Slashdot Mirror
Copyright As Weapon In US Senate Campaign
kfogel writes "Sharron Angle, the Republican candidate for US Senate in Nevada, is using a copyright 'cease-and-desist' letter to stop her opponent, incumbent Harry Reid (currently majority leader in the US Senate), from reposting old versions of her campaign website. The old pages are politically sensitive because Angle campaigned from the far right in the primary, but is now toning that down for the general election."
As kfogel notes, the letter "also accuses the Reid campaign of intending to impersonate Angle's campaign, which seems doubtful, but who knows?"
I think the summary got it wrong. Aren't they candidates for Senate in Nevada?
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
By "reposting old versions of her website," what the submitter actually means is "copying all of the code and images from Sharron Angle's old website, registering a new domain (therealsharronangle.com), and re-creating the entire (old) website." There was even an operable section to sign up as a volunteer, thus collecting the personal information of people who might accidentally come to the phishing site instead of the actual Sharron Angle site. This is known as phishing, and is indeed a violation of copyright.
Gee, Slashdot spreading a misleading story in a bid to make an unfavored politician look bad. Unfortunately, this isn't really unusual for Slashdot.
It is an open book. However, having dealt with a number of design contracts, there may have been a written agreement between the designer and the campaign that nobody else would use that site design, which this would violate to some extent. Nonetheless, there are ways around that: posting screen shots with commentary, for example, or just quoting the text.
I'd also expect Angle to contact The Wayback Machine if she doesn't want old copies of her site online...
Liberal? Conservative? Compare perspectives at Left-Right
Yes, should have been Nevada, not Arizona -- and the fault was mine in the original submission, not Slashdot's. Sorry about that! I'm glad they updated the post.
-Karl Fogel
http://www.red-bean.com/kfogel
Umm, you need read and understand the facts before you post.
The issue is not that Senator Reid's campaign merely reposted parts of her website. Or that she was running away from positions she has taken in the past.
It was that the Reid campaign created a website to look like hers and used that site to get names, emails and other information from people who believed it was her site.
Respect the Constitution
You do realize Narconon is heavily connected to Scientology right? The book that Willian in the quote was reading was "Scientology: The Fundamentals of Thought" Frankly, I think any politician supporting Narconon needs to be shunned far away from public office. Democrat, Republican, it doesn't matter, cults aren't okay.
Sigh.
narCONon is a $cientology front group. It has repeatedly been found either ineffective or downright harmful.
Narcotics Anonymous, on the other hand, is an actual treatment program, the name of which $cientologists deliberately mirrored in their scam setup in order to confuse people into thinking narCONon is somehow legitimate.