April 29, 2003

Tennessee Digital Freedom Network

I've mentioned before the really lousy legislation making its way through the Tennessee state legislature that would establish a state version of the federal Digital Millennium Copyright Act. The legislation is being pushed by the Motion Picture Association of America. Sen. Curtis Person and Rep. Rob Briley are carrying the industry's water (and I'd sure like to know how much Hollywood PAC money they're gonna get in their campaign coffers for doing so.)

Good news: there is a grassroots organization fighting it! They need your help.

Some excerpts from the website of the Tennessee Digital Freedom Network:

HB457 and SB213 are the Tennessee House and Senate versions of the "Super-DMCA" bill, proposed by the MPAA and already passed in eight states (and counting). If passed here, this bill will have a very negative impact on citizens' freedom of speech, access to secure communications, and use of many networking technologies. It would give Internet service providers (ISP's) unprecedented control over what types of devices and software Tennesseeans can use while connected to their systems, and give them power to sue users for thousands of dollars per day if they infringe on that control in any way. If this bill is enacted, Tennesseeans will have far fewer freedoms in their electronic interactions; as the Internet and pervasive computing becomes more a part of our lives, this will translate into control by a few corporations over almost everything that you do electronically.

Do you have more than one computer? Do you use Linux? Do you use any kind of Internet security hardware or software (called a "firewall"), or does your company use networking equipment to share Internet access using network address translation (NAT), or allow employees to connect from home using a virtual private network (VPN)? Do you cryptographically sign or encrypt your email? SB213/HB457 threatens your access to all of these. And if you don't understand some of these terms, you may already be using these technologies and simply be unaware of it. That's unimportant, though, because you can still go to jail for it.

This legislation is being presented to the Judiciary Committees as a "Theft of Service" bill, which simply "update[s] state law so that it comprehensively protects new broadband communication services from piracy and sabotage." In reality, it is much broader and more insidious. In its current form this law would make even a minor violation of your Internet agreement a Class-D felony, and levy excessive fines of $1,500 or more per device or software program, per day. Imagine, hooking your laptop up improperly at home for a year could cost you more than half a million dollars. Compliance will cost Tennessee businesses a bundle as well.

Who is the Tennessee Digital Freedom Network?

We are a group of IT professionals, students and concerned citizens who have dedicated ourselves to protecting the right of Tennesseans to freely use digital technology in their lives. For that reason, we are using all our resources to oppose the new "Super-DMCA" bills proposed by the MPAA. In Tennessee this legislation has been proposed in the House and Senate as HB457 and SB213. Our organization is still very young and still organizing to meet this threat effectively. We need your help if we are going to be successful!

Our objections to these bills include:

- The misrepresentation of this bill as something that merely updates existing law.
- The overly broad language that would give unreasonable powers to any ISP over their customers.
- The fact that this legislation criminalizes reasonable and otherwise lawful conduct by ordinary citizens.
- Unreasonable penalties. Sell a gram of cocaine, pay $2000. Run a home network, and risk a judgment of millions of dollars, even if your service provider suffers no damages whatsoever.
- Ordinary citizens do not benefit in any way from this law. No rights are defined or protected, only taken away.

Many of us only became aware of this issue due to a Slashdot article posted on Monday, April 21st. The bill was to be reviewed by the judiciary committee at 3:30pm the next day. On little more than 24 hours notice, almost 20 people were able to show up at the judiciary committee hearing in opposition to SB213. Some came from Nashville and nearby Clarksville, while others came from as far away as Knoxville. Several people spoke out against the bill, and we were able to delay almost certain committee approval of SB213. Afterwards, a senator in attendance remarked that the committee had probably given us the two weeks because they did not expect us to return to continue our opposition. If that's what they thought, they were wrong.

Copyfight.org, an excellent weblog covering digital rights issues, mentioned the work of the Tennessee Digital Freedom Network in a larger post about efforts to defeat similar legislation in other states. The Copyfight stuff actually comes from The Filter, an e-newsletter published by the Center for the Internet and Society at Harvard Law School.

Also, here's a story on growing opposition to a similar law in Massachusetts. It notes that the Massachusetts legislation - like the Tennessee legislation - is based on MPAA draft legislation.

Initially perceived by the telecommunications industry as a communications theft bill, the MPAA-sponsored legislation at first received little attention ... however, industry organizations are increasingly alarmed about some of the broad implications of the MPAA-sponsored bills. Among other things, the MPAA legislation broadens the definition of the term "communications service" to include both the content transmitted - for example, downloaded song files - and the medium over which they were transmitted.