Law Librarian Blog

Zillman's Statistics Resources and Big Data on the Internet

Marcus Zillman's LLRX feature, Statistics Resources and Big Data on the Internet, is a comprehensive listing of statistics and big data resources and sites on the Internet. "This bibliography of sources", writes Zillman, "is taken from my Subject Tracer™ Information Blog titled Statistics Resources and is constantly updated with Subject Tracer™ bots." 

These sites will help you to discover a wide range of avenues through which you may locate and leverage the latest statistics resources applicable to many different types of projects, programs and research. As this site is constantly updated it would be to your benefit to bookmark and return to the above URL frequently.

[JH]

Chief Justice Roberts Speaks

Chief Justice Roberts spoke at Rice University earlier this week as part of Rice’s centennial celebration.  Rather than giving a formal lecture, the talk was billed as a conversation with the Chief Justice.  His comments included a concern about the Constitution as applied to new technologies:

"What is the fundamental protection offered by the Constitution when applied to new technology and situations? It's a question that comes along all the time."

Justice Alito addressed this concern in one of the most recent cases, United States v. Jones where the Court confronted this issue.  That case concerned placing a GPS tracking device on a suspect’s vehicle:

The Court argues—and I agree—that “we must ‘assur[e] preservation of that degree of privacy against government that existed when the Fourth Amendment was adopted.’”  Ante, at 5 (quoting  Kyllo  v. United States, 533 U. S. 27, 34 (2001)).  But it is almost impossible to think of late-18th-century situations that are analogous to what took place in this case. (Is it possible to imagine a case in which a constable secreted himself somewhere in a coach and remained there for a period of time in order to monitor the movements of the coach’s owner?³)

³The Court suggests that something like this might have occurred in 1791, but this would have required either a gigantic coach, a very tiny constable, or both—not to mention a constable with incredible fortitude and patience.

It appears that GPS trackers were much larger at the time of the adoption of the Constitution. 

Chief Justice Roberts further addressed collegiality on the Court.  He pointed out that talk of divisiveness is untrue. There are never voices raised in anger at conferences and there is great intellectual depth on the Court.  While the press is fond of labeling Justices as liberal or conservative, many of the Court’s decisions are unanimous.  I’m not so sure about that last part myself.

The story on the talk is in the Houston Chronicle.  There is a video of the talk at the Rice University web site, courtesy of Rice’s Educational Technology Team.  [MG]

The New Labor Market: Law schools ask NALP to be more upbeat

I have been surprised recently that a number of law schools, through their dean or their office of career services, have called on NALP generally and on me specifically to develop a more positive message about the entry-level job market. One request went so far as to urge me to describe the entry-level legal employment market as good. Ah, if wishing would only make it so. -- James Leipold, NALP Executive Director

Quoting from Truth or Dare: The New Employment Market, NALP Bulletin, October 2012.

For more, see Five stages of grief on Inside the Law School Scam ("Shocking but, sadly, not surprising. Law schools have had to disclose their sobering job outcomes, but they want to reassure applicants that the market is 'fundamentally strong' and will 'turn around shortly.' Fortunately, Leipold points out that he can't say things that are false.") [JH]

Friday Fun: My Roommate, the Law Student Who Needs to Get a Life

And what happens when the roommate gets "all lawyerly" because the sink is filled with dirty dishes. [JH]

Newsweek To End Print Edition

Newsweek has announced that it will end print publication of the magazine with its December 31 edition.  The news source will become a single all-digital subscription edition called Newsweek Global.  Tina Brown and Baba Shetty made the announcement on the pages of The Daily Beast which joined with Newsweek about two years ago.  The announcement contains high hopes for capturing a tablet based user base willing to pay for news and commentary from Newsweek.  Good luck with that. 

