This episode is the "Publisher-Platform Data Relationships" panel from our Exploring the Anti-Ownership Ebook Economy event. It was recorded on October 27, 2023.
Announcer 0:01
Welcome to engelberg center live a collection of audio from events held by the engelberg center on innovation Law and Policy at NYU Law. This episode is the publisher platform data relationships panel from our exploring the anti ownership ebook economy event. It was recorded on October 27 2023.
Talya Cooper 0:25
My name is Talia Cooper, I'm coming to you from around the corner at NYU libraries. It's wonderful to be here to see a number of my colleagues from over the libraries here. And to continue to build our relationship with the engelberg center and library features. It's a great resource to have for us. And it's great for you all to have some, you know, test test drive librarians around the corner to try your ideas out on. I'm a research creation librarian, and my background is in data preservation. I'm also a former colleague of Sam's from the intercept. So my interest in this panel, which is about platform publisher, data relationships, largely stems from questions around the surveillance, economy surveillance and data capitalism. We're also very sad that the the moderator who's sorry, who I'm very sorry, on your behalf that I'm replacing because she's really remarkable. And, you know, a huge influence in the world of librarianship and thinking about these issues of Sarah Landon and her work data cartels has really been revelatory to those of us in libraries, and thinking about how the companies that we tend to think of as platforms or publishers are really deeply embedded, and in some cases at the heart of the data economy. So what does this mean for us? What does this mean for our users? And so without further ado, I'll introduce the panel very briefly. Annalee Hickman Pearson is a law library faculty member at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah. She is the head of reference and Faculty Services for the BYU Law Library and as a professor for the first year legal research courses at BYU law. Sam Biddle is a Los Angeles based writer and technology reporter at the intercept, where he focuses on matters of privacy, surveillance and security. Melanie Walsh is an assistant professor in the Information School at the University of Washington. Her research interests include data science, digital humanities, cultural analytics, contemporary literature, and library and information science. And, you know, feel free to add on your various qualifications if I've missed anything important. So I thought that I begin with a pretty broad question, that what is actually a quote from an article that Anna Lee and I anti hate wrote, entitled The eBook wars, state legislation and the protection of robust library collections. And I was really struck by this quote, it's an aniline, I antha, rode, the extreme level of Publisher control over information has arguably not been seen in the Anglo American world since the days of Queen Mary, when copyright was used as a tool to control religious and political dissent. So the kind of broad question that I like to pose to the group is, in your different work and research, how have you seen platforms publishers, and the data brokers who kind of are present in data transactions between them, combining forces and or working independently, to control access to information?
Annalee Hickman Pierson 4:01
I guess since I was a quote from my co authored article. And I will say, you know, we prep that quote beforehand, and then based off the last session, you know, it might or in the intro, Michael talks about, you know, everyone is has rational reasons for why they do what they do. And maybe if you read my article, you might think that my co author and I don't, I don't quite think that so we probably use stronger language than maybe others in the room might agree to so I apologize if that's a little offensive, but I would just say, and I'll leave some of the discussion I see a lot from the law school to Sam and his work that he's done as a journalist in one of these areas, but in some of the other areas, you know, one of the big ones is just, we feel some of us, at least my co author and I feel like There is a lot of control to the information by publishers putting embargoes on a lot of titles so that libraries can't purchase them right away when the public can purchase them for themselves. There's an increasing cost. So they sell it to libraries at a much higher amount than they sell if you were to buy it individually as a person, and that we think that that controls then what access the public who use libraries to read or listen to literary materials, how that, you know, impacts them, and those that do rely on library services, to get information and read these books and educate themselves in that way. And I would say, maybe another thing that we see a lot is that, and this will be the segue to Sam. Especially for law libraries, we rely heavily on two major platforms, Lexis and Westlaw to teach legal research to our students. And also part of Sarah Landon's work, you know, they, in she's got quotes in her book, how, you know, years ago, both of these platforms would talk about like, oh, you know, we're just, we're just we are, we're providing this, this platform for you. And we're publishing some of our own stuff, too, like making our own annotated codes or, you know, publishing treatises and putting them on here and things like that. But it's grown much further to then now we're actually going to take the data from, you know, the searches you're running, or the sources you're looking at, or, and a lot of law libraries have access to Lexis and Westlaw that the public can come in and use. And we're gonna, you know, now sell that or use that or give it to, you know, ice or something like that. So that's my little segue into into what Sam can tell us more about that, how they're working together to kind of give information that maybe we don't want given through this data to groups or controlling it and other ways.
