Slashdot Mirror
FEC May Regulate Online Political Activity
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..."
I demand equal time in flamewars! No "keRry SI teH SUxx0rS omgROfLmaolololoOLOL!!!21!1@11!" should ever go unanswered!
Won't be able to lie anymore on the internet?
politics stink.
* In order to conform to future FEC regulations on online political speech: I'm nharmon, and I approve this message.
If the FEC is currently regulating radio, TV and print ads, it should do so for Internet. The regulation has to do with coordination between candidates and PACs as well as spending levels and sources. The first amendment was not meant to protect your right to say anything, anywhere, anytime, so yes, you are naive. Supreme Court justices of all political bents have ruled that their are limits. In this case, the FEC helps provide a level playing field to *protect* our democracy from people yielding undue influence based on the size of their pockets.
The first amendment was not meant to protect your right to say anything, anywhere, anytime...
Actually.. it was...
campaign finance laws place no restrictions on polititcians, only select voters. Politicians are still free to lie. ;-)
I just got a note from my neighborhood association stating that, while the neighborhood covenant specifically prohibits them, the Supreme Court has ruled that signs for political candidates are protected speech and cannot be overruled by neighborhood agreements (contractual or not).
If they're going to regulate political speech from candidates, that's one thing. That's not regulation of the Internet, but regulation of campaigns no matter where they are executed. Regulating political speech on the Internet for the regular user won't happen - not likely in theory and definitely not in reality.
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.
So how do you stop "anonymous" campaign sites springing up and propagating by spam or google-bomb?
gwbushsucks.cx or similar (made-up URL, not a real site as far as I am aware) might be hard to trace to an identifiable political body
I have been a user for about 10 years. This ends Feb 2014. The site's been ruined. I'm off. Dice, FU
You're nuts...
Are you saying that if bill gates wanted to spend $500,000,000.00 in advertising on google, amazon, ebay, msn, slashdot, etc., that you'd be able to match him to express _your_ opinion?
i doubt it.
It seems to me that, typically, the people who complain the most vociferously about restrictions to political speech are also the ones who complain most vociferously about the presumed influence special-interest money has on the political process. Can't have it both ways. Free and unfettered speech means living with big money, and eliminating money from the equation necessarily means restricting free speech.
ABSURDITY, n.: A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one's own opinion.
I always thought that freedom of speech originated in part because the framers wanted to protect political speech. I guess I was being naive...
Yes, they wanted to protect political speech. That is speech from a private citizen regarding the government. That is currently still supposedly the most protected speech there is. Someone running for office is *not* involved with political speech. The candidate is a public figure that is involved with the government from the moment that they start running. As such, they are regulated similarly to a political figure.
I know it is a contrary to common sense, but speech related to running for a political office made by the candidate is not political speech.
Learn to love Alaska
From the article:
"I don't think anybody here wants to impede the free flow of information over the Internet," Weintraub said. "The question then is, where do you draw the line?"
This statement makes no sense. I could see regulating the flow of money, but that is obviously not the issue here. The issue is at what point do they impose rules on SPEECH. The money will still flow from the corporations to the political parties, but we will no longer be allowed our little sandbox of freedom.A woman in a hot air balloon realized she was
lost. She lowered her altitude and spotted a man in a
boat below. She shouted to him, "Excuse me, can you
help me? I promised a friend I would meet him an hour
ago, but I don't know where I am."
The man consulted his portable GPS and replied,
"You're in a hot air balloon approximately 30 feet
above a ground elevation of 2346 feet above sea level.
You are at 31 degrees, 14.97 minutes north latitude
and 100 degrees, 49.09 minutes west longitude."
She rolled her eyes and said, "You must be a
Democrat."
"I am," replied the man. "How did you know?"
"Well," answered the balloonist, "everything
you told me is technically correct, but I have no idea
what to do with your information, and I'm still lost.
Frankly, you've not been much help to me."
