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14 Legal Information Alert 1 (1995)

handle is hein.lbr/leinfal0014 and id is 1 raw text is: What's new in legal publications, databases, and research techniques Volume 14, No. 1 January 1995 Contents Assault on the Citadel Viewpoints 1 6 Humor 10 For Further Background 10 New Publications 12 Calendar 16 Publishers 19 Index 19 Assault on the Citadel Romancing the Crown Jewels of West Publishing By Richard A. Leiter In the Spring of 1994, subscribers to the online discussion group LAW-LIB began to read posts from an innocuous-sounding organization called Taxpayer Assets Project (TAP) about a project called The Crown Jewels. However, these postings promised very little in the way of controversy. After all, it was clearly a public interest movement with a single goal: to get West Publishing Company's Crown Jewels. However, as the summer wore on, it became increasingly clear that not only was TAP serious, but it had the oomph (or whatever it takes) to follow through on it. There were reports of TAP involvement in Justice Department investigations, hearings, policy matters, and other proceedings. Somehow, TAP seemed to have managed not only to manipulate Department of Justice policy with respect to caselaw databases, but to bring AALL leadership along in an effort to undermine West's case publishing business. Granted, debate on the issue of West's claim to a copyright in its published case reports had raged for nearly 10 years, beginning with the infamous legal battle between West Publishing Company and Mead Data Central initiated in 1985. To date, the Ralph Nader-founded TAP has not denied that a primary purpose is to bring down the West Publishing empire while substituting a new vendor-neutral citation system. In fact, it has stated as much in as many words. See, for example, Fending Off the Future, American Lawyer, September 1994, p. 76, where James Love of TAP says, Once we start going after the judges, West is going to fold. Ed note: See James Love's opinion in Viewpoints on page 6 of this issue. However, TAP had managed in only one year to rouse AALL leadership and other West detractors to a pitch and a unity of purpose never before seen. West's National Reporter system, long considered by law librarians and lawyers alike as a saving grace in the enterprise of American caselaw research, was suddenly cast as monopo- listic, anti-competitive, even anti-American, with insinuations that because it publishes all reported cases in the U.S., and charges for them, it somehow was keeping these public domain judicial decisions from ordinary citizens. In a short time, through the miracle of the Internet, a controversy that ordinarily would have taken months of considered, reasoned debate, flamed into a veritable brushfire of rhetoric, diatribes, and passion. Sadly, taken as a whole, in the end, little continued on next page