) for budgetary reasons. All programs for the year are expected to continue as planned. The organization is looking for an institutional home.

DFC

We decided not to renew our membership due to their recent inactivity.

Conference session proposals

We talked about sponsoring a session on electronic publishing, including speakers from JSTOR, SPARC, HiWire Press, STM publishers, etc. Cara and Cindy agreed to look into this further.

The War in Iraq

Combat was just beginning at the time of the conference. Vanessa brought up the recent CAA statement of concern about the effect of the war on Iraq's cultural property and on domestic civil liberties. Ed Teague had requested that the Committee propose to the Executive Board that ARLIS/NA adopt this statement as well. This was subsequently done by Vanessa at the Membership Meeting, and it was accepted by President Allen Townsend, to be discussed by the Board at their post-conference meeting.