The man smiled and responded, "You must be a
Republican."
"I am," replied the balloonist. "How did you
know?"
"Well," said the man, "you don't know where
you are or where you're going. You've risen to where
you are, due to a large quantity of hot air. You made a
promise that you have no idea how to keep, and you
expect me to solve your problem. You're in exactly the
same position you were in before we met but, somehow,
now it's my fault."
History has shown time and time again that it's hard to write laws and regulations to "level a playing field" without accdentally writing in exploitable loopholes. It's really the same sort of problem as the difficulty of writing secure software.
Attempts to do this may well backfire and amplify the power of those with deep pockets -- they will be in a much better position to afford the lawyer time to look for loopholes in the laws and regulations, use them, and then defend that use in court.
And as the regulations are incrementally patched to fix each loophole, they will increase in complexity, increasing the risks that the well-intentioned little guy will accidentally break them and end up muzzled.
There's no good answer here, alas.
I feel much better about regulations requiring a public audit trail of where the money came from and where it went, rather than attempting to create complex rules and "soft", "hard", etc., classes of money and donors.
gwbushsucks.cx or similar (made-up URL, not a real site as far as I am aware) might be hard to trace to an identifiable political body
I see no problems with that, so long as everyone is able to do it.
The only threat the printed word has is that it can be controlled, and that's just what the FEC is proposing.
mefus
In Open Society, GPL Software frees YOU!
Its just like a complicated tax code; people find, exploit and profit off of loopholes and an unneccessarily complicated system. Make the system simple (flat tax for example) and stupid things like this don't happen. Let the candidates take as much money from whoever they want and spend it in any way they please and you'll find these awful "side-effects" of dumb legislation go away. You can't tell people how to spend their money and suggesting that gagging political organizations (or in the Sinclair/Moorse cases passionate individuals) during some artifical timeframe before an election is appropriate is simply unacceptable.
The first amendment was not meant to protect your right to say anything, anywhere, anytime, so yes, you are naive.
First Amendment: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
What part of "Congress shall make no law" don't you understand? It didn't say "Congress shall make no law except where it *really really* needs to. You either have free speech or your don't. Once you start limiting, there is no stopping how much you limit it.
Brian
"The first amendment was not meant to protect your right to say anything, anywhere, anytime"
Actually the first amendment does allow you to say anything, anywhere, anytime, but due to the courts believing that the framers of the consitution couldn't have possible meant ALL speech, they have contrued it to mean what you said. So know we live in a censored society, where speech is anything BUT free!
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
"Abridge (v. t.) To make shorter; to shorten in duration; to lessen; to diminish; to curtail"
Someone circle the word "abridge" in the dictionary and mail it to Congress.
They're talking about regulating the ads used by the different campaigns and them working with groups like 509's.
Hardly a "OMG MY RIGHTS" issue.
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
Just look twords McCain-Finegold Campaign Finance Reform, where they restricted a canidate from running any ads one month before the election. But all these other groups such as the MediaFund, MoveOn.org, VietnamVets, etc. don't have to abide by those rules. So in essence the canidate can't go out and use free speech to promote him/her self (i.e. bash the other guy with attack ads at the time it matters the most). But groups that don't nessisary relay what the campaign beleives can go out and bash the other guy.
:)
This is a huge problem, because the power has shifted from groups that tried to accomplish something (i.e. NAACP, AARP, etc.) no longer are in the power seats of the campaign. Now it is a group that only wants to accomplish getting the other guy out of the way and putting their guy in office.
McCain-Finegold was a big slap across the face of the founders, because John McCain didn't want to be critized so much like he was in the 2000 election.
So this is nothing new, the people just have to throw these guys out of office that want to limit any kind of free speech. Howard Stern has just as many rights to be on the radio as Rush Limbaugh, and the option to change the channel is always there if you don't like what the person is saying. WE NEED TO STOP LOOKING TWORDS THE WHINY PEOPLE THAT WANT TO GET RID OF SOMETHING INSTEAD OF CHANGING THE CHANNEL.