The road to online profitability depends on the loyalty of readers drawn to unique content.  Therein lies the problem.  News alone is not unique.  Consider last Tuesday’s presidential debate.  Can’t get past a potential pay wall for Newsweek’s coverage?  Then try The Atlantic, or Time, or Slate, or The New Yorker.  There will always be alternatives for coverage to major news events that are free, and for many readers, good enough.  In fact, some of the same content will appear free on The Daily Beast web site.  How’s that for undermining the model?

I agree that the economics of maintaining print production and distribution is getting less and less viable as time goes on.  I don’t believe, however, that a subscription model will generate the kind of cash that will make the online version of Newsweek successful in a way Tina Brown envisions.  A more detailed analysis of this point is available from Reuters in an article by Felix Salmon.  Oh, and it’s free.

I’ll add one other thought not usually covered in the popular press.  I pity the poor cite checker who will have to explain to his or her law review editor that there is no permanent print version of Newsweek to verify a draft footnote.  I see this problem happening more and more at the reference desk these days. 

We’ll see if Newsweek’s transition from print to digital is profitable, or as profitable as the editors will like.  I’m not so sure that will be the case.  [MG]

Grappling with the Current Law eBook Status Quo as an Institutional Buyer

Unlike our general public library colleagues, law librarians are just beginning to grapple with the management of  Law eBooks. That's because our vendors, after a couple of failed attempts, became very careful before diving into the eBook marketplace in a systematic fashion. Business models had to be crafted. Target markets had to be identified. Sales cannibalization of current offerings had to be questimated. Platforms had to be created.

The current strategic objectives are clear:

• Maximize potential recurring revenue streams based on the vendor's current subscriber base.
• Lock-in potential eBook users by way of vendor platforms and enhancements like link-thru to vendor research services

The only real difference is buyer-focus. Individual consumers and institutional buyers by (1) owning the eBook and being able to loan eBooks by an offered vendor-provided eLending solution (Lexis) or (2) selling licensed-only access to the individual consumers (eg TR Legal)

Note well, at Boston 2012's PLL Summit, a TR Legal rep mumbled something about "looking into" eLending as a panelist when asked the question from the audience. WK's panelist ignored the topic of the session completely, opting instead to give a pitch for the Company's eBook platform. To his credit, only LN's panelist actually addressed the topic at hand and had the guts to say "print is dead." By that I believe he meant that Law eBooks eventually will replace their p-Book editions as the dominant content delivery system. Professionally, I happen to agree with that forecast; Print-on-Demand will be "Plan B." But there is still a lot of work to do for eBook-ing content integration that maximizes the technological benefits of professional grade enhanced Law eBooks as well as managing a Law eBook collection to resolve institutional buyer issues.

Test driving Law eBooks in the private sector. Bess Reynolds descusses the eBook trials her law firm, Debevoise & Plimpton LLP, ran with LexisNexis, Thomson Reuters and Wolters Kluwers in 2011 at The Challenges of E-Books in Law Firm Libraries. In her article, Bess identifies a number of Law eBook problems experienced by the library from the perspective of being the provider of eBooks to the firm's users. She concludes that "the vendors have made the entire experience of acquiring, distributing and supporting e-books far too complicated. ... [L]icensing and digital rights management ... add[s] additional complexity. Pricing is another issue to consider, with Thomson specifically charging a premium for e-books over print. Lexis is keeping prices the same, and Wolters Kluwer offers discounts if you purchase both formats."

For the moment, according to her linked-to June 2012 survey of 85 law firm librarians, the adoption rate of eBooks is low. While I believe eBooks sales will increase eventually, adoption rates will be constricted by a number of issues Bess identifies. They include tie-ins to vendor research services not accessible by end users, eBooks being vendor platform dependent, and the inability of institutional buyers to manage their own eBook collections by integrated hosting such as Adobe Content Server for user discovery (which, of course includes eLending) and library collection management purposes.

Law eBooks in the public sector. In a recent internal planning and budgeting memo (lightly edited for LLB publication below), I addressed enhanced Law eBooks in the context of a county law library that funds p- and e-resources for government stakeholders which are delivered to their workplaces and local attorneys and members of the general public in our county law library. The issues Bess presents in the context of law firm libraries are similar to ones government libraries have.

