The Worst Technology Laws

When we buy a song, a video, or any other piece of entertainment, we should be able to move it around to our various devices, take it with us when we travel, and share it within our homes. Such capabilities used to fall under the concept of "fair use," but with the DMCA and Hollywood's fears about peer-to-peer piracy, fair use has come under attack.

Congress should end the debate once and for all, by giving consumers a clear set of guidelines about what they can and cannot do with content they have bought. Andthose rulesshould preserve the commonsense minimum set of rights that we used to have, and not require us to pay every time we want to enjoy our media on a different device. 'Nuff said.

Just Make It Fair

Three priorities for Congress: Keep the Internet a level playing field, make monthly bills from service providers simple to read and dispute, and ensure that electronic voting is secure and free from interference.

This should be a no-brainer: Big companies shouldn't be able to pay to have the data from their Web sites and services travel more quickly along the Internet than those of smaller companies or individual users. But many people in government--most recently the folks at theFederal Trade Commission--don't seem to get the concept.

Allowing unequal service leads to anan Internet imbalancethat ultimately will hurt innovation and competition. And that means we, the consumers, lose out.

There should be a prioritization of traffic, but it should look only at what kind of data is being transferred, not who sent it. Data that requires fast, uninterrupted service, such as streaming video, should get priority, whether that video is ESPN's game highlights or footage of your Hawaiian vacation.

Take a look at your cell phone, telephone, and cable bills. Odds are, you'll spot an item or two that you know little about, or perhaps can't identify at all. Maybe your spouse ordered a new service or your child downloaded a ring tone or game. But the abbreviated jargon on most of these bills makes it hard to know for sure.

That's why consumer groups are mobilizing to get Congress or individual states to set a billing standard so that you know exactly what you're being charged for, andby whom.

That latter point has become increasingly important as cell phone carriers work with third parties to provide customers with services ranging from games to daily jokes. It's too easy to sign up for something--sometimes without even knowing it--and way too hard to figure out how to unsubscribe. Theproblemextends to ISPs and Web services, which often have partnership deals and may share your credit card information when you sign up for special offers.

Congress should require companies that bill you to include a plain-English description of the service you're being charged for, along with a phone number you can use to cancel. That would go a long way toward helping consumers make sure they can control their finances and prevent fraud.

After the fiasco of the Florida presidential election count in 2000, Congress passed the Help America Vote Act in 2002, allocating hundreds of millions of dollars to get states to update their voting systems and, presumably, to reduce errors and fraud. While e-voting machines have certainly made things easier for voters and county officials for the most part, they've also beenplagued by so many identified security problems, and software and deployment errors, that some states (including Florida) are banning them altogether.

One of the chief problems with the machines is that they offer no paper trail to check against electronic tallies if a glitch crops up. If the machine crashes or a discrepancy in voter counts surfaces, you're out of luck. Mandating a paper trail would help to resolve such conflicts when they arise. Some states already demand such verification, but it's important enough that we should have this requirement nationwide. We also need stricter oversight of the machines' software and physical security, so we can be sure that any election-eve patches are legitimate.