Umm, someone want to tell Texas, Massachusetts, South Carolina, Florida, Georgia, Alaska, Tennessee and Colorado that bills like this are a bad idea? Apparently not. Did I mention that Michigan already did it? I think Chip’s dad lives in Michigan, so he may want to read these (1, 2, 3) since they go into affect fairly soon.
Seriously, who would think that a bill banning the use of any technology that conceals “the existence or place of origin or destination of any communication” would be a good idea? I guess you could come up with some bullshit “terrorists might use the internet” scenario but come on, that’s stretching things a little thin. These laws need to be rewritten if they’re even going to be vaguely acceptable.
If you send encrypted email, you’re in violation of these bills. If you use NAT and/or a router you’re in violation of these bills. If you use “Internet connection sharring” you’re in violation. Hasn’t anyone told these people that these things are important and are used on a daily basis for completely legitamate things?
All I can picture is that scene from Fight Club where they confront a city council member in the bathroom and tell him something along the lines of “we are the people who fix your meals, we deliver your mail, we drive your cars, we guard you while you sleep… do NOT fuck with us.” Only I can see an army off seriously pissed SysAdmins shutting down state capitals for days at a time. Wouldn’t is be great if we could catch congressmen sending secure emails to each other and shut down their offices for breaches of the DMCA. That would make my day.
Oh, and you may want to check out my new favorite webpage: Freedom to Tinker. Their slogan is “Freedom to Tinker … is your freedom to understand, discuss, repair, and modify the technological devices you own” and I couldn’t have said it better myself. That’s always been my main concern with things like the DMCA. After a short while we won’t have the freedom to open up our PCs and change stuff. I don’t know about you, but that scares the shit out of me. I won’t go on a long tirade because it’s late. Just read the web site. Be informed. I don’t want to be the only person concerned about this anymore.
More information:
Story from the Inquirer
Story from Freedom to Tinker
State “super DMCA” page from Freedom to Tinker
Sleep tight.
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