2009 Legislative Scorecards Available

The American Library Association (ALA) released the 2009 Legislative Scorecards.

The Legislative Scorecard outlines votes and support of legislation that is important to and has an impact on the library community. Use this scorecard as a tool to gauge your elected officials' support of library related legislation.

The House and Senate Legislative Scorecards are both available in PDF format.

iAWFUL: Internet Advocate's Watchlist For Ugly Laws

iAWFUL is a NetChoice initiative dedicated to tracking the worst [proposed or passed] Internet laws in America.

Reckless and misguided laws, often originating at the state level, threaten to undermine the foundation of the free and open Internet. Some of the most serious threats to the Internet come in the form of lawmakers trying to 'fix' it.

Through this site, the Internet Advocates' Watchlist For Ugly Laws (iAWFUL) will track dangerous legislation and mobilize citizens to defeat bills and proposals that threaten the future of e-commerce and online communication. The list will be continually updated to reflect the most immediate dangers, based on regulatory severity and likelihood of passage.

You can follow and/or subscribe to NetChoice blog. You can also follow NetChoice on Twitter. Or you can subscribe via email to receive any pertinent updates.

The Current Top 10:
1. Maine Predatory Marketing Law (10 MRSA c.1055)
2. Hotel Taxes on Online Travel Companies
3. New Jersey Social Networking Bill (A 3757)
4. New iTunes Taxes Without Legislation
5. North Carolina Digital Downloads Tax Bill (HB 558/S 487)
6. North Carolina Tickets Bill (SB 99)
7. Federal Bills on Organized Retails Crime
8. Massachusetts Online Advertising Bill
9. North Carolina Advertising Nexus Proposal
10. New York Online Employment Services Taxation Issue

Check it out for yourself and let us know what you think. We look forward to reading your comments.

StateScape Billfinder

StateScape Billfinder is a policy tracking and analysis website that allows you to quickly find any state or federal bills. As the creators describe themselves,

StateScape serves organizations seeking a competitive edge in government relations by providing the fastest and most accurate legislative and regulatory information and analysis service on the market.

Further,

Bill Finder helps you find any bill eligible for consideration in the current calendar year using either keywords and phrases or bill numbers.

StateScape provides:

• Legislative and regulatory monitoring
• Coverage of all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, hundreds of localities and the federal government
• Issue analysis and political intelligence
• Real time updates and e-mail alerts
• Report formatting possibilities
• Links to customized reports with real time updates
• Customized web pages and direct data feeds

Among the search options is a quick search, legis track, and Bill finder. If you had an experience with this website, feel free to share your opinions.

Use of Open Wi-Fi

Via Legal Blog Watch, with a bit of a delay, this post by Carolyn Elefant discusses the use of open Wi-Fi and the question if such use should or should not be criminalized. For example, when traveling, lots of use need/want to check our e-mails. So, a quick search for open Wi-Fi will allow us to connect to the Internet (just to check our e-mail) without realizing we just might have committed a crime.

At present, most federal and state laws do not explicitly criminalize unauthorized use of an open Wi-Fi network. However, there are many laws designed to outlaw hacking that prohibit unauthorized access to computers -- and these laws could be construed to criminalize unauthorized access to an open Wi-Fi network.

Also check out Legal Implications of Wi-Fi Usage, at Computer Technology Review. Any thoughts, ideas, opinions, comments?

Draft of Cybersecurity Act of 2009

Via Be Specific, the staff working draft of the Cybersecurity Act of 2009 is available here.

The draft of the act starts with,

To ensure the continued free flow of commerce within the United States and with its global trading partners through secure cyber communications, to provide for the continued development and exploitation of the Internet and intranet communications for such purposes, to provide for the development of a cadre of information technology specialists to improve and maintain effective cyber security defenses against disruption, and for other purposes.

And CDT states,

A cybersecurity bill introduced April 01, 2009 in the Senate would give the federal government extraordinary power over private sector Internet services, applications and software. The Cybersecurity Act of 2009 would, for example, give the President unfettered power to shut down Internet traffic in emergencies or disconnect any critical infrastructure system or network on national security grounds.

Any thoughts, comments, suggestions, or questions?