mt@debussy.media-lab.media.mit.edu (Michael Travers) (03/09/91)
This is from InfoWorld a few years back (Nov 23, 1987). It has some scary implications about the desire and ability of corporations to control access to information. Does anybody have any more current informationm about this case? ---------------------------------------------------------------- Restricted Access Riles Dialog Users by Jeff Angus and Alice LaPlante Subscribers to on-line databases may increasingly see the words "unauthorized file" when they try to use certain services, if a recent trend continues unchecked. Last week, Dialog Information Services, a carrier of Dun & Bradstreet financial databases--including the now-restricted Dun's Financial Records--told labor union librarians that they would no longer be able to access certain files. "If it's allowed to go on, this could set a precedent for a wide range of discrimination in online services, which are essentially public utilities," said Randy Barber, a financial consultant with the Center for Economic Organizing, in Washington. This time the discrimination is aimed specifically at labor unions and possibly the IRS, according to Barber. But if online services such as Dialog can cut off certain subscribers simply because of fears about how the data will be used, the next step could be routinely forbidding customers to access certain files at the slightest hint of an adversarial motive, according to Barber. "It could get to the point where you'd have to have a demonstrably benign reason to access certain data," said Barber. "This precedent could have severe repercussions on the free market for ideas." According to the AFL-CIO's librarian, Ruby Tyson, when she first got the "unauthorized file" message while trying to access the Dun database, she was referred by Dialog to the New Jersey office of Dun & Bradstreet On-line Services, where a spokesman told her a list of 240 "entities" had been compiled and sent to Dialog with the instructions to deny access to any person or organization on that list. "We were told it wasn't just unions but other groups, including the IRS," Tyson said, adding that Dun & Bradstreet hinted the ban might be extended to other databases as well. Both Dialog Information Services and Dun & Bradstreet refused to comment, but Marvin Hrubes, an attorney representing the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union (UFCW), sent a letter to both organizations charging that Dun & Bradstreet's actions constitute tortuous interference with the UFCW's contract with Dialog and are violations of the National Labor Relations Act and the civil rights laws of both California and the District of Columbia. Tyson as well as Ellen Newton, librarian of the United Food & Commercial Workers International, say Dun's on-line information can be gathered through hard copies of the data. But this defeats the purpose of subscribing to an on-line service since researching and tabulating data manually using hard copy is complex and time-consuming, they said. Tyson and Newton find the Dun move and Dialog's assent to it not only an inconvenience, because the service is so productive, but also an offense to their librarians' sense of the appropriate access to information, they added. "We think it's a serious matter and something that causes concern for libraries in their role of providing access to the broadest possible diversity of ideas," said Patrice McDermott, the assistant director of the Office for Intellectual Freedom of the American Library Association. Newton added that he has seen the information spreading. "Dun & Bradstreet has also knocked us off of Data Times," he said. "We just got a message saying that Dun's database service is unabailable under our agreement, which can't be true because we haven't signed any new agreement since Data Times added the Dun Service." Newton spoke to a Data Times spokesman who said that Dun & Bradstreet had also sent his company a list of names of entities to be denied access.