The current state of the art in enhanced Law eBooks is beginning to require serious consideration for longer term planning purposes. The following factors, however, must be taken into consideration. The review is fairly detailed because Law eBooks are not similar to general trade eBooks.

• Unlike general trade titles, the pricing of enhanced Law eBooks is equal to or greater than print title editions. The possibility of volume discounts for specific titles remains an open question at this time. The availability of desirable eBook titles from each publisher’s sales catalog is increasing.
• Enhanced Law eBooks link to each vendor’s own “next generation” database service and thus are fully functional only if the eBook user has access to that vendor’s service.
• Only one of our major vendors (Lexis) provides its eBooks with an electronic lending solution at this time. There is an opportunity here to reduce print spending in the library collection as well as for our in-office users by acquiring that publisher’s eBook titles for electronic lending eventually.
• Cannibalization of print sales and database sales by increased sales of Law eBooks as they become more popular will increase the cost of print and legal database research services in the future.
• As with all technological innovations, acceptance of enhanced Law eBooks will be slow but will increase. For many resources, enhanced Law eBook are more usable than the database versions of the same content. Law eBooks also may become a viable alternative for their print editions used by in-house users in their workplaces. 

End note. Bess Reynolds' The Challenges of E-Books in Law Firm Libraries is one contribution to a compilation of articles published in AALL-ILTA's The New Librarian white paper. [JH]

What Do You Think of Congress.gov?

Here's what Matthew Mantel thinks of the beta replacement for Thomas, New is Not Always Better -- It's Just New: Legislative Research edition, on Nota Bene.

End note. For those "how a bill becomes a law" lectures, see The Legislative Process mini-webinars hosted on Congress.gov for student assignments. [JH]

Justice Scalia On Church And State

Justice Scalia spoke recently at Washington’s Catholic Information Center.  The details are in the National Catholic Register.  One of the topics that came up was the religious makeup of the Court, which now stands at six Catholics and three Jews.  He chalks it up to a decline in religiosity:

“The fact that the Supreme Court consists of — what now? — six Catholics and three Jews: I would like to believe that it’s because of more religious toleration, but I think it’s actually because of indifference.”

Justice Scalia is consistent with the latest Pew Report on religion and public life:

The Landscape Survey confirms that the United States is on the verge of becoming a minority Protestant country; the number of Americans who report that they are members of Protestant denominations now stands at barely 51%. Moreover, the Protestant population is characterized by significant internal diversity and fragmentation, encompassing hundreds of different denominations loosely grouped around three fairly distinct religious traditions - evangelical Protestant churches (26.3% of the overall adult population), mainline Protestant churches (18.1%) and historically black Protestant churches (6.9%).

While those Americans who are unaffiliated with any particular religion have seen the greatest growth in numbers as a result of changes in affiliation, Catholicism has experienced the greatest net losses as a result of affiliation changes. While nearly one-in-three Americans (31%) were raised in the Catholic faith, today fewer than one-in-four (24%) describe themselves as Catholic. These losses would have been even more pronounced were it not for the offsetting impact of immigration.

Justice Scalia’s expressed views on the separation of church and state seem downright moderate:

Scalia went further, drawing on the evidence of the Gospels to support the notion that the church and state hold authority in separate realms. Christ’s words and actions, he said, make it clear “that the state is not the source of man’s power, nor of his religion. … Its focus should not be with the hereafter, but with the here: ensuring a safe, just and prosperous society.”

And further:

“My message is: Don’t place your hope in politics,” Scalia said. “That is not your salvation. … Certainly, good government should abide by the natural law. And, as the Catholic Church teaches, natural law prohibits certain things, such as abortion, that Catholics in public life can oppose.”

