Intellectual Property Law

Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney formally dropped out out of the race for the Republican nomination for president Thursday, effectively ceding the contest to Arizona senator John McCain.

Romney  made his announcement at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington, DC. His decision came after his campaign's poor performance on Super Tuesday.

"If I fight on in my campaign, all the way to the convention, I would forestall the launch of a national campaign and make it more likely that Senator Clinton or Obama would win," he said in his speech Thursday. "And in this time of war, I simply cannot let my campaign, be a part of aiding a surrender to terror."

Romney's campaign was probably the most technologically savvy of the Republican presidential candidates' campaigns, aside from former rival Republican Mike Huckabee's which is more grass-roots oriented.

The Romney campaign was adept at deploying Internet and other kinds of technology at key strategic moments, and wasn't afraid of experimenting with new ways of incorporating Web 2.0 applications for its centrally-controlled messaging strategies.

Romney repeatedly told voters during the latter stages of his campaign that he was the person that they should choose to bring change to the nation's capital -- but some of his platform policies and sometimes polarizing rhetoric looked and sounded identical to those of  President Bush's.

This was particularly evident as it related to the Iraq war and domestic civil liberties. During his speech Thursday, Romney attacked Democratic presidential candidates Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton for wanting to withdraw from Iraq, and "declare defeat" at the same time as he declared that  "our economy  is also burdened  by the inexorable ramping of government spending."

Earlier on during his campaign, Romney made it clear that he supports the Bush administration's expansion of unchecked domestic spying.

And like former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani,  he also supported the idea of a national ID card.

One key difference between Romney and Bush's administrations might have been in the area of science and technology policy. Romney indicated multiple times on the campaign trail the importance of investing in science and innovation as a way for America to move forward and to stay competitive with India and China.

Finally, his speech Thursday indicated that his administration would probably have continued with the Bush administration's policy of devoting significant amounts of Justice Department resources to clamping down on the pornography industry.

That policy has directly affected digital rights, such as anonymity and free speech online because of the industry's migration to the Internet. In the process, it's embroiled companies like Google and telecommunications firms in the debate because the Justice Department has been more active in subpoenaing user information. The Bush administration under former attorney general Alberto Gonzales also vigorously pushed  telecommunications companies to retain  boatloads of  data so that its prosecutors could go after the pornographers.

Update: George Washington University law professor and former DOJ trial attorney Orin Kerr calls the "surrender to terror" remark "pathetic."