From: mt@MEDIA-LAB.MEDIA.MIT.EDU (Michael Travers)
Subject: Unions denied access to commercial database services
Date: 24 Dec 87 05:41:12 GMT


I came across this in InfoWorld (Nov 23, 1987).  It has some scary
implications about the desire and ability of corporations to control
access to information.  This points up the need for alternative power
structure databases such as those that were discussed on prog-d a
few months ago.

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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, librarina 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 unavailable 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 spokesoman who said that Dun & Bradstreet
had also sent his company a list of names of entities to be denied
access.

Electronic Osmosis by New York On-Line. Modem: (718) 852-2662 300/1200/2400
distributed by Ohio State University Students for Peace & Disarmament
P.O. Box 22, Ohio Student Union, 1739 N. High Street, Columbus, OH 43210
