May 15, 2003

Digital Freedom Update: It's a Person-al Thing

Glenn Reynolds wonders if there's a connection between the cable companies that are pushing the privacy-destroying, freedom-curtailing legislation known in Tennessee as HB 457 and SB 213 and the newspapers across Tennessee that are ignoring the story. Well, there's certainly a connection between the cable companies and the sponsor of the legislation in the Tennessee state Senate.

Reader Jay Johnson, a 1999 University of Tennessee law school graduate, writes from tornado-ravaged Jackson, Tenn.:

Living here in Jackson, I heard no end to the public outcry when the Jackson Energy Authority wanted $60 million in bonds to install a fiberoptic to the home network in Jackson. Obviously, this would enable the city's utility company to provide high speed internet as well as cable TV service. Currently, the only way to get that here in Jackson (readily) is through Charter Communications. There has been litigation here by Charter and a local internet company, seeking to block this plan, and seemingly never ending controversy about the bond issue on incurring public debt for the system.

With the present legislation to suck away massive amounts of privacy, and force us to send messages to friends via homing pigeon and make our own crystal radio sets to pick up Amos and Andy, I remembered an interesting little fact and started doing some Googling. There were some columns in the Jackson Sun about this issue, and as I thought I recalled, Curtis Person III is the local head honcho with Charter Communications, and is on the Board of the Tennessee Cable Telecommunications Association. Of course, they were substantially opposed to JEA entering the cable and internet business.

It just so happens that his dear-old dad, Curtis Person, Jr., is the sponsor of SB 213, Tennessee's "Super DMCA." Must be nice to have fathers in high places.

I am personally doing everything I can do in this area through our local media to get the word out on this travesty for individual privacy rights, and I'm going to continue to do so. Keep spreading the word, and keep up the good work.

The first story says:

The private act that allows JEA to compete in the telecommunications market breezed through the General Assembly with only one dissenting vote. State Sen. Curtis Person Jr., R-Memphis, was the only state legislator to vote against JEA's charter change in 2001. Person is father of Curtis Person III, Charter Communications West Tennessee director, but the younger Person says the two never talked before the vote.

And so, we're finally starting to unravel how a piece of legislation drafted by the Motion Picture Association of America and pushed by the cable industry came to be sponsored in the Tennessee legislature virtually verbatim as SB 213 by Sen. Person. There's a family connection. In the state House, Rep. Rob Briley maintains he has never spoken to the MPAA about HB 457. We're still trying to find out why he's in bed with the cable industry on this.

For more on HB 457 and SB 213, click here, read, and follow the links.

UPDATE: Over at the Tennessee Digital Freedom Network (in my blogroll) they're debating whether Sen. Person's familial connection to the cable industry is fair game as they continue to work to defeat or at least defang HB 457 and SB 213. My comment on that is this: The TDFN should work to defeat the bill on its lack of merits even in its current amended form, and should not battle the legislation based on Sen. Person's personal connection to the industry whose water he is carrying. But journalists who cover the Tennessee legislature are missing a big story, and the facts cited above regarding Sen. Person's son's employment by a cable company that stands to gain incredible powers under SB 213 and HB 457 are fair game and should be reported. The public should be told of that connection as part of overall coverage of the issue, which I have done here at HobbsOnline, and journalists should dig to find out whether there are any unseen connections explaining why Sen. Person's counterpart, Rep. Rob Briley, might have sponsored legislation drafted by the Motion Picture Association of America. Activists should focus on the the legislation itself.