Diebold gives up on the memos

The electronic voting machines manufacturer Diebold has given up attempting to press charges for theft of internal memos using the DMCA
according to this slashdot posting (and Diebold's court filing referenced within).

Now, if we can just convince them that using the DMCA to protect their code and operations of voting machines is illicit, that would make me happy. Because our need for transparent voting -- and a stable democracy -- trumps their need for profit from trade secrets.

So far, governments using electronic voting have permitted manufacturers to keep secret the programs which operate them. This is dangerous, because the programs are entirely responsible for tallying the vote, in an unverifiable way. Naturally, that is exactly where elections are stolen.

The only argument for permitting them to keep their programs se cret is the DMCA -- that is, protection of trade secrets. But we're trying to run a free and open democracy here, and our need for reliable, verifiable voting procedures which underpins our free and open democracy takes precedence over their desire to make a buck from clever programming secrets (and there are probably zero programming innovations in that program).

If they want to make money from clever programming secrets, they should do it for consumer products -- like a web browser -- not for voting.