BookFinder.com Journal

Election day, free speech pledge

We had a slow day here at BookFinder.com, with today’s 2006 US midterm elections in full swing. I spent last night doing phonebanking for a local city council candidate. Charlie did some last-minute research on some of California’s ballot propositions. And we all grumbled about ridiculous campaign ads, the runaway initiative process, and how there’s gotta be a better way.

All this thinking about politics reminds us of our civic responsibility as members of the bookselling community. The American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression picked one of the busiest days in the US news cycle to release its new Free Speech Pledge, which it encourages member booksellers to post in their stores:

To Our Customers

The shelves of this bookstore hold a wide array of titles containing ideas as diverse as the world in which we live. We believe that it is in the best interest of our community and democratic society for ideas of all kinds to be available to interested individuals, regardless of what our own tastes may be. In that spirit, we believe that censorship—whether by individuals, special interests groups, or government—damages our society.

We also believe that it is our responsibility to you, and to the First Amendment, to respect the privacy of your choice of books, magazines and other materials. We will not sell information identifying your purchases to a third party without your permission or otherwise disclose it to anyone, including the government, on our own initiative.

Amen.

[Now reading The Monkeywrench Gang by Edward Abbey]

Posted by Anirvan

Interloc wiretapping case back on track

US vs. Councilman is back on track. The 1st Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that an ISP reading its customers' mail can be tried on federal criminal charges. (More from Yahoo/AP, and Declan McCullough of News.com).

Here's how it happened:

In 1998, Interloc (the first major Internet-based listings service) was caught snooping on emails sent by Amazon.com to booksellers using Interloc's ISP business, which provided @interloc.com bookseller email addresses. Alibris, the company that acquired Interloc, quickly pled guilty, and divested itself of the ISP business.

The case continued in 2001 as US vs. Councilman, in which the government tried to prove that a former Interloc VP violated criminal wiretapping laws by having directed the email interceptions. Councilman's lawyers argued that existing federal criminal wiretapping laws did not directly apply, because the filtering did not occur during transmission, but rather, took place while the Amazon.com emails were on the Interloc email server. The District Court judge agreed, and the case was dismissed in 2003.

A three-judge panel of the Boston-based 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the dismissal in June 2004, ruling 2-1 in June 2004 that the Wiretap Act did not apply. Online privacy advocates were concerned that the ruling weakened Internet users' privacy rights. The Court voted to rehear the case in October 2004, presumably in reaction to widespread concerns about the ruling.

Yesterday, the Court ruled 5-2 that the Wiretap Act can apply even to email messages temporarily stored during delivery on an email server, allowing the government to move ahead with its original charge, and effectively leaving us back where we were in 2001.

Update: I fixed my mistake and clarified the description, as per Seth's suggestion. Thanks!

Posted by Anirvan

Interloc case affects online privacy rights

How would you feel if your ISP were secretly monitoring the contents of your email?

The results of an old legal case from the world of online bookselling is bothering online privacy advocates.

Six years ago, Interloc (the predecessor to Alibris, and the first major contemporary listings service) was involved with a case of electronic espionage -- they were caught snooping on emails sent by Amazon.com to booksellers using Interloc's affiliated ISP. As the case unfolded, the young Alibris quickly pled guilty, and divested itself of the businesses involved in the case.

The case continued as US vs. Councilman, in which the government tried to prove that that a former VP of Interloc (not an Alibris employee) violated criminal wiretapping laws by directing the capture of emails from competitors sent to booksellers on Interloc's affiliated ISP.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit just decided that the case was not a violation of criminal wiretapping laws. Online privacy advocates are worried that this weakens Internet users' privacy rights.

Read the full ruling (PDF format).

[Now Reading: The Hazing Reader edited by Hank Nuwer]

Posted by Anirvan

IOBA Standard #13

Issue 13 of the IOBA Standard is out.

Articles of interest include Dick Weatherford on Alibris' new pricing tool, Chuck Pierce (the Book Nazi) on his philosophy of new age bookselling, and Chris Finan of the ABFFE on the bookselling community's campaign to amend the Patriot Act.

[Now Reading: Day's End and Other Bangla Stories edited by Amiya Dev and Chakraborty Dasgupta]

Posted by Anirvan

Joining the ABFFE

BookFinder.com is in the process of joining the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression (ABFFE), a book industry organization working on anti-censorship issues. Although we're technically not booksellers ourselves, we share many of the same concerns as other folks in the industry, and consider it important that we safeguard our users' right to read.

The ABFFE is currently involved in ensuring that those provisions of the USA Patriot Act that give the government the power to investigate Americans' reading habits not be abused. They've been trying to raise awareness of the issue, and recently filed a Freedom of Information request with the Justice Department to force it to disclose the extent to which these new powers have been used to monitor American bookstores, libraries, and newspapers.

Posted by Anirvan