Info/Law

I got in a conversation recently about which of the Presidential candidates I’d be supporting. Ordinarily, I hate getting into conversations like that; my involvement in some high-profile political disputes during my old career as a practicing lawyer left me fairly soured on politics in general, and for some years now I’ve basically been a member of the “plague on both your houses” party.

But the question got me thinking. Which candidate would be the best on issues of concern to the info/law community? Who has technological expertise and a sense of the public’s interest in open access to information? Whose copyright policy would be consumer-friendly? Is there even such a candidate in existence?

I’m not the only one wondering about this. Business Week recently ran a piece, Election ‘08: Seeking a “Tech President”, that tried to suss out the candidates’ views on telecom policy, federal research funding, improving broadband penetration, and the like. What’s most remarkable about the BW piece, and its accompanying survey of the candidates’ positions, is how uninformative it is. We learn a little about which tech-industry business titans have lined up behind which candidate, but on seemingly simple baseline questions (would you sign the patent reform act? Or the Snowe-Dorgan network neutrality bill? What’s your stand on fair use and the FAIR USE Act? Would you extend the internet tax moratorium? etc.), nothing. We can count Clinton and Obama as supporters of Snowe-Dorgan, since they’re cosponsors. More generally, however, BW seems to have come up mostly empty-handed in its attempts to illuminate which candidates deserve the “Tech President” mantle.

Professor Lessig thinks, if it’s anyone, it’s definitely not Clinton. He writes:

Some of the worst changes in copyright law came under the watch of her husband (Sonny Bono Act, DMCA, NET Act). She’s made no statements that I’m aware of to suggest she has any different view from her husband’s. She was also the only major Democratic candidate not to endorse the idea of free presidential debates. Of all the Dems, I would have bet she was closest to the copyright extremists. So far, she’s done nothing to suggest to the contrary.

Laying blame for bad intellectual property legislation at the feet of President Clinton, however, strikes me as a little unfair. After all, the Sonny Bono Act, the DMCA, and the NET Act were all passed by the Republican-controlled 105th Congress. Moreover, all three bills were passed by the Senate unanimously. If there’s blame to be spread, it seems like it should be shared equally among all the present candidates who were members of the legislature at the time—which includes the likes of Chris Dodd and Fred Thompson but doesn’t include the former First Lady.

Senator Obama has earned some plaudits for incorporating a social-networking site, my.barackobama.com, as part of his online presence, but will that translate into user-friendly public policy? And Governor Romney made at least a stab at joining the user-generated content revolution by providing the tools for visitors to his site to create their own campaign videos, at least until the whole thing blew up in his face. Rep. Paul’s libertarianism has earned him a devoted following online, and netizens would probably be generally sympathetic to his views on the PATRIOT Act, but it’s hard to imagine him lifting a finger to diminish the reach of copyright and patent monopolies.

My quick survey of the candidates’ campaign web pages suggests that info/law issues just aren’t on anybody’s radar this election. Even Rep. Kucinich, whose bewildering array of position posts includes some truly niche topics, seemingly hasn’t found the time to tackle this subject. Perhaps it’s just not realistic to expect a candidate to focus on, say, patent reform, with one or more wars on, a health care crisis, a seemingly slowing economy, and so forth. And certainly I wouldn’t propose that a candidate should give up having a view on the “big issues” just so they can have a view on the small ones. But, like it or not, the next 4 years are going to be important ones for technology and the internet. The war isn’t going to dominate Washington forever. The next President and his/her advisors are going to have an info/law policy. It would be nice to know, before the election, what it’s going to be.

Think I’m missing the boat here? If you’ve picked a candidate based in part on their views on law and technology issues, and have links to some of their position statements, speeches, or the like, please chime in in the comments below.

Filed under: Internet & Society, Voting