The rest of the article is worth reading.  [MG]

Risk Averse Mimicry in the Executive Suites of Our Very Expensive Legal Information Providers

The history of the consolidation in the US legal publishing industry is fairly well documented. We have the big two national players now, TR Legal and Lexis for p- and e-content delivery to the generalist market, and the little two, WK, clearly narrow-focused on speciality law in the private sector, and BLaw which didn't have a snowball's chance in hell of garnering its targeted 15% of the private sector until it acquired the editiorial quality rich p- and e-content and customer base of BNA at a substantial premium. Still got some work ahead to achieve its 5-year plan objective but you can bet that WEXIS execs view BLaw-BNA as a competitive, disruptive threat to the status quo in the only market segment that really matters.

Just look at the acquisition of, joint-ventures in, and standalone development of legal news reporting web-based properties by WEXIS modeled in no small part of BNA's p- and e-based topical reports such as Daily Tax Reports and Daily Labor Reports due in no small part to BLaw acquiring BNA. Current awareness service in the private sector when the staff reporters and editors have the expertise to know how to distinguish what is relevant from what is just "noise" are not only valuable in and of themselves but lead to preforming legal research.

My hunch is that someday our email in-boxes will be filled with WEXIS legal news and developments webinar announcements like our in-boxes are with webinar notices from BLaw and WK now. By someday, I mean WEXIS will have to compete with BLaw and WK to acquire expert practitioners to produce them. "Brand name" authors from their current sales catalogs just won't do. 

This, however, is not the point of this post. What is not well documented is the transfer of corporate expertise and competitive intel between our major vendors by way of career moves. Executive A from vendor X moves to vendor Y. Executive B from vendors Y and Z, moves to vendor X. This happens frequently, sometimes even without much, if any, non-compete clause time lapse.

I'm not talking about account reps who get sales reorg-ed out of their jobs or decide to move to a new vendor after a sales re-org, oftentimes only after their non-compete clause's "time-out," and sometimes produced by a sale re-organizer hired after re-org-ing a competitior. I am referring to those corporate decider-ers whose careers advance by moving from vendor to vendor to vendor in what is the very small town of legal publishing. Can you blame them? I certainly don't. But there are market-based consequences. Our vendors end up using essentially the same "game play" that yields nothing more than incremental changes in marketing, sales, content generation, and research platforms.

Most changes are mimicry like the above-mentioned legal news and current awareness delivery systems. Other may someday actually benefit legal professional content end-users and their institutional buyers. For example, TR Legal is p-format "switcheroo-ing" some of its long ago acquired and larely neglected "loose-leaf" narrow-focused secondary source smaller multi-volume treatises to paperbacks to eventually sell them as enhanced eBooks. The Company, however, is going to have to ratchet up those titles' editorial quality to make then competitive with current offerings by BLaw-BNA and WK in the private sector marketplace. Clearly, the industry's focus is and has always been the private sector but the times they are a-changin.

Both TR Legal and Lexis also have been rolling out smaller topical multi-volume practice-oriented loose-leaf sets as alternatives to gargantuan multi-volume comprehensive "treatise" sets for eventual enhanced eBook-ing. And then there are the WEXIS next gen current gen research platforms. User experience is so similar now that transitioning a user population from one to another platform will not produce the sort of user anxiety attacks that occurred with transitioning users from one vendor's "Classic" service to the other vendor's "Classic" service. Oops.

What is interesting is the strategic mimicry taking place based in no small part because of the hiring of a competitor's executives. This "industry in-breeding" produces a very real risk averse attitude that negates serious consideration of innovation in the development of "professional legal services" including the delivery of legal resources acquired by institutional buyers, you know -- us.

