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Update on State "Communications Services" Laws
babbage_ct writes "As has been reported on Slashdot before (see here, here, and here for just a few) the MPAA is pushing so-called Super-DMCA laws in states around the country. Well, score one for the good guys. Oregon's version, SB 655 is going to die. Turns out the sponsor was scammed by MPAA lobbyist. See the e-mail from legislative staff below.
From: "Staff SenCharlesStarr"
To:
Sent: Thursday, May 22, 2003 5:17 PM
Subject: Status of SB 655
Status of SB 655:
SB 655 is slated to die in committee this session. It is no longer an immediate threat, however, there will be a study commission appointed over the interim. Sen. Minnis decided that the issue was too complex to resolve this session. I will attempt to inform you when the commission is formed so that you can have further input. Oregon truly dodged the bullet on this. Some states passed the MPAA model legislation before the IT community even knew it existed.
The email you sent to Sen. Starr (and I hope all of the committee members) helped to stop this dangerous legislation. Good job! In case you're wondering why Sen. Starr sponsored this bill in the first place, it was requested by the MPAA lobbyist (who really is a nice guy) but Sen. Starr was told that it was a simple bill to update copyright law in relation to digital media. Yes, and a whole lot more! As the full impact of the bill became clear, Sen. Starr withdrew his support, which contributed to the bill's "unfortunate demise."
If you have any further questions, please feel free to ask.
Ken McDermott
Legislative Assistant
Senator Charles Starr
900 Court St NE S-312
Salem, OR 97301
staff.sencharlesstarr@state.or.us
But the topic is not interesting. How many submitted stories for the Developers section -for example- do you think they turn down every day? That stuff is interesting, even if it's about embedding Linux in a toaster.
The story about SCO today has fewer posts than the inane one about the F# language. Is that "meaningful discussion"? I think not.
Nice, very nice. Mind if I use that occasionally?
For those who describe their systems as 'boxen', do you order multiple 'boxen' of corn flakes also?
Well now Owen's has done one thing right and just about everything else wrong. Maybe now he'll fix the slashing and burning he's done to education. The schools here are dismal, I think they're about 48th in the nation. And his recent gouging of the state universities is atrocious.
What about Oregon's new Senate Bill 742? Proposed by republican senator John Minnis, it says that whoever participates in or conspires to participate in any type of activity which disrupts commerce (or which at least one person involved intends to use to disrupt commerce, regardless of if they tell the others) faces a mandatory life sentence without paroll.
The idea of it is, that if you say you're going to go to a peace march, they can arrest you, because many peace marches disrupt commerce, and if found guilty of saying you're going to go to a peace march, they'll throw you in prison for life without giving the judge a chance to reduce the sentence. And I have not exaggerated a word of this.
Of course it advertises itself as an anti-terrorism bill, and our legistlators have a history of saying "aye" whenever a bill comes along that has a good sounding summary and was proposed by someone of their own party. And peace marchers are usually democrats, trouble makers in their eyes.
They might say that they're only going to use it against real terrorists, but if that's true they should put it in writing, rather than passing an "everyone is guilty of crimes punishable by death" law.
Just the fact that one of our legislators would propose something like that deeply offends all of us. And black people from California still can't get more than 30 miles past the border without getting pulled over, but that's another story. I'm voting democrat in the next state election if they decide to let me have a ballot this time.