Sterling Ambivalence (sterlingnorth) wrote,
Sterling Ambivalence
sterlingnorth

All New Computers Sold are Breaking Virginia State Law...

Here is yet another illustration why industry lawyers should not be allowed to write laws. Those of us who live in Virginia, or at least the northern part love to harbor the illusion that we're more tech-savvy than most of the country. We call ourselves the Silicon Valley of the east, with a hotline directly to Washington. "Half of the internet traffic of the world travel through wires over and underneath us," we tell anyone who can bear our presence. The bubble never burst here, and everyone has a wireless connection to high speed internet -- even people who live in their automobiles. We have legislative acumen, unlike those backwater sticks like West Virginia or other unenlightened places where people have tried to legislate pi to be exactly 3 or legislate bibles to be official scientific textbooks.

Yet, in Virginia if you use a firewall, encrypt your email, or use a virtual private network, you just broke the law. Yes, even using the piddly-sorry firewall that comes with XP?

You can thank your friendly Motion Picture Association of America -- the very same people who banned screener tapes and DVDs for Oscar voters because someone could possibly upload the film to the net. (OK, this has just happened.) But in the speedy "criminalize now before you could possibly lose a cent and have to find a better business strategy" mindset, we can't afford to let anyone have a tool that could possibly be used to infringe copyright...

And Virginia, you let Hollywood write legislation without seeing if it makes sense.
Of the movies and comics and TV shows they produce, a third barely makes sense. This is their very trade. If Hollywood can't figure out why a script called "Dumb and Dumberer" shouldn't have been filmed, how on earth could they possibly write a law?
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