Pete Ashdown vs. Orrin Hatch

I usually don't pay too much attention to individual congress members from states other than my own. There are a few exceptions, of course, among them is Orrin Hatch, a republican senator from Utah. I pay attention to him because he's one of the most visible Mormon politicians (as am I; well the Mormon bit, not the visible politician bit). For a long time, I'd hear reports about him and I'd either agree with his position, or, at worst, I'd find it wrong, but innocuous. Basically, I saw him as a sort of centrist Republican.

Then, a few years ago, in what seemed like a blink of an eye, he went stark raving mad. And I don't mean a little mentally divergent; I mean frothing-at-the-mouth, rocking-back-and-forth-on-the-floor-muttering insane.

I seem to remember the first thing he said that made me go 'wha, what, WHAT?!?!' was something gun-related, but I'm not entirely sure (note that while I'm not a huge pro-gun guy, I'm also not a huge anti-gun guy; I'm gun-undecided). Whatever it was, it began a short descent to the depths of insanity. One of the things that really made me question his sanity, or at least his loyalty to his constituency (but not his loyalty to the MPAA and the RIAA), was his statement that the entertainment industry should be allowed to remotely destroy the computers of those who they suspect are downloading music/movies/etc. illegally. No trial, no due process, just let 'em loose to be net vigilantes.

Anyway, I bring this all up because I stumbled across this Wired interview with Pete Ashdown, who seems to be a little more in touch with the realities of our tech-centric lifestyle.

Here are a few parts that discuss topics that are near and dear to me:

On transparency in politics:

Well I feel transparency is a big part of my campaign. That is needed in Washington. And what I see in Washington is certainly we have a lot of scandal (in which) the Democrats try and blame on the Republicans, but I view it as a larger scandal of money and politics. And what I see in Washington is the Democrats stomping around, and they stand up and sign these ethics declarations for the television cameras, and then they say, "We need more restrictions on lobbyists," but they really don't lead by example. And it's a really simple thing to make your office transparent. And when somebody takes on the mantle of public service, they lose the privacy that is in regards to that job.

On music downloading:

Well it's interesting you say individual and corporation, because there's a third party here, it's the artist. And I think the artist's rights should be held over the corporation rights. I believe that the internet presents a great opportunity for artists to make more on their work than what they were formerly doing with the corporate distribution system. And I think the writing is on the wall for that corporate distribution system, and that's the kind of backlash we're seeing from them in regards to lawsuits and restrictive legislation. So I absolutely believe the artists need to be rewarded for their work, should be rewarded for their work, and that the internet presents them an opportunity to do that in a more direct fashion.

So I support their rights, but I also support the rights of the consumer. I support the rights of the consumer when it's in regards to fair use. If I buy some media I should be able to do whatever I wish with that media inside the domain of my own home, outside of sharing it with somebody else commercially. That is, if I play it in the car for somebody else should I have to charge them a use fee? I don't think so. But if I'm out selling their music and the artist is getting no benefit from that, then that's an obvious violation.

I liked this one because it shows an understanding of the reasons for, and the problems with our current copyright system.

And, of course this is the clincher:

Well, on my desktop I'm a big fan of Ubuntu, not only in my campaign office -- I use Ubuntu exclusively, Ubuntu/Linux. I use Ubuntu throughout my office at X Mission. We do have a need for a few Windows desktops for running some of the accounting software we need, but that's for the secretary. We try and put Ubuntu/Linux on everything, and of course our servers (run Linux).

As it turns out, I've got several readers from Utah these days. So, what do you think? Have you heard of Pete Ashdown? What do you think of him? What do you think of Orrin Hatch? Am I completely wrong on him? What do you non-Utah readers think?