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November 28, 2002
Should computer geeks give up on politics?

Paul Boutin writes in Slate that Geeks should give up in the political sphere, and their resources are better spent innovating.


As a result, educational efforts such as GeekPAC miss the point. The problem isn't that lawmakers misunderstand the effect of their legislation. It's that politicians don't fear the geek bloc's power at the polls.

Is he right?

Posted by dsifry at 08:44 PM
November 27, 2002
Here's a plan

Check out the latest on Declan's list. Then look at what Hal Plotkin says to Paul Boutin in Slate.

What CEOs can we hit up for some of the money we need to make this thing a fully operational battle station?

Posted by doc at 06:18 AM
November 12, 2002
Ya gotta have friends

Can the GOP Rescue Tech? is the title of a Tech Investor piece by Eric Hellweg in Business 2.0. Among its Nuggets:


  • CNET says Senate Republicans vote the tech line 84% of the time, compared to 65% for Senate Democrats. On the House side, it's 89% to 43% in favor of the GOP.
  • The Information Technology Industry Council is taking the lobbying lead for the tech industry. Apple, Dell, Sun and others are members.
  • The ITI has a Voting Guide for the 107th Congress.
  • TechNet is another lobbying .org.
  • A leading priority for ITI is the Expensing Technology Reform Act of 2001, introduced by Rep. Jerry Weller (R-Ill). It Accellerates the depreciation rate for business tech from five years down to one (perhaps bringing it into compliance with a surreal market reciprocal of Moore's Law — compute power may double every 18 months, but the iron itself dropps to worthlessness in 2/3 of that time). A watered down version (30% off in the first year) was part of President Bush's stimulus package, but with the Republicans advancing their majority in the house, Weller may be in a better position to push something through.
  • The ITI doesn't like the Hollings bill, and some heavy Republicans don't, either:

    The technology industry also hopes to drive a stake through the heart of a controversial, Democrat-led copyright protection bill. The Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Act, sponsored by Ernest "Fritz" Hollings, D-S.C., would have required tech companies to incorporate special antipiracy technologies into consumer electronic devices.
    "Hollings was facing an uphill battle with that act," notes Hellmann (of the ITI). "Now it's a battle against Sen. Trent Lott, R-Miss.; Sen. Tom DeLay, R-Texas; and Rep. Dennis Hastert, R-Ill. -- all of whom take a dim view of Hollywood's political agenda."

Posted by doc at 03:57 PM
November 03, 2002
The Worst Coders in Washington

The best code in the world can be foiled by a single bug. One careless line of code can crash an entire program.

Lawrence Lessig calls laws "East Coast Code," and it only takes a few buggy laws to strangle freedom and innovation in technology. Laws like the DMCA, the Hollings Bill, and the CDA threaten to put the American technology juggernaut up on blocks.

AOTC has researched the sponsors of eight bad Internet laws and compiled a list of their most prolific campaign contributors. These laws were written and sponsored by a tiny handful of lawmakers, backed by a tiny handful of wealthy financiers. These bad coders and their backers have done more damage to computing, the Internet and freedom than all the virus authors, spammers and crackers combined.

The Laws

Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), H.R.2281

1998's Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) flooded American technology with punishing legal action, jailing scientists and destroying companies. The DMCA's "anti-circumvention" provisions have trumped the First Amendment and have given copyright holders a whip hand over every use of the material they sell to their customers.

Communications Decency Act (CDA), S.314/ H.R.1004

1995's Communications Decency Act turned the Internet into a First-Amendment-Free zone. Speech that would be absolutely protected in the "real world" was criminalized if transmitted over the Internet. After a protracted court battle, a Philadelphia Federal Court zapped this buggy code, declaring the CDA un-Constitutional.

Child Online Protection Act (COPA, "CDA II"), S. 1482, H.R. 3783

After the defeat of CDA, anti-freedom groups and their lawmakers launched a second salvo, COPA. COPA was a narrower attack than CDA, limiting itself to websites hosted by commercial entities, but no less un-Constitutional. The courts stopped COPA dead in its tracks, but today, the Supreme Court is deliberating over whether to unleash COPA on America.

Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act (CBDTPA, "The Hollings Bill"), S.2048

This virulent Trojan Horse, written by Senator Ernest "Fritz" Hollings and friends appears to be a law that promotes technology, but it carries a deadly payload. Under this proposed law, technologists will have to come to film and movie studios on bent knee and beg for permission to ship new hardware and software. The film and music companies who worked to ban every innovative technology from the player piano to Marconi's radio to the VCR and the Internet itself would be in charge of all future innovation in America.

P2P Piracy Prevention Bill ("Berman P2P bill"), H.R.5211

Representative Howard Berman's (D-Cal.) P2P Bill opens a hole in the security of the American judicial system. Under this proposal, copyright holders are free to take illegal countermeasures against any member of the public whom they believe to be engaged in copyright infringement. A law that lets a group of people break the law sounds like an oxymoron, but it's worse than that: by affording a "right of revenge" to movie and music companies, Berman's code legalizes vigilanteism, stripping law-enforcement agencies of the ability to police attacks on Internet users.

