BTW News Briefs

Visa Adopts New Policy on Storage of Credit Card Numbers

The National Retail Federation's Washington Retail Insight reported last week that Visa had agreed to a long-standing NRF request to adopt procedures that would help protect consumers against credit card fraud by not requiring retailers to store full card numbers.

On Wednesday, July 14, Visa announced that retailers would be allowed to keep truncated or disguised card numbers rather than customers’ full 16-digit card numbers, and card-issuing banks would be required to accept disguised or suppressed card numbers when they ask a retailer to produce a receipt in order to resolve a disputed transaction.

Details of the agreement are available in a joint NRF-Visa announcement and at www.visa.com/cisp.

Industry Groups Cheer Passage of "Libel Tourism" Bill

On July 19, the U.S. Senate passed bi-partisan legislation that will protect American authors and publishers from foreign libel judgments that undermine First Amendment free speech rights. Similar legislation passed the House last year.

The passage of the SPEECH Act was cheered by the Association of American Publishers and free speech organizations, including the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression. The new legislation prohibits federal courts from recognizing or enforcing foreign libel judgments that do not pass First Amendment muster. It also allows American authors and publishers to go to court to seek a declaration that such a foreign judgment is not enforceable in the U.S.

“We’re very pleased with the Senate’s action,” said Judith Platt, AAP’s director of Freedom to Read. “As we told Congress, these foreign libel judgments not only deprive American authors and publishers of their right to speak, they deprive our citizenry of their right to be informed. The legislation passed today will significantly reduce that chilling effect.”

In September 2008, AAP and ABFFE joined with 17 other groups in issuing a statement urging members of the Senate Judiciary Committee to support the Freedom of Speech Protection Act (S. 2977). The groups pointed to the case of Rachel Ehrenfeld, an American author, who was successfully sued in England by a Saudi billionaire even though her book, Funding Evil: How Terrorism Is Financed and How to Stop It (Bonus Books), had never been published there.

Exhibit Honors 50-Year Bookselling Career of George A. Hecht

The Hampton Bays Library in Hampton Bays, New York, features an exhibit on George A. Hecht, whose career spanned 50 years (1925 - 1975) with the Doubleday Book Shops and included a two-year term (1946 – 1948) as president of the American Booksellers Association.

The exhibit, which runs through August, was organized by George's Hecht's daughter, Karen Hecht, and is curated by Virginia Bartow, senior rare book cataloger at the New York Public Library.

George Hecht, who died in 1998, was a resident of Long Island's East End for more than 50 years. The exhibit celebrates Hecht's life on the 100th anniversary of his birth, and the 50th anniversary of the Hampton Bays Public Library.

Hecht began his career as a stock clerk at the Doubleday Book Shop in Penn Station. He worked his way from the stock room through sales and various management positions to become president of the Doubleday Book Shops, and then vice president of Doubleday & Company.