Perhaps someday someone (not me) will map out the genealogy of TR L&P, Lexis L&P, WK L&R and BLaw (not yet "L&P" or "L&R" but with "-BNA") current corporate decider-ers based on their career paths by way of their corporate bios and Linkedin profiles (hint). It could be much more interesting then the timelines that have been produced to show the history of mergers and consolidations in the US legal publishing industry. [JH]

Authors Guild Responds To Loss In HathiTrust Case

The Authors Guild isn’t getting the love it would like from the courts these days.  It opposed the settlement between three publishers and the Justice Department in the e-book price fixing case.  The Association of American Publishers settled with Google, effectively leaving the Guild to continue the fight on its own.  Then there was the loss in the HathiTrust case which looks as if it could affect the Guild’s legal position that scanning an entire work is not fair use.  Judge Baer ruled that despite the volume of books used, the online word index created out of the scans was transformative and fell under fair use.  Other than arguing that displaying snippets is out of bounds, Judge Baer’s opinion may give Judge Chin some cover in ruling on the issue. 

I wrote about the Guild’s loss in the HathiTrust case last week.  The Guild’s response came on Friday.  Curiously, there wasn’t much in the statement about fair use other than a generic sentence noting the Guild’s disagreement with every aspect of the ruling.  The bulk of the statement attacks the ruling in the Orphan Works Project where the University of Michigan had planned to make available in-copyright books where the rights holder could not be located.  The University did an admittedly bad job at identifying an orphan work and stopped the program until the standards for identification could be reevaluated.  Judge Baer ruled that since the program is not going forward there was not controversy to address.  The Guild’s reaction: 

“The so-called orphan works program was quickly shown to be a haphazard mess, prompting Michigan to suspend it,” said Paul Aiken, the Guild’s executive director. “But the temptation to find reasons to release these digitized books clearly remains strong, and the university has consistently pledged to reinstate the orphan works program. The court’s decision leaves authors around the world at risk of having their literary works distributed without legal authority or oversight.” 

We’ll be discussing the decision with our colleagues and co-plaintiffs in Europe, Canada, and Australia and expect to announce our next steps shortly. 

I would expect Michigan to come up with tighter standards if they plan to offer the program again.  I wonder, though, if the Guild will be allowed to represent “persons or persons unknown” if the issue goes to litigation for a second time.  I expect the Guild to appeal the most recent decision.  I’ll be interested in their arguments on fair use.  I think that is the more interesting aspect of the litigation.  [MG]

Tie-ins Between eContent and eCommerce

Here's just one example:

Hearst’s Harper’s Bazaar introduced ShopBazaar, a website owned by the magazine that features merchandise from its print pages—part of the magazine’s broader effort to diversify revenue. It is a “true content-to-commerce venture”, an editorial site that allows readers to buy the products that Harper’s Bazaar editors have curated to fit their tastes and the brand’s identity.

Quoting from Pam Horan's (Online Publishers Association) Lean Back 2.0 article, Commerce through content. Horan adds

These innovative, editorial-minded approaches to e-commerce allow publishers to provide a convenient service to their loyal audience that enhances the overall user experience. One of the beauties of the digital age is instant-gratification: why simply mention quality products, when you can help your readers shop for them right from the page or website?

How long do you think it will be before our major vendors promote their wares to "enhance the overall user experience" because "that's what our customers want" by way of their search services? Imagine, for example, a message like this:

This source is blocked from your license but you can use your user account to acquire the title in print or eBook at {insert publication's direct link on vendor's eCommerce site].

See also No Business Model Required.

Might be wise to start drafting addendums now to add to your vendors' boilerplate search licenses when they come up for renewal if you don't want to be stuck picking up the tap. I'm already working on two:

1. Sales transactions based on user accounts will not paid without prior authorization from [insert title or name of institutional buyer's license contact] because user accounts are solely for the purpose of performing research; and
2. Contact from the vendor to any and all users based on information provided for user account establishment is strictly prohibited. This includes but is not limited to contacting any user for sales promotions, sending unsolicited research tips and instructions, and follow-ups after a user views a vendor-hosted "how-to" video.