Sam Biddle 7:17
Yeah, that's, I agree with all of that, completely. I think there's also a sort of a countervailing force when it comes to the flow of data that isn't about restriction. But in many sense, a lot of these companies that work with enormous pools of data are I think, incentivized to let that data flow freely, because the more people interact with, again, I'm using data with a capital D here, it doesn't have to be books or publishing data. But the more you're able to get people, ordinary people, as many of them as possible to interact with any kind of data, the more than data points you can collect on that data usage and repackage and resell. So, you know, there is, I think, a sense in which control and restriction over access to, you know, written material is very, very real concern, but then you have this sort of completely opposite incentive to get people clicking and scrolling and tapping and touching as much as they can, you know, again, to turn that into a brand new data product that in the case of a platform like LexisNexis, they turn around, and we'll repackage that as a bespoke product for federal law enforcement. And I think another form of control, broadly speaking, that is relevant here is control over what the public is able to know about these companies. I mean, LexisNexis, advertises to its law enforcement customers that they have 10,000 different data points on almost 300 million people with 99.99% accuracy. We have a pretty good idea of what some of those data points are, thanks to the scholarship and research of someone like Sarah, but the other 9900 and whatever are unknown, and, you know, a matter of corporate secrecy. They're not subject to public records requests or the Freedom of Information Act. And so we don't know what that information is. And, you know, I There are reasons we can discuss a little later about why it matters. But I think I think that's a very meaningful form of control over consumer data that is at work here.
Melanie Walsh 9:37
Yeah, so my perspective on this question comes from research that I've done about the Data Broker bookscan, which owns the most comprehensive source of book sales data in the world and bookscan in the US used to be owned by Nielsen and was sold to NPD Group which just merged with another company and now it's called Sir Canna. But for the past 20 or 25 years basically since bookscan started, the book sales data that they have has become a huge influence on the publishing industry. So the editors who have spoke to who I've spoken to, for this work, have talked about how it is a huge factor in which books get acquired and which books don't. The sociologists, Clayton children's has done work on this as well. And he's talked about how bad book sales numbers are like a bad credit score. And it will make it really hard for an author to get a book deal or get their book acquired. And bookscan data is only available to people who work in the publishing industry. So these are publishing houses, but also agents and booksellers and authors. But if you're not in the publishing industry, they don't let you have access to this data. So that includes academics and journalists and anybody else who might be interested. And in the US, this was sort of a recent about face, because they used to allow academics to access this data. And then they just sort of decided to change their policy. And nobody can access the data anymore, at least officially. And this is really concerning, because again, it's a big factor in who's getting published. And it also determines how big marketing campaigns are, and who gets translation rights. And a lot of research has shown how overwhelmingly white the mainstream publishing industry is. And so the fact that we can't investigate this data in any way that there's no real oversight of this data outside the publishing industry, really limits us from being able to understand how that might be an influence in this inequality, or how it might be influencing other parts of the public publishing industry. So I think it's interesting to think about, you know, how this might be playing out with ebook and audiobook platforms and publishers, especially when the platforms and publishers are now the same, can sometimes be the same company. So for one, you know, they often again, they have their own book sales numbers, which publishers do as well. But with all this reading behavior and user behavior data that they have, I'm really curious about how this similarly might be used to influence like decisions about production, or what kinds of books get created, or whose kinds of ebooks or audiobooks get acquired and created. So I think that's what I'm really interested in.
Talya Cooper 12:27
Thank you. Yeah, and I think it is an interesting paradox in the way that these companies have the ability to access a ton of data, and also have this incredible ability to hamper and restrict and deny access to the data about their data. I want to also in this conversation, I think it's important for us to acknowledge that we're in a climate, where there are a lot of tensions around speech and access to information. You know, I'm thinking particularly about legislation around the country around stuff like critical race theory, of bands, and so on. And I think it's important for us to think about the risk that there is inherent in platforms that are places where people access information, having the ability to then acquire data about the information that people are seeking. So I'm interested, if any of you have thoughts on any kinds of legal risks there might be for publishers or platforms in this particular moment, as well, as you know, is it to tinfoil hat for us to think about risks to those of us who are information seekers about the implications of these kinds of behaviors?