I say send a message, by hitting them where it hurts, their wallet. Don't listen to the show, so the advertising numbers will go down and pull out.
I am starting to think it would be a lot better if we paid polititions to stay out of office.
God, when I get on my high horse my spelling goes to shit. Sorry about that.
Supporting World Peace Through Nuclear Pacification
I've already seen ads designed to walk a fine line on campaign finance. They go something like this:
Candidate B is a bad man! Click here to help us raise money to stop him by donating to Candidate A.
The message is clearly intended to sway the viewer, but they technically are fund raisers, not advertisements. In other words, campaign laws shouldn't apply to them in the same way they apply to TV or print ads.
I've seen these come out of both parties and their respective PACs. It is the same argument used to defend Michael Moore. "This is different because we're making money... not spending it."
I'm embarassed that our politicians and political organizations are so willing to follow the letter rather than the spirit of the law. And I'm sure we'll see many more laws trying to reign in abusers. And we are just as likely to see a lot of new creativity to skirt the laws that are implimented.
Slashdot Syndrome: the sudden, extreme urge to correct someone in order to validate one's self.
BINGO, you've got it. Supported by "progressives", passed by a Republican Congress, signed by GWB--the warning signs were all there. Now blessed by the Supreme Court, it will serve as the cornerstone of new legal edifices to "protect" our beloved "two-party system" against new media and information technologies.
The Supreme Court, the group the Constitution created to interpret the laws, correctly have held that there are limits to speech that a free and safe society must have. The old "can't yell fire in a crowded theater" adage and inciting a riot. I'm not saying that limits on political speech fit in there, but if the FEC has been held as constutionally allowed to regulate political speech, then no matter how sarcastic you try to be with "what part of...don't you understand", it doesn't change how the U.S. works. I completely disagree that free speech is black and white as you say. It sounds like you would allow someone to say libelous, slanderous, or "fire in a theater" speech. Sorry - the slippery slope you see doesn't exist.
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.
"Campaign finance" is a proxy for regulating speech. It's what the political class is using to stifle criticism. There are jail terms associated with broadcasting a political message that regulators do not approve of, now. The framers must be turning over in their graves.
This is the very speech that the 1st amendment was designed to protect. Not nude dancing, not obscenity, not flag burning, but political speech is what they were trying to protect. How can the 1st amendment be so expansive as to include those other things, but not the intended object of protection?
I guess I was being naive...
What's naive is granting free speech (and all other human rights) to corporations as if they were "persons" and then wondering why the whole system went to hell. We wouldn't need this kind of regulation if only corporations were treated as the legal fiction they are. Allowing corporations to roam our society with all the rights of a person exposes us to ultra-wealthy psychopaths.
A lot of money buys a lot of "free" speech. Real persons have no chance in hell of competing with corporations on the "free" speech playing field. It's time we recognized reality and revoked these misplaced rights and overturned the fallacy that corporations are persons.
Remember "No Face" from Spirited Away? Best to keep them out of the bath house.
- Hail to our fearless misleader! Fool speed ahead!
"The Constitution admittedly has a few defects and blemishes, but it still seems a hell of a lot better than the system we have now." - Robert Anton Wilson
Don't blame me; I'm never given mod points.
The Supreme Court, the group the Constitution created to interpret the laws...
...correctly have held that there are limits to speech that a free and safe society must have.
Wrong. That power was self-invested by the Supreme Court in the Marbury vs. Madison case in 1803, as an act of partisan politics against the Jeffersonian Republicans. Nowhere in the Constitution is any court given the power to "interpret" law.
So, what you're saying is... the First Amendent is wrong? That is what you're saying, because the First Amendment patently disagrees with you.
Now if we're gonna argue about whether or not the First Amendment means what it says, then I'll just go ahead and suggest we ought to make the Presbyterian Church in America the offical religion of the US, since the Constitution isn't supposed to be taken literally, or anything.
