Lawmakers Writing Software Again
From a true friend of freedom, Ed Felten, comes word that California's attempt to regulate p2p networks has morphed into a requirement that net-ware include copyright and porn filters.
Felten points out all kinds of practical problems with the bill's language, just one being that it assumes that software hawkers somehow control the underlying architecture of the product. Not in this world.
Then there's the clumsy attempt at defining the "primary purpose" of software yet unknown, as Felten notes:
A program's author may have one purpose in mind; a distributor may have another purpose in mind; and users may have a variety of purposes in using the software. Of course, the software itself can't properly be said to have a purpose, other than doing what it is programmed to do. Most P2P software is programmed to distribute whatever files its users ask it to distribute. Is purpose to be inferred from the intent of the designer, or from the design of the software itself, or from the actual use of the software by users? Each of these alternatives leads to problems of one sort or another.
Isn't someone in Sacramento the least bit embarrassed by this stuff?