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FEC May Regulate Online Political Activity

Posted by timothy on from the hard-to-regulate-some-but-not-more dept.

jgarzik writes "A recent federal court ruling ordered the U.S. Federal Elections Commission (FEC) to rewrite rules that currently exempt, rather than regulate, political ads and speech on the Internet. Well, it's looking more and more likely that the FEC will not be able to avoid some amount of Internet regulation. I always thought that freedom of speech originated in part because the framers wanted to protect political speech. I guess I was being naive..."

1 of 302 comments (clear)

  1. Slashdot does it again! by rpdillon · · Score: 5, Informative

    If you RTFA, once again, you'll find the submitter has no idea what they're talking about:

    U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly in Washington ordered the FEC to rewrite 15 rules, including regulations exempting Internet ads from the 2002 campaign finance law. The law bars outside groups from coordinating television and radio advertisements with candidates.

    To exempt certain types of communications runs completely afoul of this basic tenet of campaign finance law,'' Kollar- Kotelly said in a 157-page ruling. Two members of Congress filed the complaint that led to the decision.

    This has entirly to do with campaign finance, and whether Internet ads are included (or excluded) from campaign finance. It has nothing to do with free speech.