Diebold's Change Of Heart
from the gee,-I-wonder-why... dept
According to Larry Lessig, Diebold has actually backed away from their threats to sue students who were posting memos suggesting their electronic voting machines had problems. Considering the public relations storm that has been brewing around this case, it's not a huge surprise. However, what will be interesting now is whether or not the EFF's case against Diebold will still be allowed to move forward. This is reminiscent of the "chilling effects" Ed Felten case, where a big company starts slapping people around with the DMCA until they protest loudly enough. If there are no consequences to letting these companies threaten anyone they want with the DMCA (even if the threat isn't valid) they're just going to keep doing it.
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Diabold? Diabold who?
Apparently I am not alone, as others have now become more aware of bad security at Diabold, since 2 of their ATMs got the Welchia worm, and they tried to PR the exposure to death, only causing security experts to look into the issue more. I think Diabold has proven that PR and the legal system doesn't fix problems, hopefully they will learn from their mistakes and move on.
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