Too extreme? If "[o]ne of the beauties of the digital age is instant-gratification," I don't think so. [JH]

A Constitutional Challenge to Virginia's State FOIA as It Applies to Non-Residents

On Oct. 5, 2012, the Supreme Court granted cert in McBurney v. Young, 12-17 [SCOTUSblog case page] a case involving a state's power to grant access to its public records to its own citizens but deny access to non-residents under the rarely interpreted Privileges and Immunities Clause and the dormant Commerce Clause. For background, see Courthouse News reports Out-of-Staters Take Info Access Dispute to D.C. and Out-of-Staters Have No Claim to Virginia Files (Covers 4th Circuit ruling at 667 F.3d 454). [JH]

Supreme Court To Hear Case On Applying The First Sale Doctrine To Foreign Goods

One of the more interesting cases the Supreme Court is taking up this term is Kirtsaeng v. John Wiley & Sons, Inc. (11-697).  The case is set for argument on October 29 [Corrected. Original Post said the 22nd].  Here are the questions presented:

This case presents the issue that recently divided this Court, 4-4, in Costco Wholesale Corp. v. Omega, S.A., 131 S. Ct. 565 (2010). Under § 602(a)(1) of the Copyright Act, it is impermissible to import a work "without the authority of the owner" of the copyright. But the first-sale doctrine, codified at § 109(a), allows the owner of a copy "lawfully made under this title" to sell or otherwise dispose of the copy without the copyright owner's permission.

The question presented is how these provisions apply to a copy that was made and legally acquired abroad and then imported into the United States. Can such a foreign-made product never be resold within the United States without the copyright owner's permission, as the Second Circuit held in this case? Can such a foreign-made product sometimes be resold within the United States without permission, but only after the owner approves an earlier sale in this country, as the Ninth Circuit held in Costco? Or can such a product always be resold without permission within the United States, so long as the copyright owner authorized the first sale abroad, as the Third Circuit has indicated?

The case has some implications for libraries that may be purchasing foreign books through third parties, or potentially limiting what a library may do with these books.  There are all kinds of possibilities, practical or otherwise depending on the outcome of the case.  It may seem absurd to suggest a library may not place a de-accessioned book into a sale bin without permission of the publisher, but that could indeed be a result.  Consumers may be affected by this decision as well.

The first sale doctrine certainly applies to items manufactured in the United States, but the decisions by the Ninth, Second, and Third Circuits noted above make this an open question.  The facts in the case before the Supreme Court are best expressed in the Second Circuit’s opinion:

Defendant Supap Kirtsaeng ("defendant" or "Kirtsaeng") moved to the United States from Thailand in 1997 to pursue an undergraduate degree in mathematics at Cornell University. According to Kirtsaeng, he later moved to California to pursue a doctoral degree.

B. The Instant Action

To help subsidize the cost of his education, Kirtsaeng allegedly participated in the following scheme: Between 2007 and September 8, 2008, Kirtsaeng's friends and family shipped him foreign edition textbooks printed abroad by Wiley Asia. In turn, Kirtsaeng sold these textbooks on commercial websites such as eBay.com. Using the revenues generated from the sales, Kirtsaeng would reimburse his family and friends for the costs that they incurred during the process of acquiring and shipping the books and then keep any remaining profits for himself. Kirtsaeng claims that, before selling the textbooks, he sought advice from friends in Thailand and consulted "Google Answers," a website which allows web users to seek research help from other web users, to ensure that he could legally resell the foreign editions in the United States.

The evidence showed that Kirtsaeng had about $1.2 million in PayPal revenues from his textbook business.  I’ll mention somewhat parenthetically that when seeking advice on setting up an import business, Google Answers and advice of friends may not offer the best information or substitute for competent legal advice.  The trial court in Kirtsaeng held that the first sale doctrine did not apply to goods manufactured outside of the United States.  The Second Circuit agreed, holding that the right of foreign manufacturers to control their distribution granted under §602 of the Copyright Act would have no meaning if the first sale doctrine in §109(a) applied.  A summary of the Second Circuit Opinion is in 16 Intell. Prop. L. Bull. 95 (2011).

