FC: Orrin Hatch hosts Napster love-in; Voteauction.com getting sued

[Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>]

http://www.cluebot.com/article.pl?sid=00/10/12/2055227&mode=nested

   Orrin Hatch Hosts Napster Love-In
   posted by cicero on Thursday October 12, @03:53PM
   from the changing-the-political-equations dept.

   It's official: Sen. Orrin Hatch is a Napster fanatic. The
   chairman of the judiciary committee this week fawned over Napster
   founder Shawn Fanning at a field hearing in Provo, Utah. Now, this
   is a head-scratchingly unusual development that can't quite be
   explained by traditional political algebra. Such calculations say Big
   Hollywood controls key congressional committees, a hypothesis echoed
   by how Hatch bragged about supporting the hated-by-hackers Digital
   Millennium Copyright Act. ("The DMCA laid the cornerstone for a rich
   and more vibrant Internet," Hatch boasted in 1999.) Since then, some
   variables have changed. Hatch sparred with music execs who showed up
   to testify this summer, and he recently took the unusual step of
   writing to the court that's considering the Napster case. Might
   Napster's 32 million mostly-young users -- aka potential voters -- be
   relevant? Maybe it's just those presidential ambitions again.

Excerpts from Fanning's testimony:
http://www.cluebot.com/article.pl?sid=00/10/12/2055227&mode=nested




http://www.cluebot.com/article.pl?sid=00/10/12/0326212&mode=nested

   Chicago Plans to Sue Voteauction.com
   posted by lizard on Thursday October 12, @06:20PM
   from the vote-early-vote-often-get-paid-for-it dept.

   Wired News has an article on a reported attempt by election
   officials in Chicago to get an injunction against VoteAuction,
   a site where Americans can supposedly sign up to auction their votes
   to the highest bidder. Problem One: The site isn't located in
   the USA. Problem Two: To say that Chicago -- a city long synonymous
   with voter fraud -- is overreacting is to praise with faint damns.
   They're utterly over the top. Problem Two: It's more than likely that,
   as a form of genuine voter fraud, this "auction" is meaningless -- the
   site's almost certainly a joke. Just like most American elections.
   But this time, the voters are laughing at the politicians -- and that is
   what Chicago can't stand. Also see a previous thread.




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