Persons making noninfringing uses of the following six classes of works will not be subject to the prohibition against circumventing access controls (17 U.S.C. § 1201(a)(1)) during the next three years.

1. Audiovisual works included in the educational library of a college or university’s film or media studies department, when circumvention is accomplished for the purpose of making compilations of portions of those works for educational use in the classroom by media studies or film professors.

2. Computer programs and video games distributed in formats that have become obsolete and that require the original media or hardware as a condition of access, when circumvention is accomplished for the purpose of preservation or archival reproduction of published digital works by a library or archive. A format shall be considered obsolete if the machine or system necessary to render perceptible a work stored in that format is no longer manufactured or is no longer reasonably available in the commercial marketplace.

3. Computer programs protected by dongles that prevent access due to malfunction or damage and which are obsolete. A dongle shall be considered obsolete if it is no longer manufactured or if a replacement or repair is no longer reasonably available in the commercial marketplace.

4. Literary works distributed in ebook format when all existing ebook editions of the work (including digital text editions made available by authorized entities) contain access controls that prevent the enabling either of the book’s read-aloud function or of screen readers that render the text into a specialized format.

5. Computer programs in the form of firmware that enable wireless telephone handsets to connect to a wireless telephone communication network, when circumvention is accomplished for the sole purpose of lawfully connecting to a wireless telephone communication network.

6. Sound recordings, and audiovisual works associated with those sound recordings, distributed in compact disc format and protected by technological protection measures that control access to lawfully purchased works and create or exploit security flaws or vulnerabilities that compromise the security of personal computers, when circumvention is accomplished solely for the purpose of good faith testing, investigating, or correcting such security flaws or vulnerabilities.

University of Massachusetts Dartmouth officials are investigating reports that a student at the university was visited by officials from Homeland Security after the student requested a copy of Chairman Mao’s “Little Red Book”. UMass administrators have interviewed the student who has requested that his identity be shielded, and the University is complying with that request.
At this point, it is difficult to ascertain how Homeland Security obtained the information about the student’s borrowing of the book. The UMass Dartmouth Library has not been visited by agents of any type seeking information about the borrowing patterns or habits of any of its patrons and did not handle the request for the book in question. The student has indicated that another university library processed the request.

The UMass Dartmouth library has established policies for handling requests under the Patriot Act and has taken every lawful measure possible to protect the confidentiality of patron records.

The Library subscribes to the American Library Association Library Bill of Rights and was a signatory to the MCCLPHEI (Massachusetts Conference of Chief Librarians of Public Higher Educational Institutions) resolution on the USA Patriots Act submitted to the Massachusetts Civil Liberty Union in 2003.

UMass Dartmouth Chancellor Jean F. MacCormack said, “It is important that our students and our faculty be unfettered in their pursuit of knowledge about other cultures and political systems if their education and research is to be meaningful. We must do everything possible to protect the principles of academic inquiry.'’

Ann Montgomery Smith
Dean of Library Services
University of Massachusetts Dartmouth Library

So now the student is saying the book was requested through another library. There are a lot of holes and/or inconsistencies in the story. For instance, assuming we are talking about the original English Peking version, WorldCat/FirstSearch lists 425 libraries that have it (including Northwestern) and it is even available in full online.

Also, a 5/17/5 op-ed by librarian Joan Airoldi gives us some insight into an experience of the FBI requesting records of patrons requesting a particular book. However, in that case the visit was prompted by a patron who notified the FBI after finding a message of hostility toward the US scrawled in the margin of an Osama bio. In addition, the FBI dropped the request after the library decided to challenge it in court.

In fact, the DoJ claims that FISA orders under the Patriot Act’s Section 215 have only been used 35 times as of 3/30/5, and not once to request library records.

On the other hand, according to UIU Library Research Center surveys, many libraries (as many as 10% nationwide) have apparently been visited by federal and local law enforcement seeking information on patrons, and according to comments from an Illinois specific survey, a number felt or were told that they were not allowed to discuss the visits:

Similarly, when asked survey question number 8, “Have authorities requested any kind of information about any of your patrons since September 11, 2001?”, only twenty-seven (6.0%) public libraries and 6 (5.0%) academic libraries responded yes. In reference to this question and the secrecy provision, librarians wrote comments such as:

“By the way, it is illegal for me to answer question 8.”

Or as another wrote:

“The Patriot Act lowers the standard of proof that law enforcement officers must provide in order to view library records. It also requires secrecy from the library officials. In fact, if we’ve been served under the Patriot Act, we shouldn’t be answering question 8 on your survey.”
Another librarian commented:

“Technically, I think I shouldn’t have answered #8 according to the ‘Act’ but I’m not totally sure.”

Twelve Illinois public libraries (2.6%) and 2 academic (1.7%) reported that they did not answer questions on the survey because they believe the provisions of the USA Patriot Act prohibit them. One librarian wrote:

“While I cannot tell my board that we have been served with a search warrant, I can and do tell them each month that we haven’t been served.”

