Illinois Library Records Confidentiality Act

For one of my classes we were to go through our 'home' state's confidentiality/privacy statutes pertaining to libraries and identify any changes we would like to see made. Originally I was going to analyze Oklahoma's statute, but decided to look into the statute for Illinois. From this exercise I discovered a few changes that I would like to see made to the statute.

First, the statue limits confidentiality to only registration and circulation records in the library. The issue is that patrons use many items and services provided by the library without the resource being circulated. For instance if you were to browse/read through a book without circulating the item, then that would not be considered confidential. Thus some expansion is needed. Especially as the statute does not contain any protections for electronic access to resources. As the statute reads search logs and logs of websites would not be considered confidential and thus would not need a court order for law enforcement personnel to obtain.

Second, the immunity provision given in Section 1(b-5) grants libraries immunity, but sounds as if it also grants law enforcement immunity as well. If a law enforcement officer were to ask for confidential information in a nefarious manner, the statute reads as if it also provides immunity to the law enforcement officer. This is troubling from the standpoint that an officer could abuse their power to obtain information without consequence from this statute.

Overall, the statute seems very well written. With some of the updates that I have made for my class report, I think the statute would fall into line with current thinking on confidentiality in a library.

How the RIAA, MPAA etc..want to use education funding to fight their battles

I thought I had posted this some time ago...Unfortunately it looks like my mind forgot to tell the rest of my body to actually 'post' this.

There is a movement to tie together copyright enforcement with federal education monies. The US House has their version, HR 4137. But the backlash is less on the state level. Therefore, you can now see similar legislation at the state level (Illinois).

The purpose of the legislation is to fight copyright infringement, as both the attached bills explain. If a university/college receives a certain number of copyright notices, they would be obligated to fight copyright infringement and/or install technological measures to protect copyrights. However, there is/are provisions for technological solutions to analyze the data traffic in an effort to determine if data transiting the network is copyrighted. Now I am not positive on the particulars of the technology, but it would require the network to look into the data packets and view the 'real' data. For the postal analogy, the postal carrier would now be authorised to open and read your post to your grandmother. Not surprisingly the backlash is relatively low at the state level as it is almost being sneaked in the 'back door'.

Now, we have had reports of a large increase in the number of DMCA Copyright notices...One can only wonder if there is a link between the increase in RIAA notices and the pending legislation. Maybe it is a way to perhaps show there is a quantifiable need for universities/colleges to do the work of the recording industry. As dollars for education are continuing to dwindle from the federal and state governments, this amounts to nothing more than "passing the buck" of copyright protection to cash strapped educational institutions.