McCain Releases Technology Platform

I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "John McCain has finally released a technology platform. Most of it is the same old stuff; lower corporate taxes, protect children from porn, and avoid Internet regulation unless 'necessary.' Alas, in his view, helping the RIAA's War on Sharing is necessary to stop the 'global epidemic' of piracy, while Net Neutrality is something he 'does not believe in.' Ars Technica has a review of McCain's platform." A brief analysis is also available from Federal Computer Week. In addition to the technology policy, McCain has also released a paper describing his stance on security and privacy. We've previously contrasted his views with those of Barack Obama. Obama's technology policies are also available online.

Worthless ...

[ScrewMaster]

Sounds to me like McCain's "platform" is centered around trying save a sinking ship. That's too bad. He's lost my vote on that issue alone.

hypocrisy

[je ne sais quoi]

John McCain's stance on copyright infringement is hypocritical. The reason is that he is currently being sued by Jackson Browne for copyright infringement [chicagotribune.com] because he used the song "Running on Empty" without permission. This looks to be yet another Republican professing high fallooting morals but who by his deeds is shown to believe that morality is for the populace and doesn't apply to him.

No Agenda in the Summary

[Anonymous Coward]

The Summary: "Net Neutrality is something he 'does not believe in.'"

The Website: "When Regulation Is Warranted, John McCain Acts. John McCain does not believe in prescriptive regulation like "net-neutrality," but rather he believes that an open marketplace with a variety of consumer choices is the best deterrent against unfair practices."

The Summary: "helping the RIAA's War on Sharing is necessary to stop the 'global epidemic' of piracy"

The Website: "While the Internet has provided tremendous opportunity for the creators of copyrighted works, including music and movies, to distribute their works around the world at low cost, it has also given rise to a global epidemic of piracy. John McCain supports efforts to crack down on piracy, both on the Internet and off."

The Summary: "avoid Internet regulation unless 'necessary.'"

The Website: "Keep the Internet and entrepreneurs free of unnecessary regulation" and "John McCain understands that unnecessary government intrusion can harm the innovative genius of the Internet. Government should have to prove regulation is needed, rather than have entrepreneurs prove it is not."

Re:grr.

[chuckymonkey]

Sadly when it comes to things such as network neutrality, MAFIAA litigation, censorship of the internet, and understanding how the internet has the potential to be an unstoppable force of intellectual freedom most U.S. citizens are woefully ignorant. They care about gas prices, making sure that they are not responsible for raising their kids, ensuring that gay couples are not recognized as a legal union, and which religion the candidate subscribes to. They have forgotten that there is a reason the the freedom of speech was the very first amendment, I have met very few that ever read the Federalist Papers, hell half of the people that I talk to have never even read the constitution or have the most basic understanding of how our government works. The internet has the power to be the most perfect force for the first amendment which is essential to the rest of the Constitution and in all honesty I don't think the GOP really wants the average citizen to have that kind of power.

Really?

[Nicolas MONNET]

Technology is my area of expertise, and I guess it's that of many slashdot readers. There is probably no other area where we can judge a candidate as well; therefore if his program sucks balls in this respect, it's probably just fair to extrapolate to the others.
Besides, McCain is Bush III. He's pro war, pro war on terra, and so on.

Re:Who takes platforms seriously in an election?

[rtb61]

The most wildly blatant contradiction, Chairman of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation and he doesn't know how to use a computer. Man, you guys can really pick them, now I know how you managed to have both shrubs running the CIA and why the CIA made such a hack job of collect evidence on all those so called terrorists in GITMO.

The really lamest part of course is 'Educate Its Workforce For The Innovation Age', all the lamest politicians the world over have been rabbiting on about exactly the same thing and then in the next breath, global marketplace and free trade, with the net result that all those job are outsourced to countries that pay one tenth the wage and you have a flood of people in the food services industry with tech degrees. Either that or cannon fodder for the military industrial complex.

Re:hypocrisy

[Dhalka226]

Right from the article you linked:

A McCain spokesman said the ad in question, which mocks Sen. Barack Obama, was put together by the Ohio GOP.

The article isn't even 100 words, could you not make it all the way through? I know /.'ers are notorious for not reading the article, but one would think they wouldn't link it as support for a dubious claim without giving it a once-over.

It isn't even being run by him or his campaign. Even if it were, it's entirely probable that he would have nothing to do with the ad other than a final "go ahead and run it." It would not be at all unreasonable to assume that even if he took note of the fact that they were using the song, that he assumed his staffers had done their job and obtained proper permission to do so. If I were a presidential candidate, I know I would have much more important things to do than micromanage my team.

I haven't seen the ad in question, but if it's anything like most political ads it runs about 30 seconds long, which in my mind would also bring up a fair use question even if the song ran the entire duration. The article also doesn't mention anything about whether or not anybody was contacted with a request to stop using the song or compensate the artist or if he just went straight to lawsuit town.

I'm not a McCain supporter by any stretch, but your post is just ridiculous. Then again it's patently obvious you made up your mind long ago and are inventing lame "issues" to try to lambast him with, so I suppose you'll just come back with a "zomg he's lying he's a politician lolerskatz."

Re:Protect children from porn

[urcreepyneighbor]

go about protecting children from STDs, by preaching abstinence.

Abstinence is the only proven method of not contracting STDs. The only way.

I'm sorry, my friend, but if you're going to slut it up... you're going to pay the price. All the latex and gels in the world won't give you the same protection as abstinence.

