Philadelphia, PA

I’m slowly losing my interest in Joe Biden. CNet’s Declan McCullagh wrote an informative history of Joe Biden’s tech-related voting record. If Biden’s name rings a bell, it’s because he’s the guy Barack Obama picked to be his vice president. Maybe you don’t care about what happens in Washington, but you may want to know that Biden considers a lot of what you do care about criminal activity. Here’s what I’m talking about:

- He asked Congress to spend $1 billion to monitor peer-to-peer activity.

- Two Biden bills have been explicitly anti-encryption, because you know, encryption makes it hard for the FBI to read people’s e-mails.

- The RIAA seems to be one of his best buddies: Biden sponsored a bill that would restrict recording of songs from satellite and net radio, and another one that would make it a felony to “trick” a computer into playing back unauthorized songs or running bootlegged videogames. That latter one died when Verizon, Microsoft, Apple, eBay and Yahoo all argued against it.

- Biden was one of just four senators invited to attend a celebration of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act hosted by the MPAA’s Jack Valenti and the RIAA’s Hillary Rosen, two of American file-sharer’s most wanted.

- When he was asked in 2006 about proposing net-neutrality laws, he said there was no need, since any bit-filtering violations would provoke such a huge public ruckus they’d have to hold congressional hearings anyway–and they’d be standing-room only.

I don’t know what you may think about this, but it pisses me off. I can guarantee that Biden just lost the online vote.

[CNET - Joe Biden's pro-RIAA, pro-FBI tech voting record]