23-1260 - IN THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE SECOND CIRCUIT

Amici’s sole interest in this case is to assist the Court by highlighting how the loss of controlled digital lending (“CDL”) as a library lending option would harm reader privacy.2 INTRODUCTION AND SUMMARY OF ARGUMENT This case could profoundly affect longstanding protections for reader privacy and thus affect a core purpose of copyright: public access to information. [...] Second, CDL provides the public 5 Case 23-1260, Document 100, 12/20/2023, 3599721, Page22 of 56 benefit of increased access to information and avoids the public harm of chilled inquiry. [...] In the 1970s and 1980s, for example, the Federal Bureau of Investigations initiated the Library Awareness Program, which was a “surveillance effort to track Soviet use of technology information available in American libraries.”4 Concerned about the “chilling effect” the program would have on free inquiry, libraries responded by advocating for state legislation to protect the confidentiality of lib. [...] are on loan,” and loan records are deleted “soon after” the materials are returned.10 The Queens Public Library’s privacy policy similarly states: “At the moment that library material is returned to the library, the link between the customer and the material is broken—that is, the Library’s system ceases to retain information on what materials were taken out by whom the moment the item is returned. [...] 1 6 Case 23-1260, Document 100, 12/20/2023, 3599721, Page33 of 56 efforts because anyone can inspect the code and fix vulnerabilities.26 Finally, the nature of open-source software allows other libraries to implement the software themselves,27 as the University of Chicago appears to have done by integrating DIBS into its digital lending system.28 Libraries without resources to develop or host29 th.