Discovered this via BoingBoing and although it isnt the usual type of thing posted here at GamersRadio, it seems like something that word needs to be spread about.

It seems as though a bill has been introduced into the Senate that would ban the weather service from publishing weather data. Instead, that data would go directly to companies like Accuweather (a contributor to the Senator sponsoring the bill) to publish for profit. The problem that I have with this is that as taxpayers we pay for that weather data to be collected

Reproduced from BoingBoing:

“The National Weather Services Duties Act (S.786) would ban NWS from “competing” with private entities by making it unlawful for the agency to publish user-friendly weather data and barring NWS experts from speaking one-on-one to news agencies. Why? Because Senator Santorum believes that companies like AccuWeather would make more money if they didnt have to compete with “free.” Thats right – he believes you should pay twice for your weather information in order to line the pockets of the private weather industry, which *already* benefits from repackaging the data that tax-funded agencies like NWS give away. Thats not only unfair, its a bad precedent for our national information resources.”

If you dont think that this bill is a good idea, you can send an email to your States Senators via the Electronic Frontier Foundation