It's no big secret that lobbying is a big part of technology these days - but it seems even CIO tracked down the creature after the nasty hobbitses... The hobbits, of course, being a part of the analogy for user rights.

Amazing stuff there:

...Microsoft is one of the top lobbying shops in the country. With spending on federal lobbying in line with traditional powerhouses such as financial services company Citigroup and defense contractors Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman, Microsoft makes the rest of the computer industry look like poorcountry cousins. In 2000 Microsoft spent $9.4 million on federal-level lobbyists, according to records obtained from the Center for Public Integrity (CPI). That same year IBM, Oracle, Sun and Cisco combined to spend $9.49 million. Microsoft has exceeded its 2000 total in each of the past three years. It spent $11.1 million in 2003, while IBM (which is nearly three times the size of Microsoft) spent $6.7 million, Oracle $2.1 million, Sun $1.6 million and Cisco $645,200, according to the CPI. Recently, The Hill, a Washington insider publication, named Jack Krumholtz, Microsoft's managing director of federal government affairs and associate general counsel, one of the top corporate lobbyists in the country, and called Microsoft "a lobbying powerhouse."...

No kidding, huh? See Mr. Gates Goes to Washington for the full article.

The question is... Who will there be to challenge policy like this? Don't the representatives have a responsibility to seek out further information?

Don't forget the combination lock on your tapioca pudding. ;-)