In John Kerry’s real tech agenda, Declan McCullagh of CNET observes:

A careful review of Kerry’s history in the Senate shows that his record on technology is mixed. The Massachusetts Democrat frequently sought to levy intrusive new restrictions on technology businesses that could harm the U.S. economy. He was no friend of privacy and sided with Hollywood over Silicon Valley in the copyright wars.

You’d think that readers would be grateful to McCullagh for drawing on his many years of tech-related Congressional coverage. Yes, he’s no liberal. But facts are facts. John Kerry, as McCullagh documents, has hardly been the biggest booster of high-tech and is badly in need of education.

So how do Kerry defenders respond? With comparisons to George Bush. Apparently it’s okay for Kerry to be a Luddite as long as Bush is seen as more of one.

In the political donations area, too, which can be related to misbegotten copyright laws, Kerry apologists have been shameless. ABC News quoted law enforcement officials as saying that Hollywood producer Steve Bing–a major contributor to John Edwards and other Democrats–has a Mafia business partner now in prison on racketeering charges. [Important: ABC News has since retracted the assertion that the producer had a Mafia partner.] ABC didn’t explore the copyright angle, but Bing is the biggest Democatic contributor and deserves scrutiny on all fronts, especially since Edwards sits on a copyright-related committee and keeps wimping out on copyright-related issues. So how does a Kerry booster respond in a Kerry blog? With an accusation that ABC has been partisan.

Meanwhile it’s good to see a few voices on the blog circuit speak up about the need for the Dems to be small-d Democrats on copyryight issues. Ernest Miller has a beaut of a post on The Presidential Election, Copyright, INDUCE Act (IICA) and Tech Policy and graciously gives credit to us for our campaign to get to Kerry and Edwards to reveal their tech policies. As useful as the McCullagh article is, I’ll not go by past records alone. I want to know what K-E will do in the future. And like Ernie Miller I’ll do my best to avoid partisan bias. Ernie wisely writes:

…this is a non-partisan question. We should be asking both the Bush and Kerry people what their position on INDUCE is, especially as Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) wants to pass the bill during the current term. Who really cares whether Kerry would veto it if Bush signs it into law? Indeed, if Bush spoke out against it, I highly doubt it would pass anytime soon.

Exactly! We need to fight the current INDUCE battles and look ahead in a nonpartisan way. Both Kerry and Bush have failed to be responsive to the needs of the public and the Net, and, given the extremist copyright agendas of both parties, it would be a shame to let Kerry off the hook just GOP copyright polices in some ways could be even worse.

(CNET article via The Importance of….)

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