Sam Biddle 13:52
I don't, I don't think it's ever to tinfoil hat to worry about these things. I think the the time to worry about them is before they happen and not after which is unfortunately when we learn about these things, typically after they have been implemented, Once data is collected and stored about a consumer behavior, it exists on someone's hard drive in perpetuity. And generally the Terms of Service grant them essentially an infinite license do whatever they want forever to whatever end they they deem beneficial for themselves and that could be something very different in a year or a week or whenever down the line. So I mean, I say that only to say that I think the time for concern and scrutiny about these things is before there is reason to be concerned because the rules can change at will. Once this stuff has been collected and like I said can be easily repackaged and resold. The data industry, broadly speaking is completely unregulated. There is very little legal liability when it comes to repackaging and reselling deeply personal behavioral data. So I don't think it's keep the hat on, I think.
Melanie Walsh 15:15
Yeah, I think it's an important question and a scary question. And yeah, I mean, they definitely have information about, you know, granular moment to moment what people are reading and listening to. And so, yeah, you could imagine information being leaked, or something like that, about people consuming books that are getting challenged. And also, you know, all these companies are operating outside of the US as well. And there are different political, cultural climates, different kinds of laws, different relationships and cooperation with law enforcement. And so I think it's definitely something to consider, I was also intrigued by the point that was being made in the white paper, about potential self censorship with users knowing that their you know, behavior is being tracked, is that going to make them less likely to read or listen to some of these books that are being challenged and banned? But then on the other hand, I also wonder to what extent users aren't even thinking about that, or even know that I think often about how people were talking about the phenomenon of people reading 50 Shades of Grey as an ebook on the subway so that people wouldn't know that they were reading 50 Shades of Grey. I mean, in some cases, you might want to flaunt that, depending on who you are. In other cases, maybe you don't. So So yeah, I wonder if users even know that their their behavior is being tracked in that way. But that's, that's another thing to consider, I guess.
Annalee Hickman Pierson 16:39
And the last thing that I want to add is talking about legal risks, and this is kind of a different angle from that. But when thinking about teaching law students and being in a law school, and Sarah talks about this and cites others, so please read her book and see those sites, because I don't want to, you know, they're the ones that came up with these ideas, but just this thought that there could be, you know, lawyers have to follow certain ethical rules, right to stay licensed in their particular states. And this idea that, well, what if you're an immigration law lawyer, and you're using Lexus or Westlaw, and you're, you know, advising a client, and they're paying you to do this, but they're paying you and then you're paying Lexus or Westlaw to do this search, and then Lexus or Westlaw is then taking your searches in your information. And, you know, if the client had gone in on their own to a public law library and looked at Lexus or Westlaw, and then that is all being then sold to ice that then might come in, you know, deport your client or try to find them. Right. That, you know, there could be these ethical issues of like, is it ethically okay, then for this immigration lawyer to you know, use these platforms? And obviously, I feel for them, because they are the monopoly of, if you do big law, you know, you're on at least one of those platforms, if not both. Cancel, what other option does that lawyer have? And we're training and teaching these new law students that come in and legal research, and it's certainly, you know, we fill these pools and I know some while I brands that, you know, they're like, Hey, I'm gonna boycott and like, I'm not going to use either one of these. And you know, that's a valid response. But then there's others of us that are like, our students are going to go work in big law, and then they're going to be on these platforms, and they've got to know how to use them effectively. Or else, then ethically, we're not doing our job, you know, correctly. And so there's this poll of them what is really ethical? And could you ever end up risking your bar license or something like that to practice life? You use it, or you don't use it for these various reasons. So that's also I think, a really tricky situation.
Sam Biddle 18:49
It's a really, if I if you don't mind, I think it's that's a really important point, the stuckness that an attorney could find that an immigration lawyer in particular could find themselves and in my conversations with LexisNexis, they have claimed that rather than helping put migrants in jail or getting them deported, they help them in their legal defense because they provide legal services to their attorneys. So in a way, they're sort of benefiting from both ends of the funnel here. I mean, they can sell data to ice to initiate a deeper deportation rate or deportation proceeding and then sell legal data to the attorney defending that migrant and which is you know, a pretty, what is that horizontal integration? I forget which one it is but, you know, there's a sense here in which they are active at all points of the process here. And I can't imagine what that's like for the attorney in question to your to your important point.
