Brandon Stafford of Rascal Micro was attending an Open Source Hardware event in Washington DC and has this great quote of Michael Weinberg, of Public Knowledge:

“If you’re a legislator and the first time you ever hear about 3-D printing is someone coming into your office saying, ‘This horrible pirate box is ruining my business,’ you would have one world view of 3-D printing. If the first time you hear about 3-D printing is someone saying, ‘Wow, look at all these new businesses and people who are coming together around technology and creating all these amazing things,’ you have a different world view about the subject.”

Certainly applies to more than just Open Source Hardware, and is one more reason why here in the EU we have to be more vocal about the propositions of IoT.