The Third Circuit said quite the opposite in Sebastian Intern., Inc. v. Consumer Contacts (PTY) Ltd., 847 F. 2d 1093 (1988):

Section 602(a) does not purport to create a right in addition to those conferred by section 106(3), but states that unauthorized importation is an infringement of "the exclusive [section 106(3)] right to distribute copies." Because that exclusive right is specifically limited by the first sale provisions of § 109(a), it necessarily follows that once transfer of ownership has cancelled the distribution right to a copy, the right does not survive so as to be infringed by importation. The preliminary injunction was granted on the basis of an erroneous reading of the law and therefore must be vacated.

The Supreme Court would have answered the question as to whether the first sale doctrine applies to foreign manufactured goods in the Costco case but for the 4-4 split due to Justice Kagan’s recusal.  The United States has filed an amicus brief supporting Wiley’s position.  The argument transcript in the Costco case is here for those looking for a preview of the Kirtsaeng case.  Justice Kagan’s questions should be particularly interesting, assuming the other Justices haven’t changed their position since last year. [MG]

Harvard University Library Transitions into the "Digital Future"

Recently Harvard University Library launched its new web portal in beta. For details, see the Harvard Gazette's Library in transition: Harvard moves rapidly into digital future, while preserving past and the University Library's Vision Statement. The Vision Statement includes the following animation entitled "The Future of the Harvard Library". [JH]

Romney And Obama Want To Know Your Online Porn Habits (And More)

Here’s a little piece of fun courtesy of the New York Times via CNET.  Getting the vote out for the upcoming presidential election now includes campaign workers armed with voter personal information mined from the web.  From the New York Times:

Strategists affiliated with the Obama and Romney campaigns say they have access to information about the personal lives of voters at a scale never before imagined. And they are using that data to try to influence voting habits — in effect, to train voters to go to the polls through subtle cues, rewards and threats in a manner akin to the marketing efforts of credit card companies and big-box retailers.

How detailed is that information?  It gets a bit, uh, intimate:

The callers will be guided by scripts and call lists compiled by people — or computers — with access to details like whether voters may have visited pornography Web sites, have homes in foreclosure, are more prone to drink Michelob Ultra than Corona or have gay friends or enjoy expensive vacations.

A Romney campaign official is quoted as saying the analytical efforts shouldn’t be obvious otherwise voters get creeped out.  No kidding.  Most people seem oblivious when Google and Facebook have the goods on them for purposes of marketing.  How about giving this same demographic information to politicians?  It’s not the government knowing about your life, but it is the people who want to be part of the government.  As the song goes, how do you like me now? Both campaigns say they protect an individual’s privacy and operate within the law.  Oh, that makes me feel soooooo much better.  And patriotic.

And how do the campaigns get access to this information?  The same way any major marketer would:

In interviews, however, consultants to both campaigns said they had bought demographic data from companies that study details like voters’ shopping histories, gambling tendencies, interest in get-rich-quick schemes, dating preferences and financial problems. The campaigns themselves, according to campaign employees, have examined voters’ online exchanges and social networks to see what they care about and whom they know. They have also authorized tests to see if, say, a phone call from a distant cousin or a new friend would be more likely to prompt the urge to cast a ballot.

The campaigns have planted software known as cookies on voters’ computers to see if they frequent evangelical or erotic Web sites for clues to their moral perspectives. Voters who visit religious Web sites might be greeted with religion-friendly messages when they return to mittromney.com or barackobama.com. The campaigns’ consultants have run experiments to determine if embarrassing someone for not voting by sending letters to their neighbors or posting their voting histories online is effective.

Now we know why there will never, ever be strict privacy laws regarding web habits.  [MG]

The Google Books Litigation Family Tree

The Google Books Litigation Family Tree [pdf] was developed by Jonathan Band, Library Copyright Alliance, and designed by Tricia Donovan, Association of Research Libraries. Hat tip to Gary Price's InfoDocket post. [JH]

The Google Books Litigation Family Tree