Talya Cooper 19:55
Something that was, you know, both Italy and Spain I'm just talked about is the lack of legal framework and regulation around a lot of these things. And it seems like a lot of the reason why these kind of data abuses and the obfuscation of you know, what do these platforms know, and what are they collecting is because the law really hasn't caught up to the profound differences between digital publishing and data aggregation versus the publishing of physical books. And that's something that we see in I think, a number of areas of the law. So what changes do you think you would like to see? And I guess, in a less perfect world, what do you think might potentially be possible in the regulatory environment right now, that might rain in some of these companies and you know, this surveillance environment and benefit the public?
Annalee Hickman Pierson 21:09
I'm sorry, can go first? Hopefully not last either. No, but I think this is where and of course, we dearly Miss Sarah Lambton not being here today. You know, in her book, she got to cartels, she talks about, you know, some ideas of regulation and things that should happen so that these data cartels don't just continue to monopolize their information. And protect kind of the the privacy of all of all of us individuals who are reading these books or looking at these legal research platforms. And she just talks about wanting to, you know, envision public information. Yes. Exactly. I just want to be this the speaker, the voice for her, and her ideas and work that she's done. But, you know, just envisioning, you know, public information as like a public good and just kind of things that we can do. It's a little outside the realm of, you know, the research I've done in my article, and I know those same types of ideas have been done by others. And we will be talked about later today. But my research like focused on right, the state legislation that could happen to protect libraries, and getting ebooks and so I know that that's only one part of that, but I think, and as I said, I'm sure others in this sphere will talk about that more later today. But maybe some of those same ideas. I do think that that's probably part one. And that's probably, you know, in in my co authored article, like our thesis couldn't even go as far as what had been maybe implied in this white paper of exploring the entire ownership ebook economy, like we didn't even think like, could we even move to a place where we move instead of from licensing to actually owning? That was too bold for us to even think that that that we could fathom that. But can we do legislation to change the way that we licensed the ebooks to make it a little more fair, a little less embargoed, a little more reasonable on the pricing that we see with the public being offered as individuals to buy, or I mean, to license. But, so I think we see that as the most viable step one. And so it does seem like even though and this was the big crux of the paper was doing analysis on what happened in Maryland, the state legislature did pass a law to make, how we view it publishers play more fairly with libraries and the electronic literary and material licensing issue. And then it was struck down in the in the federal court system. And based on like I said, you'll get more experts about this later on, like federal copyright law and things like that. But I think that there is, and I think others have found this angle of okay, I think there's another way we can legislate the issue to make them play more fairly. And so hopefully, that, you know, continues to come down the pipeline in the next few years, and in the next few sessions, and then I think, if we can have a little bit more fair licensing agreements between publishers and libraries, or I guess, fair to from the library perspective, because maybe, you know, publisher might not agree that that's fair, that then you know, step two could then be okay, well, now how can we regulate something to help protect the data and so I think that would be kind of the ideas that Sarah has, and that that could move forward in that way and I think these things can happen in this not less than perfect world has Thalia said and I it's clear from the The states that are interested in trying to help libraries, with their ebooks and that legislation, it's clear that they are listening, a lot of them are listening. And so I think that those same groups could then do this step two later. And we've got great groups like library futures that meet with these legislators, I've been on a call with them and a Utah State Legislature since that's where I'm based on trying to move that forward. So I know they really are doing this in so many different states. And so I just think that then it could move to that step to have now how can we get these same state legislatures to do something about the data for this state? Because that's probably going to be more effective and move the needle more than trying to get the US Congress to do something.
Melanie Walsh 25:48
Yeah, I think I agree with a lot of the interventions that were suggested by the authors of the white paper, including Yeah, the ability for people to actually own ebooks, even if it's ambitious, I think would certainly benefit the public. I also think the, you know, giving users the option of opting out of surveillance, when they're consuming ebooks, and audiobooks would also be really beneficial. And then I think this was also ambitious, but like potentially just more oversight of this data and how it's collected and how it's used. I think my whole experience learning about book sales data and how opaque and closed off it is. I mean, I was coming from a pretty naive place. But when they said that you can't access it, unless you're part of the publishing industry. I was just like, Can they do that? Like, is that legal? And? And yeah, it's not FOIA Abul and, and yeah, we're so slow and behind, you know, creating laws about data in this country. So again, seems kind of ambitious. But for these kinds of data that are having really big impacts on people's lives, it seems like there should be some oversight.
