Slashdot Mirror
Diebold Issues Cease and Desist to Indymedia
h0mee writes "Diebold, manufacturer of election equipment, has issued a Cease and desist notice to the upstream provider of San Francisco Indymedia for having links to mirrors of a leaked internal diebold memo. More than just a case of a leak, Diebold has been raising a lot of questions about the fairness and security of elections in the United States. (Perhaps it's time for peer reviewable software like gnu.free? ;)"
Guys, like always, you're jumping the gun a little bit in favour of Free Software. I do not deny that an open project could be usefull in voting machine technologies, but that is far from the only solution. All that is truly needed is accountability built into the system. If a commercial product created a paper-trail that could appeald to in case of a challenge of the voting results (and the voters could see their vote choice printed) it would solve the major problems the diebold systems were designed to have. True, a GPL'd solution could do this as well, but when we start saying that no commercial product will work, we start to look like zealots who's primary goal is to get Free Software out everywhere. The issue this time isn't free vrs non-free software, it is free vrs. non-free elections: if such is possible this is a more important issue than Free Software proliferation.
Little Brother, watching the watchers
I support their right of free speech, and I think Indymedia should ignore the cease and desist offer.
However, Indymedia is definitely not a very important platform. They're mostly a source of conspiracy theories, shoddy research, half-truths, hate-mongering, and just plain bad journalism.