Once you start limiting, there is no stopping how much you limit it.
That is known as a slippery slope fallacy. There are, as another post puts it (in different words), reasonable and unreasonable limits. There are also different levels of protections based on what kind of speech.
While your argument has a point, free speech doesn't protect you from a libel or slander suit if you said something that was libelous or slanderous. The incitement claim is pretty valid too. You can't expect to use your freedom to deliberately hurt others without merit and expect there be no legal consequences. The constitution apparently can't be used to protect a right to lie, there really doesn't seem to be one.
Another example, if you take your first Amendment claim and apply it to the second, wouldn't you argue that the Federal government has no claim to prevent you from owning fully automatic machine guns? Or SAMs or fighter airplanes for that matter?
I've said this before, and I'll say it again
Money is not Speech
> get tea
No Tea: dropped.
Are you saying that if bill gates wanted to spend $500,000,000.00 in advertising on google, amazon, ebay, msn, slashdot, etc., that you'd be able to match him to express _your_ opinion?
So, why didn't we have President Forbes? If money can buy an election that way, why did it not happen? Remember, he ran before McCain-Feingold.
I am not sure that bloggers should be so regulated any more than word of mouth campaigning by various groups should be blocked.
However, it seems to me that there is a difference between free expression and large-money campaigning before elections. So while I would not be unhappy about regulations regarding paid advertisements, it seems to me that blogging and other forms of free expression should be protected. It should be noted, however, that this is not a big issue.
Also political and commercial spam should be equally banned under the law, IMO. Mass-emailing opt-out or even one-time campaigns should not be an acceptable practice in business or politics. IMO, we should ensure that all such email is opt-in only.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
What part of "Congress shall make no law" don't you understand?
You're taking the naive approach to freedom of speech. There is a concept that has been around for a very long time, and which the courts have hammered out quite clearly as the standard interpretation of the first ammendment called "protected speech".
If, for example, protected speech included everything you say or communicate in any way, then assault WOULD NOT BE ILLEGAL. Assault is clearly a case of laws being passed which restrict speech. Why should I not be allowed to say, "I'm going to kill you at 5PM tomorrow"? Why? because it's not protected speech.
Political speech is, for the most part, studiously protected, but there are strong exceptions when it comes to the funding that speech and consuming massive amounts of advertising "real eastate". These are reasonable measures taken to prevent one canidate from "buying" and election (and, in fact, I feel they're not strong enough as they do not prevent a small handfull of candidates from locking in an election among them).
If free speech were an absolute, a large fraction of the laws in this country at the federal and state levels would have been shot down by the Supreme Court over a century ago.
But we can have it both ways. The DeCSS code is our property. It just happens to resemble someone else's property. They still posess their property, though.
And the DVD is our property, and we can do whatever we want with it. It's not protected in any way from our own whims.
re you saying that if bill gates wanted to spend $500,000,000.00 in advertising on google, amazon, ebay, msn, slashdot, etc., that you'd be able to match him to express _your_ opinion?
Google is presumably not subject to graft if you are referring to the results of searches done using their software (in any ostensible way).
As for the rest, they are all subject to the mitigating effect people's affinity for personal blogs. Compared to whatever banners MS puts up and however much their marketing campaigns spend, popular discourse has considerable power if you visit the opinion sites. I use that as a model to assess the power of Bill's billions to influence opinion.
However, I have to admit, I'm immune to "infotainment" of the big networks, since I don't have a tv and don't make a habit of going to FOX, MSN, ABC, CNN, or whatever. I let discussions guide my searches.
If you don't do that you are more easily influenced by what the networks choose not to show you.
mefus
In Open Society, GPL Software frees YOU!
Court ruling only directs FEC to examine online advertisements, not, as the summary claims, speech online. Thus, the FEC has merely been directed to monitor compliance with campaign advertising restrictions currently applicable in meatspace.
