Diebold To Drop Suit Against Whistleblowers

segment writes "Fox News reports that 'Diebold said it would not sue dozens of students, computer scientists and Internet service providers who had received cease-and-desist letters from the company from August to October,' which is great for academia land, but one should still ponder using Diebold on any level: 'an executive scolded programmers for leaving software files on an Internet site without password protection.' Kind of a scary thought with all the United States went through during the Bush/Gore election, imagine the theories should a Diebold product be used in a situation like that. " Reader doormat points out, however, that "the EFF is still going after Diebold over the C&D letters." Several readers also submitted links to Paul Krugman's New York Times column about Diebold's approach to public trust and accountability.

Comments

Re:Well, it's official

[mattjb0010]

The previous Slashdot article was about Diebold not continuing to use DMCA take-down notices. There was no word at that point on whether Diebold would actually sue people who'd put up copies of its memos.

No, the first page of the first linked article says "We also advise the Court that Diebold, having issued notifications in good faith compliance with the DMCA, has decided not to take the additional step of suing for copyright infringement of the materials at issue".

Re:EFF *still* suing?

[Maresi]

They want a clear statement (from the court) that such c&d-letters are a clear misuse of the DMCA.

Read here for more infos

BTW (from the link above): Its not the EFF directly that is suing, they just help the nonprofit "ISP Online Policy Group" (OPG) and two Swarthmore College students .



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There's no "should" about it

[smchris]

"Kind of a scary thought with all the United States went through during the Bush/Gore election, imagine the theories should a Diebold product be used in a situation like that. "

You obviously haven't seen the documents. The most famous is:

I need some answers! Our department is being audited by the County. I have been waiting for someone to give me an explanation as to why Precinct 216 gave Al Gore a minus 16022 when it was uploaded. Will someone please explain this so that I have the information to give the auditor instead of standing here "looking dumb".

Lana Hires - Volusia County Florida - January 17, 2001 8:07 AM

The very point of releasing the documents is that a Diebold product helped _create_ a situation like that.

Get the memos here!

[skyfaller]

You can get the memos at the Swarthmore Coalition for the Digital Commons website... this is the campus group that was started by the two students who are suing Diebold.