[sllug-members]: Questions for our senatorial candidates

[Doug Beattie]

Please send questions you may have for Pete Ashdown or Senator Hatch's
and his representative to sllug-officers at sllug.org

We should collect some more questions in advance of this months meeting
to help the discussion stay going. You may still asked questions and
follow up questions on the spot, but having a reserve of questions
is not a bad idea.

Thanks for helping us out with this.

The invitation that was sent to both parties had some questions in it
already. That invitation follows.

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The Salt Lake Linux Users Group (SLLUG - www.sllug.org) is planning our
May meeting to which we are inviting both Senator Orrin Hatch and Pete
Ashdown to speak to us about their views on information and computing
technology legal and business climate in the state of Utah.

Past monthly meetings have been attend by from thirty to over three
hundred individuals in the the Salt Lake area; attendance depends on
what subject is being discussed.  We are sure that the two of you would
draw a large group.

We invite each of you to take 15 minutes apiece to present your views on the
interaction between regulation, law, technology, business, and consumers.
We'd also like to hear what you would do legislatively in the Senate to
influence these interactions to the maximum public good.

We will then open up the reminder of the time (up to an hour) for questions
and answers from our members.

Of interest to our  audience would be your views and plans concerning:

1) the current state of the Constitution's Congressional capacity to
   "promote progress in science and the useful arts", and modern tensions
   between progress, prior art, obviousness, the PTO, practioners, patent
   portfolios, the public, etc.

2) the outlook for those of us involved in the Information Technology
   and software development industries in a competitive and legislated
   world.

3) how you/we can protect our careers from being devalued and outsourced.

4) how to steer the legislative environment to foster progress, creation,
   and protections in an enabling technical environment that is blurring
   the lines between consumer and producer.  Impact of DMCA, et al.

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