Slate: Silicon Valley vs. K Street

“But all the encryption in the world is powerless without laws
that forbid picking the locks. So, under Hollywood’s influence,
Capitol Hill has focused its legislative searchlight on the
desktops of personal computer users. One bill seeks to mandate
uncrackable copy protection inside every digital device made or
sold in America. Another would let Hollywood conduct
search-and-destroy missions against home computers, by seeding
file-sharing P2P networks with virus programs that erase bootlegged
music (and who knows what else) from consumers’ disk drives.

“Programmer-turned-essayist Eric Raymond summed up geeks’ fears:
‘The worst threats are not bad technologies, but bad laws.’ But
just because Congress wants to get under the hood of our computers,
that doesn’t mean the quid pro quo of turning programmers into
lobbyists is the smart response…”

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