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TARA GRUBBS TAKES ON RIAA & HOLLYWOOD -
She Wants P2P for the People
By Paul Boutin
2:00 a.m. Aug. 23, 2002 PDT
They're already calling her the Weblog Candidate.
Real estate agent Tara Sue Grubb is fed up with what she calls "individual rights sacrificed for big corporate politics." Grubb, 26, is running as a Libertarian candidate against North Carolina's Howard Coble, the 71-year-old Republican congressman whose public opposition to P2P file-sharing networks has made him the target of an online backlash.
Even her own party says Grubb's chances of winning are slim. Yet political pundits cite her online popularity as proof of techies' growing involvement in government, rather than their dismissal of it.
"This is historical because it's not happening in the lab, it's happening in the field. This lady is getting money right now," said Ed Cone, a columnist for the News & Record, the major newspaper in Coble's district. "It's going to be replicated across the country."
Grubb's campaign -- and the national interest in her -- centers on Coble's support of a bill introduced by Rep. Howard Berman (D-Calif.) that would allow copyright holders to act against consumers' computers in order to remove or disable pirated materials.
Coble also signed a letter to Attorney General John Ashcroft urging him to act against P2P networks.
"I wouldn't call myself a one-issue candidate," Grubb said from her home in High Point, North Carolina. "But I'm tired of watching the government come in and throw their weight around."
Characterizing Coble's position as "It's OK to hack as long as you contribute to my campaign," Grubb added, "Howard's biggest supporters are in Hollywood. There's no Hollywood in North Carolina. I really don't have any clue what his concern is here."
Coble's concern -- and the donations to his coffers from Hollywood industry groups and lawyers -- centers around his role as chairman of the House Subcommittee on Courts, the Internet and Intellectual Property. As chairman, the 18-year congressman has overseen debates on matters ranging from the terms of rock stars' recording contracts to privacy issues with the whois database.
Coble's chief of staff, Ed McDonald, told Wired News that Coble and the subcommittee plan to hold hearings this fall with both proponents and critics of the Berman bill. "He'll be the first to tell you he does lean toward the copyright holder," McDonald said of his boss. "But it doesn't mean to the detriment of someone else's privacy issues."
"People are overreacting to hyperbole they're reading on the Internet," he added. "We support the broad concept of Mr. Berman's bill. That doesn't mean we're going to support it in its final form. The purpose of this bill is to protect copyrighted material. It's not to give Hollywood and the record companies carte blanche to go into someone's computer and look around and do what they want."
But News & Record columnist Cone also said McDonald recently told him that the congressman "wouldn't even know how to turn on the computer" -- a typical statement that exacerbates the feeling among digital rights advocates that Hollywood studios are dictating technology legislation to politicians who don't understand what they're dealing with.
"He's thumbing his nose at us," said Silicon Valley analyst and writer Hal Plotkin. "It’s a wonderful example of how little we really matter. Imagine if someone was going to pass legislation on the auto industry and admitted he couldn't drive. Detroit would be all over him."
In contrast to Coble, Grubb won an instant fan club by setting up her own weblog this week. "I'm not a techie," she said. "I was looking at Ed Cone's weblog and some others, and they were saying, 'Well, what's keeping her from downloading (weblog editing software) Radio?' So I did. It was the easiest thing in the world."
Still, it's unclear whether Grubb's candidacy will have any effect on Coble or P2P legislation. Libertarian Party press secretary George Goetz was realistic about her chances. "It's really tough even to get a seat in the state legislature," he said. "As far as third parties getting into Congress, I think you'd have to go back 80 years."
Aside from Grubb, Coble remains unopposed for re-election this fall. A spokesman for the North Carolina Democratic Party said the party doesn't recruit candidates. Aspiring contenders have reason to balk: Redistricting in the area has removed many traditionally Democratic neighborhoods from Coble's 6th Congressional District.
Add to that the lack of a partisan base for digital rights crusaders. Coble is a Republican, but both Berman and Sen. Fritz Hollings, author of the controversial Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act, are Democrats.
Besides, digital rights issues will eventually move from Coble's hands into those of the next subcommittee chair, which may make running against the man, rather than the issue, futile.
Plotkin, who has written frequently on what he sees as a lack of political effectiveness in the technology sector, thinks the geeks who decry Hollywood's donations to politicians should stop looking for clever hacks around the system and start making donations of their own.
"We don't show up at the fundraising events, and nobody's made a $100,000 contribution on this issue," he said. "Other people do that regularly on things like whether diapers should go into landfills. Where is Scott McNealy? Where is Steve Jobs? Where is anyone that has the juice to get things done? They're all busy looking out for their stock options."
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