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..."
Won't be able to lie anymore on the internet?
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.
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
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.
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!
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.
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.
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!
I know that was a joke, but I think that is the point of adding regulation. If so how the hell do they propose regulating my speech (esp. if I move my server overseas)?
-nB
whois gawk date unzip strip find touch finger mount join nice man top fsck grep eject more yes exit umount sleep dump
"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?
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.
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
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"
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!
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...