Down the well-greased ways of paid political influence

HR 3261, a bill to allow database publishers to exercise monopoly control over the information cited in their databases, is obviously on a specially-prepared legislative fast track, and has already been rushed to approval in the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Courts, the Internet and Intellectual Property. Votes were party-line, with Republicans in favor of paying off the the well-monied publishing industry by approving the bill and Democrats opposing.

In an embarrassingly cowardly "I've-got-mine-Jack" moment, the Association of American Universities, the American Council on Education, and the National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges withdrew their opposition to the bill after legislators consented to throw them a bone by exempting universities and research labs from the prohibitions on disseminating information from databases.

The intent of the bill may be judged by the fact that an amendment offered by Rick Boucher, a Virginia Democrat, which would have exempted other libraries from such prohibitions, was explicitly voted down.

Allow me to repeat that for the benefit of those who were not listening. AN AMENDMENT PERMITTING LIBRARIES TO DISSEMINATE INFORMATION FROM DATABASES WITHOUT BEING SUED WAS EXPLICITLY VOTED DOWN.

Not exactly subtle, are they?

This information was primarily drawn from an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education, which does not (yet) have the power to sue me for discussing events and information that I read about there.