Joe Biden's pro-RIAA, pro-FBI tech voting record (Attn: tech geeks)

[cyberpj]

Got this from my tech geek (darling) husband this morning.
He's very anti-RIAA and anti-gov intervention regarding copyright and encryption issues.
I don't really have a lot of knowledge or opinion on this stuff but thought I should share it for other DUers who might be interested.

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Joe Biden's pro-RIAA, pro-FBI tech voting record
August 23, 2008 6:09 PM PDT
Posted by Declan McCullagh

snip-
..."After taking over the Foreign Relations committee, Biden became a staunch ally of Hollywood and the recording industry in their efforts to expand copyright law. He sponsored a bill in 2002 that would have make it a federal felony to trick certain types of devices into playing unauthorized music or executing unapproved computer programs. Biden's bill was backed by content companies including News Corp. but eventually died after Verizon, Microsoft, Apple, eBay, and Yahoo lobbied against it.


Sen. Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic vice presidential nominee, whose anti-encryption legislation was responsible for the creation of PGP.

(Credit: Biden.senate.gov)A few months later, Biden signed a letter that urged the Justice Department "to prosecute individuals who intentionally allow mass copying from their computer over peer-to-peer networks." Critics of this approach said that the Motion Picture Association of America and the Recording Industry Association of America, and not taxpayers, should pay for their own lawsuits.

Last year, Biden sponsored an RIAA-backed bill called the Perform Act aimed at restricting Americans' ability to record and play back individual songs from satellite and Internet radio services. (The RIAA sued XM Satellite Radio over precisely this point.)

All of which meant that nobody in Washington was surprised when Biden was one of only four U.S. senators invited to a champagne reception in celebration of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act hosted by the MPAA's Jack Valenti, the RIAA, and the Business Software Alliance."

entire article here:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-10024163-38.html

[katandmoon]

1. Very interesting.