M. Fraase writes,
The American Open Technology Consortium (AOTC) is a nonprofit group of technologists with the mission of educating elected and appointed officials about technology. Unlike most other factions you can name, technologists have never been politically influential as a group.
The AOTC focuses most of its attention and efforts on the Internet and has assembled a list of the worst coders in Washington. Code is law, as Lawrence Lessig observed. “West coast code” is the code that runs our computers. “East coast code” is the code that runs our lives.
AOTC took the time to research the sponsors of the most egregious “East coast code:”
- Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), H.R.2281
- Communications Decency Act (CDA), S.314 / H.R.1004
- Child Online Protection Act (COPA, “CDA II”), S.1482 / H.R.3783
- Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act (CBDTPA), S.2048
- P2P Piracy Prevention Bill (“Berman’s hacking bill”), H.R.5211
- Children’s Internet Protection Act (CIPA), S.97 / H.R.543
The results of the AOTC research are not surprising:
“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.”
 8:48:52 PM Google It! comment
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