You North Carolinians better get your act together come voting time!
Libertarian candidate Tar Sue Grubb is fed up with “idividual rights sacrificed for big corporate ploitics” and plans to take on Howard Coble, the congressman who is backing the P2P bill that allows copyright owners to legally hack “potentially” infriginging user’s machines w/ little or no recourse.
Some excerpts from the Wired article:
Characterizing Coble’s position as “It’s OK to hack as long as you contribute to my campaign,” Grubb added, “Howard’s biggest supporters are in Hollywood. There’s no Hollywood in North Carolina. I really don’t have any clue what his concern is here.”
Coble’s chief of staff, Ed McDonald, told Wired News that Coble and the subcommittee plan to hold hearings this fall with both proponents and critics of the Berman bill. “He’ll be the first to tell you he does lean toward the copyright holder,” McDonald said of his boss. “But it doesn’t mean to the detriment of someone else’s privacy issues.”
“People are overreacting to hyperbole they’re reading on the Internet,” he added. “We support the broad concept of Mr. Berman’s bill. That doesn’t mean we’re going to support it in its final form. The purpose of this bill is to protect copyrighted material. It’s not to give Hollywood and the record companies carte blanche to go into someone’s computer and look around and do what they want.”
But News & Record columnist Cone also said McDonald recently told him that the congressman “wouldn’t even know how to turn on the computer” — a typical statement that exacerbates the feeling among digital rights advocates that Hollywood studios are dictating technology legislation to politicians who don’t understand what they’re dealing with.
“He’s thumbing his nose at us,” said Silicon Valley analyst and writer Hal Plotkin. “It’s a wonderful example of how little we really matter. Imagine if someone was going to pass legislation on the auto industry and admitted he couldn’t drive. Detroit would be all over him.”
Vote for this woman! Those of you who can vote in California – get that chowderhead Coble out of office!
