Outside the Beltway

HATCH FOLLIES

James Joyner · Friday, June 20, 2003 · 1 comment

Wired News has a lengthy story of a copyright violation on the site of Senator Orrin Hatch, recently castigated here and elsewhere for his idiotic idea that those who download copyrighted music should have their computers remotely destroyed. The story credits Laurence Simon, an unemployed system administrator from Houston, (known better to us as the blogger at Amish Tech Support) for the discovery.

I initially saw the write-up on ATS this morning but dismissed it as likely just a gaffe on the part of Hatch’s webmaster. I mean, who reads licensing agreements on shareware? I’m still not sure that’s not the case–registration of the software in question is free and would come out of the taxpayers’ pockets anyway–but it is rather disturbing that a website maintained for a US Senator is so shoddy in its copyright compliance. It’s not like poor John Lemon, who doesn’t have the time or resources to look out for such minutia.

(Hat tips: Donald Sensing and ATS)