Slashdot Mirror
FEC Extending Election Regulation to the Internet
m_d_j_00 writes "Cnet has a story about Federal Election Commission plans to extend election laws to the Internet." From the article: "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." This may include regulation of bloggers and mailing lists linking to or forwarding campaign website URLs.
I've read the article, and it sounds like the door is being opened to start treating links to a site as a financial contribution to a campaign. While this could be used to fight astroturf campaigns, the actual implications are staggering. This all boils down to how much a link can raise for a candidate, and assigning a dollar value to links. The secretary sending letters example is a good one, and outlines the kind of muddy waters this is marching into.
I don't see how this can work effectively. Marketing Driods have been trying to assign dollar values to links and impressions for ages to no avail.. I see this becoming a muddy mess of conflicting and inconsistent enforcement. The Internet just isn't in a state where this can be monitored and enforced effectively.
Look at how links impact search engine rankings. For example, the Google Bomb of linking "Miserable Failure" to The Shurb's biography. Would these links be considered a campaign contribution to Kerry in the last election? If so, what would their value be? Of the links on Slashdot, who would be responsible, the web site itself or the people who made the posts?
What if a BLOG gets flooded with BLOG SPAM linking to a political site, using terms like "How to Save Social Seurity" for the links? IS the BLOG admin responsible under these laws? The hosting provider? The person who made the posts or the person whose BLOG it is? None of this is addressed. All the discussion in the article seemed focused on the notion that the person whose web site has the link was the person who created the link and is authorized to create the link.
"Live Free or Die." Don't like it? Then keep out of the USA
The FEC is addressing the conflict between sponsored publications and unlimited campaign contributions. When combined, they don't give the truth a chance, and money controls elections unopposed. So the FEC, complicit in the corrupt travesty American elections have become, regulates the press - websites - rather than regulate the campaigns. Obviously the FEC must ensure that money can't overwhelm debate with press saturation, especially on the less- accountable Internet. But their regulations should control their actual jurisdiction: political campaigns, their management and finance.
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make install -not war
They're trying to prevent a candidate's opponents... especially non-major party candidates... from having any kind of impact on their reelection.
By it's very definition, the first amendment protects political speech. It is fool hardy to believe that it is appropriate to prevent someone blogging from posting a link to a contribution site.
Tell that to Senators McCain and Feingold, and their attempted Incumbent Protection Act, er, Campaign Finance Reform. (Inability to talk about the incumbent's record within 60 days of the election.)
Should you not be allowed to dontate to whom you choose?
One would hope so.
What about Foreign web servers?
Unenforcable without permission from the owners of the web sites, the various national governments, etc.
Who is going to filter this?
Symantec? (Library filtering software they mentioned here a while back.) Some other company? Who knows. I would think this would be generally unenforcable from a legal standpoint... not that the government won't try.
If it is not filtered, then which one of the thousands of people will be fined, and how would the FCC draw the line on this.
Ooooo.... money... draw a line? Why? It's up to the people to stop this one.
My friends, welcome to another slippery slope.
It just seems like yet another speed-up point on the much larger slope we've been on for a long time.
OCO is Loco
This is not directed at spam. It is directed at webpages. Not so much those of candidates, but of independent organizations like moveon.org.
In a recent enforcement decision, wisconsin right to life was reprimanded for posting a link.
W RtL is a corporation, and the FEC decided this was a prohibited corporate contribution. www.fec.gov.
I'm concerned about that.
In 2000, I and 1200 other people wrote the FEC to ask them to keep hands off the internet, and they were doin somewhat ok with that, until this decision last fall in the Shays v FEC case.
They received another 1200 comments and are in the process of adopting regulations.
Shays is on appeal.
Amicus briefs supporting an unregulated internet would be welcome.
In 1992, when I saw John Gilmore hand Glenn Tenny a several hundred dollar contribution to his internet-based run for congress, I thought the internet would someday have a big impact on campaigns. In 1994, with the de-foley-8 america PAC, it did, but it was this last election cycle where the net became maybe more important than TV. Dean's fundraising and moveon.org and blogs were real players, and the usual suspects are calling for regulation and censorship.
Votelaw.org, electionlawblog.org and electionline are some good places to follow these issues. In contrast, ballots.blogspot.com, my election law blog, is not as good.
The fight against internet censorship has usually focused on smut and indecency. I've been trying, without success, to use political speech cases to make the same points.
Do you have any better ideas for getting information out of suspected terrorists that is likely to work?
No, but that doesn't matter when -- by moral and legal measures -- you're not supposed to torture people. If you are arguing that torture is necessary, then you are arguing for breaking BOTH the moral and legal bases for the United States government system. So don't be coy; just admit you want Fascism.
If you want to play the "war" angle to support the idea of legalized torture, please realize that the US Congress did not declare war, it just authorized the President to conduct military operations. This is why no one is being prosecuted for sedition or treason -- a legal state of war simply doesn't exist right now. Therefore torture is still illegal, at the very least.
[You have a stable society when some nut guns down a schoolyard and the law doesn't change.]