Joe W:-
The fight against Deibold and its hold on voting methods is here: read, download the documents (they may not be around too long), and ask questions about your city or town or state voting methods.
http://www.why-war.com/features/2003/10/diebold.html
James Kurth, Professor of Political Science, Swarthmore College Features
Targeting Diebold with Electronic Civil Disobedience
Campaign Update Day Two, Oct. 22: Today Why War? and the Swarthmore Coalition for the Digital Commons held a public meeting with Dean Bob Gross of Swarthmore College. Overnight, word had spread of this action and Gross had received over 250 emails of support from individuals throughout the world including “tech celebrities” and Swarthmore alumni.
why-war.com Demonstrating massive concern about fair elections, over 42,000 people visited Why War? to read Diebold’s memos.Swarthmore College, unfortunately, is not willing to take a strong stand against Diebold, and is systematically disabling the network access of any student who hosts the files. “We can’t get out in front in this fight against Diebold,” Gross said during the meeting with over fifty students, staff, and faculty. Gross, apparently, did not see that by taking an active stance against Why War’s actions Swarthmore was aiding Diebold’s suppression.
Although Why War? acknowledges Swarthmore’s position, we will continue to explain the importance of this issue to the administration. We had hoped that an institution once praised for allegiance to the pursuit of truth would have taken a more forceful stance in defense of information. Under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, the college would be under no liability after informing a student that s/he should not be hosting the file. Yet Swarthmore is choosing to act counter to the spirit of both its traditions and rules, the latter of which requires that students be given three days to take down work challenged as an infringement of copyright. There is no provision under either the DMCA or Swarthmore’s own rules to allow for shutting down a student’s network access when no challenge has been made against that specific student. Why War? is deeply distressed by Swarthmore’s inability, or unwillingness, to understand that the magnitude of this situation: a fair presidential election!
After consultation with SCDC, the two groups have decided to pursue different courses of action. Although the two groups are no longer working together, we are confident that the actions of both groups will independently result in continued access to Diebold’s memos. SCDC has decided to comply with any cease and desist requests and subsequently take legal action against Diebold. Why War?, on the other hand, will continue to provide access to the memos by listing mirrors provided by individuals worldwide.
Why War? is confident that SCDC’s counter-complaint will result in Diebold being forced to stop its campaign of suppression. In the meantime, you can be assured that Why War? will continue to provide access to these documents on this page.
If you would like to join this campaign of electronic civil disobedience by hosting the memos please e-mail info at why-war.com. For those unable to host the documents, we encourage you to send letters expressing your disappointment about Swarthmore’s lack of principle directly to the college newspaper, at phoenix_letters at swarthmore.edu (and please cc your letters to us).
Representatives of the media should contact media at why-war.com.
Why War? believes that what we are doing is legal; though we see it as an issue of electronic civil disobedience we believe it is Diebold which is abusing copyright law in an attempt to shut down free speech and the democratic process. The four criteria of “fair use” copyright law are the purpose of the use, the nature of the copyrighted work, the substantiality of the portion used and the effect of the use upon the potential market of the copyrighted work. We believe the publication of these documents is integral to the function of the democratic process. The memoranda themselves are not marketable products, and in this case we believe the nature of the work, which threatens elections occurring in 37 states, outweighs the need to selectively excerpt portions of the documents. If there is anything the American people have a right to know, it is how their votes are being counted.
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