Sam Biddle 27:00
One thing I would just add is that it's sort of separate from the broader issue of copyright and ownership versus licensing, there's the way that you in a most basic sense, read an ebook. I mean, before I was in my hotel this morning, and I just was browsing the iPhone, the Apple App Store, just looking at ebook, apps and just book reading apps generally. And Apple now provides a little sort of nutrition card about privacy permissions and what the app is going to collect from you. And it's the it's put sort of vaguely, but it gives you a rough sense. And, you know, most of the top results, which are the results of people will actually use the apps, collect, location, diagnostic use, purchasing history, information about you your name, your address, information about your device, the network, you're on, et cetera, et cetera. So even if you're using an app like that, to read a book that you hypothetically owned outright, the way you're reading, it is still going to generate a plume of data that is then, you know, again, saved by a third party and resold freely among third parties. The only step that I've seen meaningful step I've seen towards you, but limiting that, in Congress, at least on a national level is Senator Ron Wyden has been pushing for something he calls the Fourth Amendment is not for sale Act, which would stop broadly speaking federal law enforcement from buying data that they would otherwise need, they would have historically up until very recently needed a judge to sign off on would have needed a court order. It turns out that a lot of police agencies, whether at the state, local or federal level, would prefer to and this includes I think, relevantly, ice and its relationship with LexisNexis is, you know, if you if you want to find out someone's address history where they've lived over the past five years, would you rather go to a judge and argue why you need to subpoena XYZ? Or would you rather just buy it? And of course, you're gonna buy it because the person who's selling it is never going to say no. And so I think, you know, why didn't legislation I think aims at plugging some of that loophole? I don't think it's, I don't think that would be an exhaustive, they would exhaust all the ways that you can get around it, but it would, that's the most meaningful solution live seemed legislatively. Thanks. And
Talya Cooper 29:44
so the last question I have before we open it up for questions, is, I think something that will probably come up that's brought up in the white paper as well as in Sarah's book And that's just a question about what what a more platform free platform diverse or platform agnostic environment for, you know, information access look like? You know, is that something it's reasonable for us to hope for? Or think that, you know, it's something that we can aspire to, and, you know, kind of what would it take for us to get there
Annalee Hickman Pierson 30:34
it takes someone a lot of money and time to make it Nova. I'm excited to hear hopefully, like later today, I believe someone will talk about the New York Public Library, how they're one of I don't know, the white paper talks about one of the only public library systems in the country to like launch their own lending app. That was something that I was talking with other law librarians, you know, our libraries are pretty small and niche, like, I don't know how we could never do that internally. But it's nice to see that maybe some of these bigger units could could do something like that.
Talya Cooper 31:10
I
Annalee Hickman Pierson 31:14
certainly think what would it take to get there, some selfless people as well, so but I think, you know, if, ideally, when that step two, you know, legislation could maybe happen to protect some data, like, hopefully, they could just kind of maybe they wouldn't be so you know, platform free, but then the platform options that we did have could take less of our information and protect the individuals a little bit more. And I know that when Sarah talks about this in the conclusion of her book, as well, just, you know, the that that it surely, the information just shouldn't should, should be private, and these things should be protected, or like the information on the data collected when people are looking at the other information out there. So, yeah.
Melanie Walsh 32:14
Um, I don't have super specific or sophisticated thoughts about this. But like, my first thought was whether platform diverse media consumption world would somehow further enable like, self publishing and independent publishing, but I don't really know exactly how those are connected, because it seems like as the first panel was discussing, it's already, you know, really popular and happening on the existing platforms. The only other thing I was thinking about is just, you know, if you'd be able to consume eBooks and audiobooks in on all kinds of other existing platforms, I keep talking about audiobooks, because I think it's very similar in many ways to ebooks. But yeah, like, if you could get audiobooks on Spotify and podcast app or something like that, I don't know, these are my again, my off the cuff imaginations?