I don't think the FEC should be wasting tax dollars fretting over the internet.
Television and radio ads are effectively because they are active advertising. The consumer _must_ participate in the advertisement in order to get back to normal programming. The advertisement takes 100% of the media stream. There are no ads for Kerry or Bush playing in the background while Metallica is playing in the foreground.
Advertising on the internet is much different. Let them spend all they want on internet advertising. Google will love it, Yahoo will love it, MSN will love it... but the consumers? Really I don't think internet advertising has much impact. I'm positive that search engines and launchpad websites can produce hundreds of studies to prove me wrong but their business relies on convincing people to spend money on internet ads. To the regular consumer, however, it's all too easy to ignore banner ads and get to the real content on a page. I have yet to meet anyone who has tried a new product or service due to internet advertising. I've bought things that were reviewed (eg. books) on a network bulletin board, but I've never bought anything from a paid advertisement. Internet advertising is passive advertising because it requires the consumer to willingly participate in the advertisement. If Bush or Kerry want to spend a billion dollars employing web monkeys to write a webpage then that's good for jobs and the economy. Unless they (illegally) hijack my browser, though, I'm still not going to view it.
So, again, why is the FEC wasting our taxpayer dollars arguing over 15 rules and trying to make them wrap around the internet?
+++ATHZ 99:5:80
Because once we started down the dark path with the first limits on the 1st Amendment in the post Watergate era this sort of mission creep was foretold. Regulating campaign finance IS regulating Free Speech. Democrats refuse to understand and keep proposing more laws when the previous ones fail. Shrub is equally (hell, moreso) culpable this time because he KNEW it was wrong and signed it anyway for coldly political purposes.
But let me say this. I will never submit to any law regulating my speech, and when the time comes that the Democrats pass a law that does infringe my speech, and it gets upheld, that is the day I use the 2nd Amendment to invoke that most primal right so well expressed in the Declaration of Independence.
"But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. --Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government."
Democrat delenda est
Well, free speech is not merely vocal activity, but locomotion to a place or activity (organized or not). What good is free speech if one is prevented from traveling? This election will probably be one of THE most important in US history, and ear-bud-using candidates, bunglers, and inept types should not have the chance to incite MORE OUTUS resentment of the US. (Maybe changing our foreign policy will ease things a bit, and if the government sees terrorists as "nits" or mobsters who are the "cost of doing business with a minimum of destruction on either side", then we might not have to raise the topic of Free Speech, travel restrictions for non-terrorists getting onto but being unable to remove themselves from hatched/half-baked Do Not Fly Lists, being subjected to DHLS scrutiny, and such...)
OK...
Let's see how the hell well THIS goes down in a presidential election year, given the past 4 years of events and the two candidates and their respective set pieces poised to either calm down or inflame the world toward the USA.
------
The FEC or the people running the debates, NEED to raise this before the candidates:
---------
Citizens of ANY nation who fear being squelched, have their travel impeded, or be subjected to the US Do Not Fly List should demand that airlines GUARANTEE that if they are for some reason on the DNFL, they can receive a FULL refund on the SAME DAY they are denied flight. NO amount of chicanery, delayed notification, or the like should be permitted whether by collusion or indepent act between or of the flight or travel entities and/or the various governments, particularly the US and the DHLS entities.
