Washington, D.C.
October 14-16, 1998

Confronting the Challenges of the Digital Era

Federal Relations Luncheon
Convened by Fred Heath, Chair
ARL Information Policies Committee

Good afternoon. My name is Fred Heath, and I am Chair of the Information Policies Committee, and as such, it my privilege to welcome you to today’s Federal Relations Luncheon. We will be hearing from Prue Adler, ARL's Assistant Executive Director for Federal Relations and Information Policy, and Arnie Lutzker on the current legislative session. I think there’s much we can celebrate for a job well done, but Prue, ever the vigilant and cautious one, reminds me that there’s a little more work to be done, as you’ll hear from her later.

But we have much to be thankful for and many people to thank for the work that was done in this session. And I hope that when Prue comes up, she’ll give a feel for some of the many people that participated in the work this session. First, you’ll hear from Prue, and she will then introduce Arnie Lutzker who had an important role to play in this session as well.

Following this I will come back up, direct any questions after Arnie finishes his remarks, and then we’ll work on getting back to our next session. With that I’d like to invite Prue to come up and make some remarks.

Remarks by Prudence Adler, Assistant Executive Director

Federal Relations & Information Policy, ARL

Welcome. This has become a regular event in the Fall and the Spring, and we see it as a very nice opportunity to bring everybody up to date. This time around, I would like to take the opportunity to say a number of thank yous. To start with, I would like to thank all of you who sent many letters, made phone calls, sent in E-mails, and responded to my increasingly urgent faxes and alerts on copyright and intellectual property.

We would not be where we are on the digital agenda if it were not for your calls. That is the reason that Arnie Lutzker will be able to describe what he does this afternoon, he was at the negotiating table because your letters got him to the table. I cannot stress that enough. So thank you very much.

My second thank you is to Peter Jaszi. He is well known to many of you. He spoke last Spring in Eugene. What may not be as well known to you is that other than his day job as a professor of law at American University’s Washington School of Law, he is also the founder of the Digital Future Coalition. Please join me in thanking Peter for his extraordinary commitment to ensuring that over the last several years there has been a strong public voice as Congress considered copyright legislation. Thank you, Peter. I cannot tell you how tireless he’s been to keep us together, to keep us focused, and to do much of the legal analysis that was called for.

Finally, it is my pleasure to introduce you to someone and at the same time unfortunately to ask you to say good-bye, and that is to Laurel Jamtgaard who has been with ARL for six months.

About a year ago, I received a letter from Laurel suggesting she came to work for a library association to do some public policy work. A little bit of a review of her resume might be in order. She’s a graduate of the Boalt School of Law at Berkeley. She was editor and chief of the Technology Journal and she organized Students Against the Communications Decency Act. That should tell us something.

She held a number of positions at Oracle in the technical and consulting arena, and she also did a brief stint at the Federal Communications Commission in the Common Carrier Bureau. Last but not least, the person who sent her our way was Pam Samuelson. I think that speaks volumes. I think you’ll agree that her timing was extraordinary. We’ve kept her very busy over the last six months, and I think we should extend particular thanks for her energies on the Uniform Commercial Code, UCC 2B. For example, see her excellent article "Licenses and Information Policy: An Update on UCC Article 2B" in ARL Bimonthly Report #198 (June 1998) http://www.arl.org/newsltr/198/ucc2b.html.

Laurel has moved the library community forward and advanced our interests on UCC issues quite amazingly, and also on database issues. Over the last few weeks, we’ve helped her in her transition to a new law firm by having her respond to almost hourly demands by the Senate staff on new drafts of database legislation. We could not have done it without her.

I think it’s very important to note that the library community beyond ARL has made Laurel’s stay with us possible. ALA and the Special Libraries Association both helped to support Laurel’s time over the last six months. This is another demonstration of how the community pulling together can really make a difference, because it has literally doubled our support for intellectual property issues over the last six months. Please join me in thanking Laurel.

(Applause.)

Now I will introduce today's speaker, Arnie Lutzker. You have heard him before. He and Peter Jaszi actually spoke at this luncheon several years ago when the legislation was just introduced. So I think it’s fitting to have them both here today. Arnie Lutzker represents the five library associations in the shared legal capability, and he has been our community’s voice at the table throughout all of the discussions over the last three years: On term extension, on database, on on-line service provider liability, on fair use, preservation, distance education and more.

His knowledge of copyright and intellectual property is really extraordinary, but I think something that we have all learned through this process is his patience and his very calm manner—particularly compared to some of the content providers, who are by no means calm when they sit down at a negotiating table. This has garnered him a very deep respect from the House and Senate staff, and I think that has gotten us where we are.

In the midst of all of this activity this past summer, Arnie and his wife, Susan, just opened Lutzker and Lutzker so that they could focus on non-profit ventures. In this new venture of Lutzker and Lutzker he was also a special legal advisor for a show that many of you may have seen. It’s the traveling art exhibit, “Jewels of the Romanovs: Treasures of the Imperial Court.” He is now working on a new art show that I think you’ll look forward to seeing in the next year or so, the show from the Topkapi Palace, Istanbul, Turkey. Please welcome me in joining Arnie Lutzker.

(Applause.)