So what’s really going on here? We can’t tell the nature of these requests and it’s possible that some of the respondents misunderstood their rights, but there does appear to be widespread interest by federal counter-terrorism investigators in patron records. And if these records aren’t being sought under Section 215 but are still secret, what kind of orders are these?

Regarding the question of whether investigators will actually make visits over something as trivial as a book, there are very detailed reports that they do. See here and here for one account. He makes a good point, though:

I realize these two guys were just doing their job, which includes checking out every complaint they get no matter how bizarre or inconsequential.

How many of the library visits are like this case or the one mentioned above with the Osama bio? We don’t know.

And to clear up the question about how exactly they could go about tracking ILL requests, assuming there is a “watch list” on interlibrary loans, the most obvious way for federal officials to track it would be through OCLC since virtually all major ILL requests go through their system. And, yes, there is a patron field viewable by the lending library containing whatever information the borrowing library puts in. If federal agencies do want to track ILL requests, there is indeed a centralized system they can hook into.

In the end, my opinion is that this is just some student’s tale/rumor that got out of hand. As mentioned before, the book is widely available. Furthermore, it’s extraordinarily unlikely that federal officials are that concerned with college students studying communist writings. This just sounds way too much like the kind of thing a student would make up on the fly rather than something that happens in real life.

As for what DHS and the FBI have to say about it:

A spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security said the story seemed unlikely.
“We’re aware of the claims,” said Kirk Whitworth, a DHS spokesman in Washington, D.C. “However, the scenario sounds unlikely because investigations are based on violation of law, not on the books and individual might check out from the library.”
Mr. Whitworth pointed out that while the original story stated the student was visited by agents of the Department of Homeland Security, the DHS does not actually have its own agents. Under the umbrella of the DHS are Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Inspector General, the Bureau of Customs and Border Protection, the U.S. Secret Service, and the Coast Guard, among others.
Mr. Whitworth could not comment on the record whether the agency monitors inter-library loans, or whether there is a watch list of books that the agency maintains.
An FBI spokeswoman was similarly skeptical.
“I have never heard that we would go after someone because of a book,” said Gail Marcinkiewicz, who works in the FBI’s Boston office. “That event in itself is not a criminal activity. I can’t imagine how we would follow up something like that. Everyone is protected under the First Amendment, which would include what you would read.”

However, the unfortunate thing about incidents like this is that once they are debunked, many people then disregard anything related to the subject. That’s not good. With the recent revelations about wiretaps on US citizens, these issues need to be recognized, examined and debated more than ever.

UPDATE: Student admits he made it up:

But yesterday, the student confessed that he had made it up after being confronted by the professor who had repeated the story to a Standard-Times reporter.

The professor, Brian Glyn Williams, said he went to his former student’s house and asked about inconsistencies in his story. The 22-year-old student admitted it was a hoax, Williams said.

‘’I made it up,” the professor recalled him saying. ‘’I'm sorry. . . . I’m so relieved that it’s over.”

However, as noted in the Slashdot posting, some folks at Wikipedia found that the Wikipedia samples used by Nature were, on average, 2.5 times longer than the Britannica ones.

This is not the first comparison with similar results (here’s one from Freedom to Tinker) and there have been other examples of Britannica’s errors.

What I found particularly interesting was the knee-jerk reaction to Seigenthaler’s article, with people at many discussion boards declaring that “Wikipedia is Totally Inaccurate!!!” and therefore a useless reference source that only the most irresponsible person would touch. This is an extremely unfortunate view, and it doesn’t help that it has been echoed by many librarians.

For instance, as quick reference sources, Wikipedia and Answers.com are fantastic. Say you want some quick information on whales and even a quick list of species in the order cetacea with links to information on each species, nothing really compares to wikipedia’s combination of organization, ease of use and fairly detailed entries.

Parsons Code is a neat way of encoding melodies:

Each pair of consecutive notes is coded as “U” (”up”) if the second note is higher than the first note, “R” (”repeat”) if the pitches are equal, and “D” (”down”) otherwise. Rhythm is completely ignored. Thus, the first theme from Beethoven’s 8th symphony that is shown above would be coded DUUDDDURDRUUUU. Note that the first note of any tune is used only as a reference point and does not show up explicitly in the Parsons code. You can enter an asterisk (*) in the Parsons code field for the first note.

If that’s not your thing, you can just use this keyboard for entering your tune.

I wonder if it can find Cage’s 4′33″

I think that it is a fair generalization to say that the use of copyrighted material is much more liberal in the blogosphere than in regular print publications. If I were writing something in print, for example, I would be much more cautious about the extent to which I’m quoting and using images. But I feel more emboldened on the Internet. Why?

The reason is that the blogosphere has developed a set of copyright norms in an area where there is very little enforcement. These norms about the use of copyrighted material are probably at odds with existing copyright law. The mainstream media and other websites have not been going after bloggers for copyright violations all that much. Although the music and movie industries have been on the copyright offensive, beyond them, the enforcement of copyright on the Internet has been rather laid back.

[…]

I fear that one day copyright enforcement rain on the blogosphere’s parade if mainstream media entities and other mainstream websites see the blogosphere getting too profitable or powerful.

from BB