This (potentially) will have some side-effects of:
-undermining "gold-digging" agencies from spuriously ore punitively or pugnaciously punishing political activitst
-undermining the ability of DHLS to simply put on the list anyone, anywhere, anytime with impunity and without a requirement to explain WHY said person is on the list or HOW to be extricated
-undermining the ability of DHLS to keep indefinitely on the list anyone who challenges it and demands being removed from it
-forcing airlines to take a stand on what information will and will NOT be shared on so-called security info-hunts, and forcing them to help booking passengers avert the inconvenience of erroneous/no-fault DHLS attachment/listing
-forcing airlines to revise their policy of "once you have the customers'/customer's money never give it back" (an activitiy even BEFORE the Star Trek DS9 Ferengi Rules of Acquisition), for the money should NEVER belong to a company until the goods are DELIVERED and USED, not just "booked", when it comes to DHLS obstruction to using a booked flight
--forcing the public to acknowledge that NO DNFL list of any sort should be used to persecute or intimidate ANY domestic or foreign national who has never even been arrested, never consorted with violent persons, never even killed anyone in self-defense or any other circumstance, never been hand-cuffed, never had called into question their prior or current service with any level of government service, classified work or not; persons with records that don't rise to a level of concern for safety of flying or operational aircraft should also not be on the list: unless they frequent terrorist training camps in a non-journalistic capacity; unless they are by familial, economic, pact or other modes connected to terrorists or terrorism-sponsoring nations (would that mean several members of the current and past US administrations SHOULD be on the DNFL, since we KNOW some of them shook hands with, rendered decisions to or enabled some of these terrorists to rise in power? (Oh, our taxes already pay for their private flights and security entourages...)
Forcing the airlines to face the prospect of losing passengers for inexplicable or nebulous or obscure or ad-hoc/whimsical reasons --other than "subject is on the DNFL for PROVEN, LISTED REASONS" will force them to technologic
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
So, how is the FCC going to stop people setting up websites on offshore webservers? Even if they might be able to stop US residents and US companies from doing this, they certainly will have a hard time stopping foreigners.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
Free and unfettered speech means living with big money, and eliminating money from the equation necessarily means restricting free speech.
Except that corporations are considered "persons" under the law (with all the rights that entails), are psychopaths , and are vastly more wealthy than real persons. Their vast wealth is swamping the speech of real persons and elevating their agenda over the agenda of the people.
Corporations are not persons.
- Hail to our fearless misleader! Fool speed ahead!
I can't believe that the American people will continue to stand for much more. I know I won't.
Yes, you will -- and the American people will too. The fact that you are bitching on Slashdot rather than doing anything constructive indicates that you will. Mainstream politicians know this, and use it to their advantage. If enough people were outraged, they would vote for a third-party candidate who would do what they wanted, but they won't for two reasons:
What is even more telling is that this article on campaign finance reform was misinterpreted as an attack on free speech. People who cannot understand the difference between regular laws such as this (which merely regulates previously-regulated campaigns, not The Internet), and evil laws (such as the INDUCE Act or the DMCA) are unlikely to mount an effective resistance against any laws, good or bad. And no, I don't count posting a Slashdot comment as "effective resistance".
There's no sig like this sig anywhere near this sig, so this must be the sig.
Guess I'll have to check the Web Server Logs to see if anyone surfs to the Hulk for President Site from fcc.gov or usdoj.gov ...
Hulk SMASH Celiac Disease
I can see them regulating PAID ads just as they do any other, but in terms of personal expression - chat rooms, blogs, etc. that would be "chilling" and clearly not allowed under any reasonable view of the consitution.
In the more gray area would be online commerical speach since the courts tend to view commmerical speach rights as being less than those of actual humans.
http://www.hawknest.com/
The argument that the decisions are stifling free speech is weak if you RTFA. The court ruled that regulations on political advertising in place on TV radio and print should be applied to the internet in order to prevent organizations from spending far much more money on advertisements than their opponents. It doesn't prevent ordinary joes from blogging their hearts out about politics.
There is one big difference that needs to be taken into account. The Internet is an open medium, compared to TV and radio which require a significant investment to get on air. Some guy in his garage can host a website for pennies a day. For a little more, he can even handle a heavy volume of hits. He can also write a blog for free, etc. Let see him produce a TV show. Because of the diversity of opinion on the Internet, it is a whole different beast. With TV and radio a handful of conglomerates own about 80-90% of TV stations, and I don't know about radio, but it consolidates everytime congress eases the ownership rules. This puts a lot of power in to a few hands, either the owners or people that can afford time. Think of it this way. If everyone was a billionaire, we wouldn't need campaign finance reform. It helps level the playing field. The nature of the Internet already levels the paying field, so why regulate it. ...Michael...
