Our blogs about
America's Wars
War on Iraq
War on Drugs
War on Afghanistan
War on Columbia
War on Philippines
War on Venezuela

More
Matrix Masters
Blogs
World Events
US News
Science & Health
Earth News
Free Speech
News from Africa
News from Palestine
Bill of Rights Under Attack

Matrix Masters'
SUPPORTERS

Lorenzo's
Random Musings
. . . about Chaos,
Reason, and Hope

 

The coming crackdown on blogging (CNET News)
Bradley Smith says that the freewheeling days of political blogging and online punditry are over.
In just a few months, he warns, bloggers and news organizations could risk the wrath of the federal government if they improperly link to a campaign's Web site. Even forwarding a political candidate's press release to a mailing list, depending on the details, could be punished by fines.

Bradley Smith should know. He's one of the six commissioners at the Federal Election Commission, which is beginning the perilous process of extending a controversial 2002 campaign finance law to the Internet.

In 2002, the FEC exempted the Internet by a 4-2 vote, but U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly last fall overturned that decision. "The commission's exclusion of Internet communications from the coordinated communications regulation severely undermines" the campaign finance law's purposes, Kollar-Kotelly wrote.

Smith and the other two Republican commissioners wanted to appeal the Internet-related sections. But because they couldn't get the three Democrats to go along with them, what Smith describes as a "bizarre" regulatory process now is under way.

In this article, CNET News.com spoke with Smith about the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002, better known as the McCain-Feingold law, and its forthcoming extrusion onto the Internet....

Campaign Finance Reform Comes to Blogging
And this is a serious threat. Linking to a candidate's web site could trigger FEC scrutiny and fines of a blog. Reproducing part of a candidate's email mass mailings would invite FEC scrutiny. The most striking thing about the McCain-Fiengold nonstrosity is that, while it carves out an exemption for broadcast and print news sources, web-based news services are not, in fact, benficiaries of the exemption. So, what do you do with a real news service like CNet, that operates entirely online, but is a generally recognized news outlet. They exist in a gray area....

Bloggers, chill out already!
Bloggers of America, chill.
And a more calming view from By Ellen Weintraub (a Democratic commissioner on the Federal Election Commission. This article sets forth her personal views and does not attempt to represent the views of any other member of the FEC.)
Reports of a Federal Election Commission plot to "crack down" on blogging and e-mail are wildly exaggerated....

posted by Hal 6:49 PM