Kucinich on Electronic Voting

[redqueen]

From a Letter to Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee Sensenbrenner and Ranking Member Conyers requesting that the Committee hold a hearing to investigate abuses of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) by Diebold Inc., one of the nation's largest electronic voting machine manufacturers. (Diebold has waged an intimidation campaign to repress circulation of employee e-mails that raise concerns about the security of its electronic voting machines):

"There is a compelling argument that the fair use doctrine precludes copyright liability for posting the e-mails. The archive is predominantly factual and was reproduced to inform the national public debate on election reform, specifically, on the machines used to count our votes. The e-mails do not harm any market of Diebold's, except in the sense that admitted problems may cause municipal and state purchasers to subject the machines to greater scrutiny.

"Furthermore, numerous letters were sent to ISPs whose users only hyperlinked to other sites where the Diebold employee e-mails were posted. Hyperlinks do not qualify for copyright protection, and their use does not incur copyright liability. In cases where ISPs complied with requests, they have often shut down entire websites for weeks at a time, instead of removing the alleged infringing activity. The safe-harbor driven 10-business-day takedown period can remove non-infringing websites during a critical interval of discussion.

"Diebold's actions abuse the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, using copyright to suppress speech rather than fulfill the Constitution's purpose for copyright, to 'promote progress.' These abuses raise a fundamental conflict with the First Amendment, diminishing the Internet's tremendous value as a most free medium of expression. Diebold's actions are representative of a growing body of abuses through which large and powerful parties unfairly intimidate ISPs to remove information those parties do not like. In other examples, the claims are not really about copyright, but about not showing the parties in a negative light, or not allowing consumers to compare prices, or quieting religious critics. Powerful parties should not be permitted to misuse copyright as a tool for limiting bad press and barring access to legitimate consumer information."

[no name no slogan]

1. Dennis Rocks, Diebold Sucks

:kick:

[genius]

2. Thank you Dennis

To those who don't know what's going on, a website that included Canadian articles (not subject to the act) about the abuses of electronic voting was pulled by the service provider because of the act, which didn't really apply. This site was reportedly one of the best sources of information on electronic voting.

[goodhue]

3. Private Voting Machines; Private Interests

http://www.house.gov/apps/list/press/oh10_kucinich/031120diebold.html

For Immediate Release
Thursday, November 20, 2003

Kucinich: Private Voting Machines; Private Interests
Unveils New Section Of His Website To Highlight Problems

With Current Electronic Voting Machines

http://www.house.gov/kucinich/issues/voting.htm

Congressman Dennis J. Kucinich (D-OH), Co-Chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, unveiled a new section to his website today to highlight the problems with the current electronic voting machines and a software provider, Diebold.

While Congress has passed legislation to ensure electronic voting can be conducted safely, implementation of the legislation has been slow. As a result, numerous problems have been found with the primary software provider, Diebold’s, product. According to an independent study conducted by Johns Hopkins University the most serious of numerous flaws in Diebold’s software permit a person to vote multiple times, view ballots already cast on a machine, modify party affiliation on ballots, cause votes to be miscounted, create, delete and modify votes on voting machine, and tamper with audit logs and election results.

Worse yet, it appears that Diebold has been aware of many of the flaws yet is unwilling or unable to fix the problems. That is why today, Kucinich has unveiled a new section of his website at: http://www.house.gov/kucinich/issues/voting.htm, to expose internal Diebold documents that show that it knew of flawed programs and made insecure changes to programs. Diebold has manipulated copyright law to intimidate universities and Internet service providers in order to remove these incriminating memos.

“The potential voting problems, if we continue to use these untested software programs and voting machines, will make the disaster of Florida in 2000 look mild,” stated Kucinich. “Private voting machines, free from oversight or transparency, only serve the private interest. I am proud to join today with over 50 colleges in this act of exposing Diebold. It is only through transparency and public awareness that we can reverse this dangerous trend of insecure voting.”

[redqueen]

4. Thank God at least ONE of the candidates gives a damn.

Pity he's not the 'realistic' candidate.