Rick Boucher To Chair House Internet Committee 55
Misch writes "Representative Rick Boucher (D-VA) will be taking the chair of the House Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet. Rep. Boucher has been an advocate for consumers rights, is a co-founder of the Congressional Internet Caucus, and has participated in a Slashdot Interview. He was instrumental in defeating key escrow, back in the day."
This is all fine and good, but its not the right 1 (Score:3, Interesting)
Legislation related to the copyright into the committees of the judiciary and courts, the internet, and intellectual property.
Occasionally copies of bill go to the commerce and energy committee, but mostly its just a gesture rather than actual authority, as any approved bills usually get passed back to the afore mentioned committees for another pass.
If he's leaving either of the others, it's actually a reduction in the influence of reformists. Either way i'm at least glad he's still there.
Good for Internet and Environment (Score:5, Interesting)
Boucher is great for this post, and I'm thrilled that he'll be there. I'm also thrilled that he'll be giving up leadership of the Subcommittee on Energy and Environment. Boucher is a coal guy from a coal region of southwestern Virginia. He was weak on energy and environmental standards relative to the Democratic caucus.
So, this is good for Net Neutrality and other Internet issues.
It's also good for climate change and other environmental issues.
P.S. Like Boucher? Click on my sig link and send him some bucks!
Re:Let me be the first to say... (Score:3, Interesting)
"Sub" because it's a subset. The smaller the committee, the greater the actual power.
Reality defeated key escrow (Score:2, Interesting)
I'm grateful to the politicians who kept that from going into law, but let's be realistic: key escrow never had a serious chance. If it were the law, everyone who needed/wanted security would just have broken the law. And the only time anyone would have been charged for breaking that law is when they were already being charged with breaking a bunch of other stuff too -- it would be one of those "let's add a bunch of extra counts to this" thing, sort of like a "robbery with a gun" charge.
Nobody knows if you're obeying a key escrow law or not, until they're already spying on you and find out, "Hey, that's didn't really decrypt the session key."