Reader Privacy Legislation Continues Journey Through California Legislature

Here’s a quick update about an interesting and important piece of legislation for readers, Reader Privacy Act, that we first posted about two weeks ago.

Since then the bill (SB No. 602) was amended for the third time (April 25, 2011) and a hearing by the Senate Appropriations Committee is scheduled for May 2, 2011.

Here’s the SB No. 602 bill history and the full text of the amended legislation here. A PDF version is also available.

Both documents show where changes were made.

Here are a few definitions found in the amended bill.

1) “Book” means paginated or similarly organized content in printed, audio, electronic, or other format, including fiction, nonfiction, academic, or other works of the type normally published in a volume or volumes.

(2) “Book service” means a service that, as its primary purpose, provides the rental, purchase, borrowing, browsing, or viewing of books.

(3) “Government entity” means any state or local agency, including, but not limited to, a law enforcement or any other investigative agency, department, division, bureau, board, or commission, or any individual acting or purporting to act for or on behalf of a state or local agency.

(4) “Personal information” means all of the following:
(A) Any information that identifies, relates to, describes, or is associated with a particular user, including, but not limited to, the information specifically listed in Section 1798.80.
(B) A unique identifier or Internet Protocol address, when that identifier or address is being used to identify, relate to,  describe, or be associated with a particular user of a book service or book, in whole or in partial form.
(C) Any information that relates to, or is capable of being associated with, a particular user’s access to or use of a book service or a book, in whole or in partial form.

(5) “Provider” means any commercial entity offering a book service to the public.

(6) “User” means any person or entity that uses a book service. (c) A provider shall not knowingly disclose to any government entity, or be compelled to disclose to any person or person, private entity, or government entity, a user’s personal information related to the use of a book or part of a book, except any personal information of a user, except under any of the following circumstances…

Full Text of Amended Bill (HTML).  Full Text Version (PDF) is also available.

We will continue to keep you posted. Also, we’re checking to see if the hearing will be streamed on the web.

Filed under: Publishing