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Case No. MUL-2012-298067-1
[ ]
Vice President, Chief Operating Officer & Chief Financial Officer
EBSCO Industries, Inc.
5724 Highway 280 East
Birmingham, AL 35242-6816
Dear Mr. [ ]:
This responds to your letter dated September 19, 2012 (the “Application”), on behalf of EBSCO Industries, Inc. (EBSCO), to the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), requesting guidance on five questions related to the scope of the informational materials exemption. The Application states that EBSCO Information Services (EIS), a division of EBSCO, provides electronic and print subscriptions, resource management tools, full text and secondary databases, and related services for libraries, research organizations, and corporations worldwide. According to the Application, EIS acts as an agent by purchasing content from publishers and sending content to customers. EIS also processes payments and refunds and provides customer service. The Application states...
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1) BACKGROUND
This guidance letter contains important determinations concerning the scope of the informational materials exemption (IME), as well as OFAC’s policy concerning the applicability of the IME in general.
As described in the letter EBSCO and EIS provide a variety of services, and this includes “electronic and print subscriptions, as well as electronic access to full text and secondary databases”. The “content…may include full text documents, abstracts, or indexes, depending on the customer’s subscription, and…customers would access such information through a text search feature.” Note that “secondary databases” are those which contain data that is delivered by and licensed from another publisher or database provider. The secondary database operator acts as a sort of data broker, though the secondary database operators are typically more focused on enhancing the value and usability of the data for specific applications, often within academic, research,...