It isn't speech at all.
It's a file that I have on my computer.
When you're done with your sophmoric semantic quibbling, you can try applying the same idiot logic to, say, newsprint. "It's not speech, these are ink marks on a piece of paper." Speech is not an effect of the media used to transmit it, but the intermediation of ideas from one interlocutor to another regardless of medium.
blog
I hope this will teach all of you that campaign finance reform is a joke. Everything that has been tried since the Nixon administration has only made it harder for non-incumbents to run for office. You now have to have a lawyer and an accountant on staff to run for any kind of office to avoid getting in trouble with all the laws.
Now they are going to regulate the Internet. Thanks guys!
"What is even more telling is that this article on campaign finance reform was misinterpreted as an attack on free speech."
Right, you can say all you want as long as you don't spend any money to deliver the message, I think I can see how people might "misinterpret" the intention of campaign "finance reform".
Does anyone remember that guy that set up a web page on his server that was either pro or anti someone and the FEC went after him considering the cost of the computer and internet connection were over some threshold of spending that required him to register as a PAC. Register? If I buy a printing press and start printing leaflets, suddenly I need to pre register because of the content of my speech or face penalties or prison. Tell me how this isn't a prior restraint on the content of my speech? I dare ya.
Campaign finance "reform" and the restricitive regulations that come with it will only benefit entrenched politicians and interests. If you believe otherwise you are very naive.
Have to say it:
Fahrenheit 911: facts never disputed. Mike's still waiting for someone to dispute:
Bush's connections with the Sauds, the 7 minute wait (actually more like 19 - there was a photo session after "My Pet Goat"), the redirection of the "war" from AQ to Saddam with baseless accusations, the creation of a police state, the profiteering, the ignored death of the Iraqi civilians, the SS guarding the Saudi embassy... it's all true, and frankly not exactly news to people who read the news every day. The 'pubs HATE Moore, but that is not a contention of the facts.
They can't contend with the facts, so they go for the man.
Stolen Honor: accusers were discredited, facts nonexistent, pure ad hominem by political opponents. One of the signed vets was never told he had signed the accusation, a surprise to him. Not a "disputed" matter except in the minds of the operatives and those who want to believe the accusers.
If I call you by some racial, religeous, or ethnic name, you can sue me. If I have a web site set up for it, Hate laws come after me (funny folks insult white guys and it is not hate). Try to sell a swastika in France and your site will be blocked. Now it is being applied to the political sites that are yelling fire in the theater. Your freedom is an illusion. Cyberspace ain't all that special of a place. The rules of reality still apply there.
Article three, section two: "The judicial Power shall extend to all Cases, in Law and Equity, arising under this Constitution, the Laws of the United States, and Treaties made, or which shall be made, under their Authority" and "the supreme Court shall have appellate Jurisdiction, both as to Law and Fact".
Nope.
"I'm going to kill you at 5PM tomorrow" is a DEATH THREAT. Assault is when I beat you up
You're thinking of assult and battery. Assault is the threat and/or attempt, not the act of doing harm:This highlights my point about the law surrounding free speech. The on-the-street defintion of assault and of free speech are both wide misinterpretations of the laws under which our country has operated for over two centuries.
From The Kerry Spot:
BRADLEY SMITH: FEC COULD EVENTUALLY REGULATE BLOGS? [10/13 03:17 PM]
Cam Edwards of NRANews.com reports in, after interviewing Bradley Smith, Chairman of the Federal Election Commission. Cam states:
"When I asked him if we're eventually looking at the FEC deciding what blogs run afoul of McCain/Feingold, he said that's the direction we're heading. Not just in determining what blogs might be in violation of McCain/Feingold, but determining what blogs would be able to claim a media exemption. Scary stuff."
