Voting machine maker retracts threat to sue students
Diebold, Inc., a supplier of touchscreen voting machines, agreed not to sue or further threaten student activists around the country after months of legal haggling over the publication of sensitive Diebold documents on the Internet.After two students at Swarthmore College first published the company's internal memos and emails, which seemed to show the company knowingly produced voting machines that were subject to tampering, Diebold issued cease-and-desist orders to Swarthmore to have their documents taken down.While saying it would not take a political stance on the issue, Swarthmore did require the students to remove the material from their websites.However, before removing the materials, the Swarthmore students petitioned students at other colleges and universities through emails chains to start posting "mirrors" of documents.Three students at the University ? Bryan Cattle '07, Charles Pence '07 and 'Prince' staff writer Aaron Kleinman '06 ? became part of the movement to propagate the mirrored material on the Internet.Soon after the nationwide campaign began, the Swarthmore students joined the Online Policy Group, a nonprofit ISP that also received a cease-and-desist order, to file a joint suit against Diebold for the right to disseminate the documents under the "fair use" clause of copyright law.Since that time Diebold has been threatening all parties who have been posting the company's memos on the Internet with suits in federal court.But with last Tuesday's announcement, the threats stopped."I think [the nationwide press coverage] brought [Diebold] more attention than they wanted," Cattle said.