Sam Biddle 33:12
I don't have any bright ideas, but I think it would be a I think it's unlikely that a self regulatory approach will get anywhere just for the simple fact that, you know, data is valuable. And publishing is a business and businesses, you know, seek to make money. I think it's usually we ought to expect the private sector to maximize its use of data to the extent the law permits, and the law is extremely permissive. So short of the law changing. I don't see much reason to be hopeful. Yeah, that's such a depressing note to end on. I'm sorry. But yeah, I think it would take an act of legislative or regulatory intervention to change the way consumers are consumers of anything, be it books, or television or shoes, whatever. I think it will take legislation for surveillance of consumers to see sir at least be reduced.
Talya Cooper 34:20
Great. So we have about 10 minutes for questions. And hopefully, we have some questions in the audience. Yes, right there.
Speaker 6 34:30
Miss Walsh. I've never run into anyone who's actually seen a book scan report. Have you seen one? And can you describe it, what the typical content would be how long it is and things like that? Careful.
Melanie Walsh 34:44
I haven't seen one actually, I'm sort of at the beginning stages of this work, but I know that like some of my colleagues who are academics have seen them, you know, because they have friends who are in the publishing industry who will share things with them. You Yeah, I'm not totally sure what it looks like. And I think the other thing that is interesting is that like, from my perspective, I would probably be interested in a different kind of access to the data, like a more holistic or comprehensive access to the data through like an API or something like that, which I'm not even sure that they have. But I think that well, so the other thing is that, like, authors, through Amazon can see their own bookscan data for free. So authors do have access to their own data. And many authors, when you even bring up book sales numbers or bookscan data, they're like, Oh, I would never look at my own book sales numbers, because it's very stressful because they don't sell a lot of books typically. So they don't really like talking about it. But But yeah, they can see their own information. I think there is, now that I'm thinking a little bit more about it, I think there is information about like, which parts of the country are the books being purchased from which again, helps publishers determine where to do their marketing campaigns, and how broadly to market. But yeah, I'm hoping to be able to see some some reports. If anyone has a connection, let me know. Hi,
Speaker 7 36:15
thank you. I wonder if the question about platform free is not so much about platform free, but really about a lack of a unified or common platform with with some accepted standards. And this has been repeated in other sectors. I mean, the Hollywood and semiconductor industry and consumer manufacture all came together, for example, to to put aside their their competitive to develop DVD standard as which came out to be it was a common standard, which clearly helps sell more movies and support that marketplace to the consumers benefit. It's really impossible thing about platform free when you look at technology as it exists today. So I wonder if you have any thoughts about whether there's any interest or conversation about maybe an emergent platform? That's more common that might benefit consumers and industry alike? Thanks.
Sam Biddle 37:08
I mean, yeah, I think that I think that's, that's a very interesting point. I think it's certainly worth considering. And I, it's a little surprising, we haven't seen something more like that, I think, to your point about you, did you say DVDs? Yeah. You know, the one thing that the the DVD reference reminds me of is that, yeah, I mean, as as a four as a standardized format, there was an immense benefit when it came to ease of use, you only had to buy well, except, you know, unless you bought a deluxe player. But if you're, you know, once once everyone had a DVD player, it was it was smooth sailing, but the, you see trade offs, when there is standardization like that, I mean, for instance, there was copy protection put into DVDs that would not that did not exist with analog sources, and prevented people from exercising their legal rights to make a legal Personal Backup of the film, if they wanted to, as has been, you know, enshrined, you know, copy protection is the sort of thing that when you have various different sectors, collaborating. You know, you can introduce anti consumer things into a standard two. So, I'm not saying that that's not something that's worth entertaining or pursuing. But I would just caution that these things are not always completely magnanimous, despite their certainly undeniable benefits for ease of use, and so forth.
Speaker 1 38:45
I was just wondering if I could ask, in the context of a trillion dollar surveillance economy, does it make sense for us to focus on ebooks at all?
Sam Biddle 38:59
Gosh, I hope so. Or else, I don't know why I got out of bed today. And I'm just I'm just gonna, ya know, I take your point, right? I mean, ebooks are a small part of a vast, vastly valuable ecosystem. But I you know, I'll just go back to something I said before, which is that we cannot it is very hard to foresee how data collected today will be used, you know, down the line. I think things that may not seem concerning from a privacy or civil liberties standpoint, such as, what ebooks Am I checking out from the library or buying from Amazon or whatever, can be turned into something we did not expect them to be in a very short amount of time. And without oversight, or transparency or any kind of accountability? So yeah, that's only to say that you know, what might not seem like, you know, sure, compared to something like facial recognition or location cracking, it might not seem as obviously or immediately alarming, but I think it's important to as much as we can try to imagine how these things, what these things can be turned into in the future. So, I mean, I mean, I think it makes sense, but curious what everyone else thinks.
