Software Money

[Declan McCullagh <declan@well.com>]

http://cgi.pathfinder.com/netly/editorial/0,1012,1722,00.html

The Netly News (http://netlynews.com/)
February 2, 1998

Software Money
by Declan McCullagh (declan@well.com)

        Successful political campaigns follow a simple formula: 1) Spend
   heaps of money; 2) Puzzle out how to squeeze your message into one
   sentence, or, better yet, a bumper sticker.

        Silicon Valley finally got the first part right. Software
   chieftains, historically eager to squander cash on doomed marketing
   campaigns but loath to spend the same opposing government regulations,
   are about to ante up millions to detangle the skein of rules that
   restrict sales of data-scrambling encryption software. Sure, it's
   pocket change to California's zillionaires, but it may be just enough
   to get their deregulatory point across in the nation's capital.

[...]

       Together the duo will coordinate the lobbying and media efforts
   of a new industry coalition, as yet unnamed but likely to be dubbed
   something like the Alliance for Computer Privacy. The
   soon-to-be-announced project (contracts haven't been signed yet) grew
   out of the Alliance for a Secure Tomorrow, which firms hurriedly
   created last fall to battle FBI-backed legislation banning software
   such as PGP, which is capable of encoding messages so securely that
   police can't crack them. But the AST languished. Soon CEOs of more
   than a dozen high-tech companies started talking about a more
   aggressive approach. "The only time you're going to win this battle is
   when you put money on the table," says Lauren Hall of the Software
   Publishers Association.

[...]