CIPA, H.R. 4577

CIPA is a denial-of-service attack on schools, libraries and children. Under CIPA, schools and libraries that receive certain Federal funds are required by law to censor the Web, using filters provided by snake-oil salesmen that raise the cost of providing Internet access to kids while spuriously blocking informative sites that carry information that appears in our schools' mandatory curriculum.

The Lawmakers

These lawmakers in the House of Representatives and the Senate wrote more anti-technology legal code than any of their co-legislators.
  1. Rep. Charles (Chip) Pickering (R-MS 3rd district) 3 bills $230,900
    DMCA, COPA, CIPA
  2. Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX 21st district) 2 bills $87,112
    P2P Piracy Prevention Bill, COPA
  3. Sen. Ted Stevens (R-AK ) 2 bills $375,339
    CBDTPA, CIPA
  4. Rep. Bill Paxon (R-NY 27th district) 2 bills $200,938
    DMCA, COPA
  5. Rep. Howard L. Berman (D-CA 26th district) 2 bills $212,991
    DMCA, P2P Piracy Prevention Bill
  6. Rep. Michael G. Oxley (R-OH 4th district) 2 bills $184,998
    COPA, CIPA
  7. Rep. Howard Coble (R-NC 6th district) 2 bills $114,747
    DMCA, P2P Piracy Prevention Bill
  8. Sen. Ernest F. Hollings (D-SC ) 2 bills $532,980
    CBDTPA, CIPA
  9. Rep. Bob Franks (R-NJ 7th district) 2 bills $661,784
    COPA, CIPA
  10. Rep. Asa Hutchinson (R-AR 3rd district) 1 bill $99,350
    COPA
  11. Sen. John McCain (R-AZ ) 1 bill $1,050,321
    CIPA
  12. Rep. Roscoe G. Bartlett (R-MD 6th district) 1 bill $50,500
    COPA
  13. Rep. Jack Metcalf (R-WA 2nd district) 1 bill $185,377
    COPA
  14. Rep. Barbara Cubin (R-WY 1st district) 1 bill $115,980
    COPA
  15. Rep. Dan Schaefer (R-CO 6th district) 1 bill $145,162
    COPA
  16. Rep. Henry J. Hyde (R-IL 6th district) 1 bill $83,500
    DMCA
  17. Rep. Paul E. Gillmor (R-OH 5th district) 1 bill $107,849
    COPA
  18. Rep. Dave Weldon (R-FL 15th district) 1 bill $139,759
    COPA
  19. Rep. John R. Kasich (R-OH 12th district) 1 bill $235,185
    COPA
  20. Sen. Conrad R. Burns (R-MT ) 1 bill $506,126
    CIPA
  21. Rep. Roy Blunt (R-MO 7th district) 1 bill $175,636
    COPA
  22. Rep. Mark W. Neumann (R-WI 1st district) 1 bill $167,765
    COPA
  23. Rep. John T. Doolittle (R-CA 4th district) 1 bill $78,765
    COPA
  24. Rep. Vince Snowbarger (R-KS 3rd district) 1 bill $106,774
    COPA
  25. Rep. James C. Greenwood (R-PA 8th district) 1 bill $98,185
    COPA
  26. Rep. Heather Wilson (R-NM 1st district) 1 bill $232,960
    COPA
  27. Sen. J. James Exon (D-NE ) 1 bill $0
    CDA
  28. Rep. Steve Largent (R-OK 1st district) 1 bill $98,852
    COPA
  29. Rep. Stephen E. Buyer (R-IN 5th district) 1 bill $115,160
    COPA
  30. Rep. Collin C. Peterson (D-MN 7th district) 1 bill $126,499
    COPA
  31. Rep. Mary Bono (R-CA 44th district) 1 bill $76,604
    DMCA
  32. Rep. Jon D. Fox (R-PA 13th district) 1 bill $200,834
    COPA
  33. Rep. Cliff Stearns (R-FL 6th district) 1 bill $92,743
    COPA
  34. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA ) 1 bill $389,544
    CBDTPA
  35. Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R-MI 3rd district) 1 bill $47,719
    COPA
  36. Rep. Ronnie Shows (D-MS 4th district) 1 bill $210,650
    CIPA
  37. Rep. Robert B. Aderholt (R-AL 4th district) 1 bill $266,944
    COPA
  38. Rep. John M. McHugh (R-NY 24th district) 1 bill $92,380
    COPA
  39. Rep. Jon Christensen (R-NE 2nd district) 1 bill $230,552
    COPA
  40. Rep. Max Sandlin (D-TX 1st district) 1 bill $215,450
    COPA
  41. Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA 4th district) 1 bill $55,500
    DMCA
  42. Rep. Greg Ganske (R-IA 4th district) 1 bill $177,885
    COPA
  43. Rep. J. C. Jr. Watts (R-OK 4th district) 1 bill $135,705