Melanie Walsh 40:16
Yeah, I think, although it may be a small part of the surveillance economy, that doesn't mean it's not important. For some reason, I have something stuck in my head. So a colleague of mine, who is a digital humanities scholar, has been collaborating with the Swedish audiobook ebook company, storytel, who's given him data from an entire year, about like 400 or 500,000 users that has information, hour to hour for an entire year about exactly what titles they were consuming. And he can see all kinds of granular stuff in that data, the user, you know, the identifiable information has been stripped, obviously, but he can see individual user behavior. And he can see things like somebody is listening to Steve Larson's The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo series over and over again, every day for an entire year, five hours or more per day. And again, that's like kind of funny and just interesting. But it really kind of is at odds with like fundamental principles of libraries in terms of protecting intellectual freedom, and allowing people to consume things without being surveilled again, and we don't know how that information is going to be used. So I think that that just really sticks in my mind, because it's, it really is like a portrait of a person. So I think it is really important.
Annalee Hickman Pierson 41:39
Yeah, and just to reiterate, even in, you know, really specific fields, so like the law field, specifically in those platforms, I think it just even though we have that example, I'm sure when people are spending time in other fields, that these things might come up. And so, you know, it only affects our small portion of law students and law libraries and lawyers, that proportion of the country, but I'm sure there are, you know, if it's happened in that field, what other fields might might not, you know, an academic and that it might be happening, and that it might really affect, you know, individual lawyers and their clients and things like that. Even if, you know, it's not happening to the, to the mass population. Jenny?
Jennie Rose Halperin 42:31
Hi, everyone. So I'm gonna ask actually a pretty similar question in the next panel, but I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about how the current climate of state legislation and censorship is playing into these questions of digital access, and digital privacy as well. You know, in, in many states, and in a lot of this work, the mentioning the ALA Bill of Rights, for example, has become a problem. So I'm wondering if, you know, with all that's going on nationally, and also within the states, as well as how slow federal legislation has been on data privacy, if you could talk a little bit about both what you're seeing, and also what you hope to see, understanding that the current climate for libraries is is pretty brutal right now.
Melanie Walsh 43:21
Um, I, what I'm thinking about and respond to the response to that question is like a little bit tangential maybe, to to this conversation today. But one thing is making me think about is that a lot of library vendors, including overdrive are now offering diversity audits of library collections. And many libraries are using these diversity audits to try to increase the diversity in their collection. So they're first doing an assessment, and then the vendors recommend titles for them to add to their collection that are often the ones that are sold by the vendors, which is a little bit suspicious. Also, how are they quantifying what counts is a diverse title, major questions that some some work that I'm doing right now. But then in other cases, I've talked to libraries who are doing those diversity audits to sort of prove that their collections are not as woke as people in the community are suggesting that they are. So yeah, I think that this is just making me think about that this is starting to become a factor in like what ebooks or audiobooks are getting acquired by libraries. And yeah, I don't know how the like user individual user reader behavior is factoring into that but it may be as well.
Annalee Hickman Pierson 44:38
No, we're at time so I'll just try to keep mine super brief. Oh, even turned off my mic. But the legislation happening on censorship is kind of outside the scope of like my research, but just from all the like I said, the the positive for libraries state legislation that hopefully is happening and will continue to happen for ebooks, I think shows that you know, at least, you know, legislatures legislators, talking with libraries and hopefully, we can you know, build these relationships that we have with people through the the ebook licensing, build the relationships with the people, meaning like the legislatures, and those and hopefully tie tie over those relationships to then like I talked about step two here, and maybe even a step three of like, making sure like, hey, maybe we you know, shouldn't, you know, be putting these laws down to censor or something, you know, there are these positive relationships out there. So then let's continue to use them for these, these other steps that we can make laws to, to help the public and help the libraries and the information we're allowed to impart on those on the public. So that's
Talya Cooper 45:58
right. I think we're at time, so thank you so much to our panel. Round of applause, please.
Announcer 46:10
The engelberg center live podcast is a production of the engelberg center on innovation Law and Policy at NYU Law is released under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Our theme music is by Jessica Batke and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license