Byron Cook trying to shut down AgendaWise

An unkempt Byron Cook campaign sent an intimidating email to AgendaWise’s domain registrar asking them to take down AgendaWise.com.

Cook lashed out in response to a story published by AgendaWise which included a recording of Cook’s office admitting they do not keep a calendar – a state law requirement – and keep an office practice of destroying appointment records.

The email to the domain registrar erroneously alleged that fraud was perpetrated by AgendaWise in the secret recording of the phone conversation.  This charge is both wrong and highly hypocritical.

It is wrong because Texas is a “one party state” regarding the recording of phone conversations. This means it is legal to record phone conversations without telling the other party. (A good and simple explanation of Texas Recording Law can be found here.)

The charge was also hypocritical, and amusingly so. The Cook campaign told the domain registrar that portions of the phone conversation were purposely omitted by AgendaWise to make the Cook office look worse, a charge AgendaWise can refute at will since we have the recordings. But how does the Cook campaign know we edited the conversations? According to Cook’s letter to the domain registrar, it is because they have full recordings of the conversations, a fact they never told AgendaWise. In fact, we found out about it when the domain registrar forwarded their letter to us.

In other words, the Cook campaign is pressuring AgendaWise’s domain registrar to take down AgendaWise.com for doing what they admit to having done themselves, namely recording this conversation without disclosure.

The Cook campaign also told the domain registrar that they were looking into filing a complaint based on copyright violation. Do they believe they have a copyright to somebody else’s recording? Do they believe Americans get automatic copyrights on their conversations? Surely not.

Desperate legal innuendo aside, this is good political drama. We will keep you posted on developments.