I feel that the Swarthmore College students who posted the Diebold security flaws were within their rights in posting the material on the internet for others to read. My main reasoning is that Diebold Electronic Systems provides a product that has direct correlation with the progression of our proud democratic system of governance. After vote recounts were warranted following the 2000 election, it became clear that the need for order (without flaws) in our vote submission system is crucial to the outcome of close elections. Appointing a political figure, especially the President of the U.S., is not "democratic" if the flaws of the vote submission system have any effect on the polls. America and American citizens take pride in this country much because of the high value we place on our right to vote. Our *fair* democratic election is what makes our country so wonderful, so united, and so unique. In the case of Diebold Electronic Systems, the students at Swarthmore College came across information that affected the entire nation; not just culturally, but politically. Only by understanding the Diebold system security flaws can we *insist* upon remedying the situation. With consequences that effect the entire nation, and the direction the countries political future at stake, we can't afford to assume that a corporation will solve the problem in a virtuous manner, rather than in the self-interest of the corporation and its finances. There are a lot of greedy corporations out there. While corporate greed in industries like music and movies won't necessarily affect our civilization's immediate future, it is unacceptable in areas such as the democratic voting system. Without the Swarthmore College students, Diebold may have never made efforts of fix the flaws of their systems. The result would have been a meaningless electoral process, and the appointment of a politician who may or may not have truly won over the majority vote of the people. I think Diebold's decision to ultimately repeal their suits against the students and the ISP that hosted the content was a result of the realization that the company would lose tremendous credibility if they followed through with the suits. After all, the students did not leak information that would impede the sales of consumer product, such as in the recent case of "Apple v. Does." They simply pointed out a flaw in our democratic process, and for that they should not be punished, let alone censored. The EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation) provides an array of documentation pertaining to the Diebold case, all of which I found extremely helpful in gaining a better understanding of the situation. Below I've included that link (EFF), among others:

While searching on Google for a few times, I found pretty much the same articles that everyone else came across. After skimming through the arguments of both sides, I did get a better picture of the situation. The Internet’s somewhat fair representation of the cases indicates that public domain and the freedom of speech still exists. And despite regulations that might seem absurd to some, social and cultural progress is still taking place.

When I searched for websites with information over the Diebold and Swarthmore case using google.com, I actually found a lot of information. It seems like the information I found was fiarly representative of both sides-there are people out there who've made websites supporting the students and those who use the students as a negative example of the cultural commons. An interesting article I found i

I think it is important to for peoples idea's to be acredited. I find all to often that people "steal" work from others for personal gain. This happens often in school. I believe the information should be out there otherwise it would be pointless to garher information through experiments or studies but a copyright law is necessary. Many people pride their work, and often enough it is their lifes work, and if their is no way of insuring that it is protected by some kind of law their efforts would have been in vein.

In "The Tyranny of Copyright?", Boynton discusses the absurdity of recent legislation of copyright laws which are causing the United to states to become "less free and ultimately less creative". In his discussion, Boynton tells us the manipulation of this legislation by large corporations such as Diebold lead to outrageous laws such as the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, which will "erode our democratic freedom" in the name of "foiling piracy".

On a website devoted to copyright articles and lawsuits, I found that "A Federal District Court judge ruled in favor of the ISP and students while granting summary judgment on the claim that Diebold violated 512(f) of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) by sending takedown notices while knowing that infringement has not actually occured." I was surprised that the students actually won their lawsuit, because before hearing this, I thought that the law would have made them liable for what they did.

When searching online, and after reading through several of the other responses, my research turned up with similar results. Why War?, a student org. at Swarthmore combined with the efforts of Luke Smith and Nelson Pavlosky tried to bring down the powers of Diebold Election systems for biasing the voting machines on campus. The idea seems great - and would be right on with Boynton's ideas of string-free information for everyone through the internet to increase total public information and awareness - but their execution was off.

My first attempt at googling resulted in webpages filled with copies of the article required to read in class.

