STAND. COM. REP. NO. 1705

Honolulu, Hawaii

RE: S.C.R. No. 70

Honorable Ronald D. Kouchi

President of the Senate

Thirty-Second State Legislature

Regular Session of 2023

State of Hawaii

Sir:

Your Committees on Public Safety and Intergovernmental and Military Affairs and Education, to which was referred S.C.R. No. 70 entitled:

"SENATE CONCURRENT RESOLUTION URGING THE UNITED STATES CONGRESS TO AMEND FEDERAL COPYRIGHT LAW TO EXPLICITLY PROTECT CURRENT LENDING PRACTICES OF NONPROFIT ONLINE LIBRARIES,"

beg leave to report as follows:

The purpose and intent of this measure is to urge the United States Congress to amend federal copyright law to explicitly protect current lending practices of nonprofit online libraries.

Your Committees received testimony in support of this measure from the Hawai‘i State Public Library System.

Your Committees find that while traditional brick-and-mortar public libraries facilitate collective knowledge by acquiring books and lending those books to the public, free of charge, nonprofit online libraries work on this same principle in the virtual realm by acquiring and maintaining numerous hardcopies of books, scanning digital versions of those books, and lending those digital versions to the public, also free of charge. Your Committees note that despite the fact that the number of digital copies of a book that an online library lends out at any given time never exceeds the number of hardcopies of that book in the library's inventory, a number of major publishers claim that this lending system is in violation of copyright and are seeking relief in the case of Hachette Book Group, Inc. v. Internet Archive, which is pending before the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York. Your Committees believe that Congress should act to preserve nonprofit libraries and protect the flow of knowledge to the public. This measure will encourage Congress to amend copyright law to prevent a devastating impact to the patrons of nonprofit online libraries.

As affirmed by the records of votes of the members of your Committees on Public Safety and Intergovernmental and Military Affairs and Education that are attached to this report, your Committees concur with the intent and purpose of S.C.R. No. 70 and recommend its adoption.

Respectfully submitted on behalf of the members of the Committees on Public Safety and Intergovernmental and Military Affairs and Education,

________________________________ MICHELLE N. KIDANI, Chair

________________________________ GLENN WAKAI, Chair