    COPA
  44. Rep. Nancy L. Johnson (R-CT 6th district) 1 bill $279,554
    COPA
  45. Sen. Christopher S. Bond (R-MO ) 1 bill $477,360
    CIPA
  46. Rep. Michael Bilirakis (R-FL 9th district) 1 bill $92,011
    COPA
  47. Rep. Jr. Nethercutt, George R. (R-WA 5th district) 1 bill $142,127
    COPA
  48. Rep. Nathan Deal (R-GA 9th district) 1 bill $106,339
    COPA
  49. Rep. Linda Smith (R-WA 3rd district) 1 bill $52,494
    COPA
  50. Rep. Bart Gordon (D-TN 6th district) 1 bill $248,500
    COPA
  51. Rep. Ed Whitfield (R-KY 1st district) 1 bill $169,715
    COPA
  52. Rep. Tim Johnson (R-IL 15th district) 1 bill $383,959
    CDA
  53. Rep. Jay Kim (R-CA 41st district) 1 bill $116,574
    COPA
  54. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX ) 1 bill $422,932
    CIPA
  55. Rep. Dan Burton (R-IN 6th district) 1 bill $145,282
    COPA
  56. Rep. Michael Pappas (R-NJ 12th district) 1 bill $80,749
    COPA
  57. Rep. Mark Foley (R-FL 16th district) 1 bill $106,699
    COPA
  58. Rep. Mark E. Souder (R-IL 4th district) 1 bill $75,534
    COPA
  59. Sen. John B. Breaux (D-LA ) 1 bill $343,769
    CBDTPA
  60. Rep. David L. Hobson (R-OH 7th district) 1 bill $104,922
    COPA
  61. Rep. Bobby L. Rush (D-IL 1st district) 1 bill $177,481
    CIPA
  62. Rep. Thomas J. Manton (D-NY 7th district) 1 bill $118,494
    COPA
  63. Rep. Ken Calvert (R-CA 43th district) 1 bill $127,625
    COPA
  64. Rep. Joseph R. Pitts (R-PA 16th district) 1 bill $103,800
    COPA
  65. Rep. John Jr. Conyers (D-MI 14th district) 1 bill $99,110
    DMCA
  66. Rep. Elizabeth Furse (D-OR 1st district) 1 bill $248,322
    COPA
  67. Rep. Fred Upton (R-MI 6th district) 1 bill $121,673
    COPA
  68. Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL ) 1 bill $442,151
    CBDTPA
  69. Rep. Jr. Istook, Ernest J. (R-OK 5th district) 1 bill $93,284
    COPA
  70. Sen. Spencer Abraham (R-MI ) 1 bill $732,850
    CIPA
  71. Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX 6th district) 1 bill $162,944
    COPA
  72. Rep. Sue Myrick (R-NC 9th district) 1 bill $147,741
    COPA
  73. Rep. Pat Danner (D-MO 6th district) 1 bill $112,950
    COPA
  74. Rep. Pete Sessions (R-TX 5th district) 1 bill $207,111
    COPA
  75. Rep. Bill McCollum (R-FL 8th district) 1 bill $326,487
    DMCA
  76. Rep. Benjamin A. Gilman (R-NY 20th district) 1 bill $149,306
    COPA
  77. Rep. Jerry Weller (R-IL 11th district) 1 bill $200,075
    COPA
  78. Rep. Robert Wexler (D-FL 19th district) 1 bill $107,500
    P2P Piracy Prevention Bill
  79. Rep. Sue W. Kelly (R-NY 19th district) 1 bill $168,550
    COPA
  80. Sen. Jesse Helms (R-NC ) 1 bill $386,450
    CIPA
  81. Rep. Richard Burr (R-NC 5th district) 1 bill $118,275
    COPA
  82. Rep. Charlie Norwood (R-GA 10th district) 1 bill $185,621
    COPA
  83. Rep. Phil English (R-PA 21st district) 1 bill $163,562
    COPA
  84. Rep. Gerald B. H. Solomon (R-NY 22nd district) 1 bill $164,098
    COPA
  85. Rep. Ralph M. Hall (D-OH 3rd district) 1 bill $94,000
    COPA
  86. Rep. Gary Miller (R-CA 41st district) 1 bill $148,450
    CIPA
  87. Sen. Slade Gorton (R-WA ) 1 bill $376,525
    CDA
  88. Rep. Rick Lazio (R-NY 2nd district) 1 bill $214,076
    COPA
  89. Rep. Sonny Callahan (R-AL 1th district) 1 bill $109,835
    COPA
  90. Rep. John E. Peterson (R-PA 5th district) 1 bill $60,556
    COPA
  91. Rep. Sonny Bono (R-CA 44th district) 1 bill $0
    DMCA
  92. Rep. Charles H. Taylor (R-NC 11th district) 1 bill $90,864
    COPA
  93. Sen. Daniel K. Inouye (D-HI ) 1 bill $247,429
    CBDTPA
-- Statistics on campaign contributions courtesty of opensecrets.org. Thanks to volunteer Benjamin Owens for compiling the data here.
Posted by doc at 02:14 PM