Keeping children away from computers would probably work about as well.

This isn't about keeping children away from computers. This is about keeping porn from kids.

You do realize that you can use a computer without accessing porn, I hope.

Cue the "it's not the same thing" replies.

Having access to a computer and having sex are different. Maybe you just don't get it?

Re:John McCain on blogs

[pudge]

Of Course. This _is_ the "McCain" in "McCain-Feingold" we're talking about, after all.

Surely you're familiar with the McCain-Feingold "incumbency protection act", who's aim is to create a dubious "protected class" of people for whom the 1st amendment (which protects _political speech_ and no other type) still actually applies.

For everyone else (people who aren't "real journalists") -- no more 1st amendment rights for you, anytime an election is 6 months (or wahtever the bill says) away.

McCain Feingold is one of these ridiculous laws that, when examined, seems totally ridiculous and unconstitutional.

Not for nothing, let's remember the fact that Democrats supported the bill 198-12, and Republicans supported it 41-176, in the House. In the Senate, it was 46-3, and 11-38. In the Congress, Republicans broadly opposed the "Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act," and Democrats almost universally supported it.

So let us not pretend (not that you were doing so) that Obama, a Democrat, who has already proven to be unprincipled on campaign financing (saying he would do one thing out of campaign finance principles, and then rejecting that principle and pretending what he was doing was following that principle), would not be in favor of McCain-Feingold too.

Re:hypocrisy

[remove office]

Actually, both the McCain campaign and the RNC have gotten itself in hot water several times for using copyrighted music or video clips without permission during this cycle.

A few examples:

McCain was served with a cease and desist [nytimes.com] letter from Fox News after he used their broadcast footage in a commercial without buying it...

McCain was sued by Mike Myers [latimes.com] after he used a clip from a skit from SNL without purchasing it or getting permission from Myers himself (Myers isn't the copyright owner, but that's irrelevant).

McCain got yelled at [boston.com] by copyright owners for using the "Rocky" theme song in an ad without permission.

One of McCain's YouTube videos have been hit with a copyright infringement claim [p2pnet.net] by Warner Music Group after the campaign used a song by Frankie Valli without permission.

Of course, all of this is not to mention McCain's little plagiarism issue [cqpolitics.com] with Wikipedia...

Re:Worthless ...

[ScentCone]

Let me just say that, as someone who's not a US citizen, the fact that you refer to your president as "Commander in Chief" scares me. A lot.

Why? That's the primary role of that position. People seem VERY confused on this subject. The president doesn't make legislation happen. The president can't tax anyone. The president is one of the three legs of the checks-and-balances system, with the congress and the courts impacting some issues far more than the president can or should.

The president is the civilian who is in charge of executive tasks, and the defense of the country is first among those. The military and its related services/agencies are the tools of that job.

I specifically mention the C-in-C part of the job because it's the part that Obama is least suited for. But who decides how much humanitarian aid to fly off of an aircraft carrier into Burma after a disaster? Who made the decision to land aid-payload by military cargo aircraft in Georgia the other day, at what risk of of conflict with the Russians rolling tanks around in that country? The person commanding the military. The commander-in-chief. Who will be issuing orders to withdraw troops from one spot and move them to another as needed? Who will be interacting with the Ukraine, or Poland on military matters? When the Europeans promise more military support in Afghanistan but continue to come up short of delivering, who gets to decide whether and how to make up for that shortcoming, even as girls' schools are being burned down by the Taliban? Such things fall on the president to execute. He's the chief executive, and the commander in chief of a military that includes the Coast Guard as well as the mobile forces. Obama's a concern because of his unfamiliarity (other than complaining about other people) in those areas, and his willingness to make vague policy pronouncements rooted in that ignorance.

Re:Worthless ...

[Anonymous Coward]

What a bunch of vague, useless, pandering crap. When forced to actually talk detailed substance, Obama has to give in face real issues realistically, and it annoys his leftist supporters who like him most when he's a blank slate that they think will do what they tell him to.

Whoa there you are really drinking the Republican kool-aid there. You have it COMPLETELY backwards.

Go look at Obama's issues page. Look at McCain's. There's some striking things here:

* In general, each of Obama's plans goes into much more detail about the *how* of things. Details are important. In contrast, McCain's issues page just says loads of high level stuff like "As president, John McCain will pursue reforms that address the underlying cultural problems in our education system - a system that still seeks to avoid genuine accountability and responsibility for producing well-educated children." with absolutely no idea how this is supposed to work. His issues page is littered with items like this. It's like they're intentionally vague so you don't see what his true position is.

* McCain wants to install judges that will overturn Roe V Wade. Right to life is backwards witch-hunt BS.

* McCain's education plan boils down to: home schooling a-OK, let everyone choose which school to let their kids attend (logistical nightmare).

There's far more places where McCain's stance is unknown. Do some research for goodness sake!

Re:Worthless ...

[cayenne8]

"In this environment, esp. if one lives in a state where the outcome (due to the Electoral College system) is "preordained" (for example, California)..."

I don't think the Electoral College is what 'pre-ordains' the vote of CA or any other state. The problem is, that most states have it so that the Electoral votes are all "all or nothing" votes. If every state voted proportionally with their EC votes in the EC...then we might see a large change in how things go for president.

I frankly like the idea about how the EC is there...it preserves the equality of votes across ALL states. Remember, you are a citizen of your state first, then a citizen of the United States...so, therefore, each state should have equal share in say of the president..and the EC provides this.