My second attempt yielded more detailed results about the lawsuit, and the Swarthmore students' victory against Diebold. The memos that Diebold tried to keep private were also posted on some webpages --specifically a swarthmore.edu webpage. A lot of the webpages gathered the more significant comments from the memos and quoted them to show that Diebold was covering up information important to voters. I didn't find any webpages that defended Diebold's position, only criticizing their abusive use of copy rights to protect themselves, most were celebrating Swarthmore's students' victory and their free speech rights.

When performing searches for this post I came across one article concerning two students who were apparently at the center of this case, Nelson Pavlosky and Luke Smith. They were two Swarthmore students who posted the 15,000 internal emails from Diebold on their site.

In the article, this was the quote I found most interesting:
"First, they asked fellow student activists nationwide to take turns posting the material. And second, they sued Diebold for abusing copyright law.

When I searched on google for this forum i could find the memos that stated the the voting machines did not work properly and could be altered with easily and it was not all that hard. It showed that people could access information if they really wanted to. Sinc ethese documents refelced poorly on Diebold, the company did not want them posted. Putting these documents on the internet did violate compyrights laws since they were not the students documents to put up.

I searched google and found many articles relating to Boynton's "The Tyranny of Copyright" and the Diebold/Swarthmore incident. On the Why War? website, which is maintained by a non-profit student organization at Swarthmore College, I found various updates and even some Diebold memos. They don't seem to be all that telling, but since the issue involves our election process, I think the public needed to be warned of the faultiness of the machines.

For the most part my search yielded many articles related to the events that took place, but I did also happen to find the memos that were taken from Diebold on Why War? site. Most of the memos were just boring messages related to Diebold's business, updates on the things they were working on, etc. Though not too interesting to look at, the idea of publishing them still reinforces some concerns about copyright laws.

Well, I was able to find all of the messages that were stolen and could look at each and every one of them. It took three Google attempts but wasn't hard at all. I guess it further shows that information can be put out there if it needs to. Just like the people during the rise of the Nazi's in Germany who fostered posters and thoughts against those very ideals. Looking at the messages, they seem to just be normal email jargon.

I tried to access the actual forums that show why Why War? (a nonprofit student organization at Swarthmore) and the Swarthmore Coalition for the Digital Commons (also stated to consist of students) have decided to defy the voting machine maker Diebold Election System, but the forums were removed. These memos were posted on the Why War? website (why-war.com) four and a half weeks ago, but after the college ISP received a cease-and-desist letter (threatening with a lawsuit in regards to copyright violations), the memos were moved to an anonymous student's computer. The author who wrote this information, Kim Letter, posted its news update from the Swarthmore college website, and IT was even removed from the site for no apparent reason. This relates to Boynton's article because it shows the power of the copyright law; it prevents people like the participants of the "Why War?" comunity from providing potentially vital information. People fear being sued by copyright infringement, because it is a well-known lawsuit; I hear about students violating copyright rules by copying information from online sources from teachers quite frecuently. Taking information from The Internet without dictating is quite different from hacking into a voting machine, but their results both prove on how effective a copyright lawsuit can be at frightening you to bend to their will.
Boynton wants to appeal to the corporations (who appease the copyrights) as well as the users, information thefts, etc. by creating a copyright system that will benefit them both. He believes that the Copyright system of today is too restricting, and the system reminds me of the Mandatory Minimum sentences for marijuana users. The Mandatory Minimum sentences are very harsh in order to scare users.

When searching for related topics on Google, I came across several sights that summed up the Diebold/Swarthmore students dilemna. An article found at PC.com indicates that the documents in question told of "flaws in the touch-screen voting machines and irregularities with certifying the machines for actual elections". The students began encourging others to publish the obtained information as well.

While searching I found some information that said that the students found that the Diebold machines were faulty and anyone with access to these machines could change the nature of the votes with ut leaving evidence that had been tampared with (The Daily Gazette). It was said that Diebold began to shut down websites that held the memos, but personal computers still posted them. I found one website that said it was providing "a mirrow of the Diebold memos".