Your Senator needs an iPod

iPac, a political action committee that is 'dedicated to preserving individual freedom through balanced intellectual property policy', is running a campaign to buy video iPods for legislators who work on technology-related technology. Lawrence Lessig has signed on to record a message for these iPods, and they're also loading other content on them that's in the public domain or is available via the Creative Commons license.

So far, they've sent video iPods to the following folks in Congress:

• Gordon Smith (Republican, Oregon)
• Daniel Inouye (Democrat, Hawaii) (the usability girl in me just has to complain about the bad website design here)
• John Sununu (Republican, New Hampshire)
• Ben Nelson (Democrat, Nebraska)
• Conrad Burns (Republican, Montana)
• Barbara Boxer (Democrat, California)
• John Ensign (Republican, Nevada)
• John Kerry (Democrat, Massachusetts)
• Kay Bailey Hutchison (Republican, Texas)
• George Allen (Republican, Virginia)
• Maria Cantwell (Democrat, Washington)
• Trent Lott (Republican, Mississippi)

I kinda like the idea. Technology is complicated, and legislators often don't have an understanding of the technology from any standpoint. An iPod is a nice entry into technology: it's easy-to-use, it's a handy little device (mine gets most of its use on airplanes), and I wouldn't mind seeing a Senator get upset when they want to rip a CD onto their iPod and discover that they can't do it because of the DRM on the CD.