Great. So the only way bloggers can keep their First Amendment rights is for a president to be elected who would tear up McCain-Feingold.
Somehow I suspect John Kerry won't go to the mattresses to prevent the FEC from regulating blogs. And George W. Bush already signed McCain-Feingold in the first place.
It's not a lie. It's the truth with lossy compression.
It's perfectly natural to have regulations to ensure a just economy; Laws against fraud, slander, libel, etc.
It's definitely a good thing to keep shadowy monied players from buying an election to keep their political machine churning.
Now the trick is to do these things without burying the system that is basically good but needs guidance.
Aside from direct person-to-person verbal (and non-verbal) communication, every form of communication requires an economic transaction to buy pen and paper, buy email or web bandwidth, print flyers or newspapers, etc. Campaign finance laws don't sweat the small stuff, so I don't think I have to worry about how much I spend on my web site (<$100/mo) that happens to express my personal political views and voting recommendations.
This may also be a case where Freedom trumps Privacy. Privacy means other people don't have to know what you do; Freedom means you're allowed to do what you do even when other people know about it. If we're going to have Freedom of speech, we might have to give up anonymity and admit where the money's coming from and how much it is. What would people think if they knew the money trail for the ad campaign from the Swift Boat Veterans for Bush? Would they be suprised that people X,Y and Z spent $bignum to put that out? Would it affect their appraisal of the message to know who the messenger is?
A lot of this stuff is already out there, to the credit of the campaign finance rules. I think it just needs to be a little more widespread and a little easier to find.
[This message paid for by slashdot. I'm Brian Olson and I endorse this message.]
Start Running Better Polls
Not at all; to interpret law is one of the primary functions of a judge. To find and argue interpretations is the main function of a lawyer. This state of affairs is a logical necessity, not a cruel and arbitrary caprice. Humans are not capable of writing laws that require no interpretation. The delicious silliness of your post is that the position you are trying to argue itself requires interpretation. Here is the text of the first amendment:
Speech, press, assembly, and petitions are all mentioned, but for some reason the Internet is not. You have interpreted speech or press in a broad sense to include the Internet. So all you are really saying is that your interpretations are valid, and the Supreme Court's are not.
"The good reader is a rarer swan than the good writer."
Now, consider, with political speech: the government fines you within an administrative court, the fine is for speaking about something in some way - whether or not it is true. This is an entirely different class of "wrongdoing" than the others.
I was with you up to there.
I know of no such restriction. I do know of restrictions on political speech which limit candidates to the point (at least this is the intent) where they cannot un-hinge the democratic process by spending more money than their opponent. This does not work because we do not fully enforce, fund and augment such laws where needed. However, the idea is the same as assault: you cannot use speech to restrict the freedoms of others (including other candidates who have as much of a right to the voters' attention as you).
This is why I'm against excluding anyone who COULD win an election from appearing in a debate (in a presidential race this means including anyone who is on enough ballots to get a majority of electoral votes).
This is also why I'm for limiting how much money you and your supporters can spend in EVERY medium to support your campaign. That means that I can put up a pro-Joe-Blow site as long as I don't exceed individual campaign dontaions in terms of the resources expended (which, on a $20/month hosted site is easy to avoid). I can then say anything I want.
But, by the same token, Google could not put a giant Joe Blow ad on their homepage (because the value of that one ad would exceed the individual contribution allowed).
This is nothing new, and applying to the Internet is an expected consequence of the Internet's popularity as a medium. What will be interesting is enforcement, given the Inernet's nature as a truly international medium... we shall see.
I, for one, am all for that being protected speech. I certainly hope anyone planning on killing, injuring, or otherwise harming is polite enough to give me 24 hours notice. Ideally they'll say it in a recording I can provide to police. It's the criminals who commit crimes without announcing it in advance that worry me a bit more.
Search 2010 Gen Con events