GOOD NEWS: Diebold Backs Off Legal Challenge

Electronic Voting - A Non-Partisan Issue

GOOD NEWS: Diebold Backs Off Legal Challenge

' Wendy Seltzer, staff attorney for the Electronic Freedom Foundation, said publication of the Diebold documents was an important ingredient in the growing public debate about electronic voting systems and the companies that manufacture them.
"We're pleased that Diebold has retreated and the public is now free to continue its interrupted conversation over the accuracy of electronic voting machines," she said. '

Wired News 02:00 AM Dec. 02, 2003 PT

Diebold Backs Off Legal Challenge

The complete article is currently (3/28/04) available on the Wired News website at-- http://www.wired.com/news/evote/0,2645,61243,00.html

Excerpt--

Diebold Election Systems is withdrawing legal threats against voting activists and Internet service providers for publishing copies of internal staff e-mails that the company says were stolen from its servers.

The documents pointed to security flaws with Diebold's computerized voting machines and suggested the company knew about those flaws long before it sold machines to several states, including California, Maryland and Georgia.

Beginning in August, Diebold issued cease-and-desist letters to more than a dozen individuals who posted the documents or links to sites hosting them on the Internet. The company claimed copyright infringement under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, or DMCA, a law designed to guard against the improper use of creative works. Diebold said the documents revealed proprietary information about the workings of its e-voting system that would benefit its competitors.

The nonprofit ISP Online Policy Group and two Swarthmore College students sought a court order in October to block Diebold's action. On Monday, Diebold reversed itself without explaining its decision, saying only that it would not sue over the copyright claims. ...

http://www.wired.com/news/print/0,1294,61243,00.html

To read Wired News' complete coverage of e-voting, visit the Machine Politics section: http://www.wired.com/news/evote

To read Wired News' complete coverage of e-voting, visit the Machine Politics section: http://www.wired.com/news/evote

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