Students Fight E-Vote Firm
Kim Zetter,
Wired News,
Oct 23, 2003
I have linked to the story about the Diebold electronic voting controversy frequently in NewsTrolls (see the research here) but this is the first time the issue has intruded into academia. The company is trying to respond to criticisms that its voting machines can be (and may have been) rigged, and it is doing so by invoking the DMCA to force people to stop linking to some revealing memos, prompting a group of students to launch an "electronic civil disobedience" campaign against the company (see the students' press release). "They're using copyright law as a means of suppressing information that needs to be public. It's a great example of how copyright law can be against the public good rather than for it, as it was originally intended. It's not like people are reading these memos in order to steal Diebold's election system. (The company is) trying to use this law, and specifically the mandatory take-down section, to conceal flaws that directly affect the validity of election results. This is a threat to our democracy."
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