A better AArons law would be to force publicly funded research be released freely and under a Creative Commons license. They did this in EU, why not the US?
Weakening the Computer Fraud laws, and naming it after Aaron trivializes his quest for free flow of information.
Of course this wont happen -- too much money tied up in selling research.
I have the same idea about open source software in governments. If it uses taxpayers money, then it should be open source, wherever possible (so in most cases). Taxpayers' money shouldn't be used to fatten corporations, if it can be avoided. And by that I don't necessarily mean that government software should be written by volunteers, but if they're paying them to write software, then that software should be made open source later. And they can keep paying companies for maintenance and upgrading it if they want. But at least the software would be available to anyone to use and tinker with it.
The problem is that every project claims to be buying off the shelf software with some 'minor tweaks'. If it truly is off the shelf, and you're guaranteed that it will be your last sale because after that your work will be in the public domain, then you'd have to send the government one hell of a bill. Things like windows, office, ERP systems, BI and reporting systems, accounting and HR, logistics.. it's more tax effective to buy them as a normal customer.
I asked before and was told that code written by the government is available by request due to the FOIA, no state secrets mind you, but it might be true of (a significant portion of) code written by contractors as well.
Does that really matter? The NSA faced scrutiny for writing its own software when commercial solutions were on the market. The US government contracts out almost all its software needs below the state secrets level anyway.
Weakening the Computer Fraud laws, and naming it after Aaron trivializes his quest for free flow of information.
Of course this wont happen -- too much money tied up in selling research.