[Ecommerce] Government agency pulls Web site

[James Love]

http://news.com.com/2100-1023-966824.html

Government agency pulls Web site

By Stefanie Olsen
Staff Writer, CNET News.com
November 21, 2002, 4:58 PM PT

The Department of Energy closed the online research database Pubscience 
after receiving complaints that it competed too closely with commercial efforts.

The Web site, a searchable database of more than 2 million documents on 
physical sciences and energy-related research, was closed in recent weeks 
after the government department was pressured by the private sector to 
reassess its value in a marketplace where commercial interests were at 
stake. A handful of privately owned sites let researchers pull up abstracts 
of scientific research documents, as well as buy the full-text documents of 
thousands of technical periodicals.

Proponents of the site's closure said the move fell into line with a federal 
law that forbids the government to compete with the private sector in business.


"The Department of Energy carefully reviewed Pubscience in light of existing 
private-sector products and found that Pubscience substantially duplicated 
private-sector offerings," said David LeDuc, public policy director at the 
Software & Information Industry Association, the chief trade group for the 
software and digital content industry, which had lobbied for the site's 
closure since its inception.

Civil libertarians, however, criticized the move as the result of lobbying 
efforts to Congress by private interests. Although much of the research 
available free online was paid for with taxpayer dollars, much of it will 
now be inaccessible because of private interests, they argue.

"You have a great public service being destroyed by commercial interests, 
and it's an attack on the public domain," said James Love, director of the 
Consumer Project on Technology. "It's something that wouldn't happen if we 
had limits on campaign spending," he said. "It's a case of corruption of 
U.S. Congress."

In September, the DOE had solicited comments on its plan to discontinue the 
site after it had discovered that its content overlapped with about 90 
percent of materials offered by other companies.

"Private sector information products have emerged that freely offer 
bibliographic records to Web patrons," according to the site.

The move mirrors other recent efforts to restrict the dissemination of 
public government data on the Internet, according to researchers. It also 
raises larger questions about the roles of the government versus the private 
sector in providing information online.

Launched in 1999, Pubscience contained research materials from more than 
1,400 scientific periodicals. Early on, the site was promoted as a benefit 
to libraries, government researchers, industrial scientists, educators and 
students. It represented a natural evolution of more than 50 years of work 
by the DOE’s Office of Scientific and Technical Information to disseminate 
research, according to the Association of Research Libraries home page.

According to the site, the government subsidizes 80 percent to 90 percent of 
scientific research and development within the private sector with billions 
of taxpayer dollars, so it would follow that the site was an extension of 
that benefit to researchers.

Paul Uhlir, director of international scientific and technical information 
programs at the National Academy of Sciences, said that it's a loss for the 
research community because the Pubscience site offered a more comprehensive 
set of documents than those in the market currently.

Alternatives in the marketplace include Infotrieve and Scirus, which is a 
member of the software association SIIA.

"It obviously reduces the amount of information that's openly available in a 
large area of scientific information," said Uhlir.

Uhlir added that other government agencies have been targeted by private 
interest groups to remove data from the Internet. For example, companies 
that provide weather data to broadcasters and other outfits have sent 
letters to the National Weather Service and the NOAA asking them to remove 
certain weather data from their Web sites, he said. In the past, other trade 
groups have lobbied the National Institute of Health to take down Pubmed 
central, a medical and health-related research site similar to the science 
venture. The site remains online, however.

"It's a public policy issue and the boundaries are kind of fuzzy," said 
Uhlir. "It's not clear when the government is competing or not. But the 
point is the public policy aspect has to be considered and that's not always 
done.

"Since the information was all publicly funded in the first place, the 
question from a public policy standpoint is, was this in the public 
interest? That's an open question," Uhlir said.

Lee Tien, senior staff attorney of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, 
further argues that the private sector should not define what is competitive 
and by withdrawing the scientific data online, the government is threatening 
the public's right to access information.

"One really has to wonder how much interest this Administration has in 
sharing and publishing information from its agencies," Tien said. He cited 
the government's recent move to pull scientific information from the Web 
that could prove a security threat.

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James Love, Consumer Project on Technology
http://www.cptech.org, mailto:love@cptech.org
voice: 1.202.387.8030; mobile 1.202.361.3040