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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'd like to see them try to "regulate" foreign servers.
I'm dutch, so I don't know what the FCC is or isn't allowed to do, but my gut tells me that this is not one the things they are allowed to do.
Can anybody elaborate?
This is the sig that says NI (again)
Oh, that's refreshing.
:/
I'm damn sick of getting spammed by candidates. Oh yeah, and pre-recorded messages on my answering machine.
The part that sucks the most is when both of the leadng candidates spam, which means that I can't use it as a way to simplify my voting decision process.
Gentoo Sucks
This may include regulation of bloggers and mailing lists linking to or forwarding campaign website URL
because it won't be hard to stop someone in belgium linking to the campaign site or anything now will it, noooo
that every link I make is a contribution to a campaign? Where can you honestly draw the line? From what it looks like, this is a contribution.
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.
Should you not be allowed to dontate to whom you choose?
What about Foreign web servers?
Who is going to filter this?
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.
My friends, welcome to another slippery slope.
A move against bloggers would likely be stopped by the Supreme Court as a violation of free speech rights. Blog = Speech
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
This is so stupid. They are regulating speech -- and political speech at that! The supreme law of the land says they can't do that.
Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
The commission's exclusion of Internet communications from the coordinated communications regulation severely undermines' the campaign finance law's purposes
Unless the campaigners have a ton of bloggers on staff that aren't asking for one damn dime, this should still be something that is costing them money. Website administration can still be a costly business. While people that aren't directly involved with the campaign aren't costing the politician any money by linking to their sites, the politician has to initially invest money to get the word out to such sites.
This feels far too much like a public squelch.
And, like I've seen posted already, what's to stop people from hosting their sites on servers based in other countries?
Besides all that, its arguable that the person that benefitted the most from the web this past election is the one that LOST. So how much of an impact is the web making, and what is it exactly undermining?
"No one is more miserable than the person who wills everything and can do nothing." -Emperor Claudius 10 BC - AD 54
bad link. you meant this
Million dollar sig.
Yet another argument for public-financed campaigns, I think.
Me? I'm a Radical Moderate.
You're looking for quotes? See my journal.
Because it is. Don't ask them to explain how it's different, it just is. You're not supposed to think like this. That's free thought and that's dangerous.
It would be like asking the question: if Syria is on the list of nations who use torture to try and extract information from prisoners and we (the U.S.) object to such treatment, how come we (the U.S.) send suspected terrorists to Syria for interrogation?
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
It's a little easier to hide under the veil of anomymity using the internet. Having candidate (a) hire a spammer to spam for candidate (b) just before an election comes to mind. Or how about if a non-endorsed fan of (a) just decides to do so?
It might help, but it opens up new problems as well.
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.
--
make install -not war
Everyone's favorite congressman, John McCain, and his buddy Feingold already got that awful Campaign Finance "Reform" law passed, which effectively abridges free speech.
But, that's only supposed to affect rich lobbyists and media conglomerates! It can't possibly apply to us as well!
Earn a free iRiver
may include regulation of bloggers
FUD FUD FUD. I bet you a gazillion dollars that my first amendment right to speak for or against a candidate would not be infringed by FEC regulation of candidates' use of the internet as a communications medium. What it will do is prevent candidates themselves from using blogs in an unregulated fashion. It's like saying that FEC regulation of TV as a campaign communication medium prevents you from ranting on your cable public access channel, which it doesn't.
If I'm wrong, prove it, don't tag it to the end of an article submission.
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
And the internet means change. Not only does the internet provide leverage to 3rd-parties that have no current power, it provides progressives and conservative groups to ability to effect the major parties in new ways.
That is the design of the awful McCain-Feingold "reforms." They are designed so the current gatekeepers remain in full control and this new scary thing called the internet has no chance to move the political process in new directions.
What is the dollar value of talking to your friends about the election? What about standing on the street corner plugging your candidate? Those signs that people love to have in their lawn, how much is that advertising space worth?
If you wanted to be a complete prick you could assign a value to wearing a button and wearing a t-shirt with candidates names on them.
This is just another prime example of how we are losing our rights slowly.
Could a competing campaign (say pro-candidate A) purposely create content (i.e. blogs) that was pro-candidate B with the sole intent of effecting FEC fines that could hurt the target candidate/party's ability to run the current or future campaigns?
You sly dog: you got me monologuing! - Syndrome
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.
In every election, regardless of the level, the Federal Elections Commission must "certify" it in the very end in order to comply with a clause in the Constitution that every [subordinate] government [in the Union] must be a republican (note lower case "r") govornment.
If the FEC do not certify it, then that means the Federal Government refused to recognize those elected and thus that particular government (state, city, county, etc.) has lost its powers and federal funding. So, no, it does affect State and other local government to at least some degree.
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.]
the Sixth -
In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the state and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the assistance of counsel for his defense.
This is dead. Supreme court has ruled you DO NOT have the right to a jury trial if the sentence has a maximum of six months, PER CHARGE.
Combined with the patriot act, and the inability to confront witnesses I'd say the sixth is toast.
The Third -
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
The patriot act shredded what was left of this.
Add to this the fact that Juries are NOT informed that they are allowed to judge the MERITS of the LAW as well as a person's guilt or innocence.
I could go on, but I think you get the picture...
Service guarantees Citizenship! Questions Guarantee GITMO.... Amerika Uber Alles!
So if I'm, say, Bush, I could have my "Swift Boat Veterans" group, or the equivalent, SPAM in a deliberately offensive way 'on behalf of' John Kerry.
That's basically what Nixon used CREEP to do with paper materials: he had fake campaign literature to hand out at Muskie rallies, distorting Muskie's actual positions. (It's also what Karl Rove did in college; he describes that now as a "youthful indiscretion.")
Near as I can tell, though, SPAM isn't the issue. The abuse we've seen like this has been equivalent to the Swift Boat Vets' efforts -- like the Bob Jones University e-mails implying that John McCain had fathered a mixed-race child out of wedlock during the 2000 primaries. That kind of poison you want to target to a receptive audience, not SPAM to the world. So, back to building address lists...
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
Seems the people with points today dont understand the concept of sarcasm..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
This is a huge morass, and might be the single straw that breaks the back of McCain-Finegold.
There are tons of collaborative political sites out there on both sides, who aren't associated with the parties or candidates yet strongly support their causes. They deserve the freedom they had through the 2004 elections.
And then there's the blogs like the pro-Thune blog in S.D., where the bloggers were paid for their blogging efforts by the campaign itself. They don't deserve crap under McC-F.
But the law doesn't distinguish - it only tries to gauge the value of an effort. How ugly can it get?
Let us live so that when we come to die, even the undertaker will be sorry -- Mark Twain
"Who decides who gets funded in publicly financed campaigns? The people already in office. Unless you want everyone who decides to run to get several million dollars in advertising. At which point the elections would make the California Gubernatorial process look serious."
...because it's always gonna be between a giant douche and a turd sandwich ..."
Come on, I think we can trust our own elected officials to know what is best for us. I'm sure they will decide fairly and honestly how to regulate candidates so we will only get the best to choose from. How much choice do we really need anyway? What choice do we have now?
"
Read the law that allows the FEC to do this. You will quickly note many other areas where freedom of speech is infringed. This law has already stood in in the supreme court.
In short, it is too late, you don't have freedom of speech.
Now I'll grant the freedoms lost are ones most people don't care about, but it is still a loss.
Why make points when you can make jokes?
I'm a libertarian. I'm stating that up front, because I'm going to piss off Republicrats and Demopublicans alike and I want any claims of partisanship to at least correctly identify my party.
When did public political discourse devolve into outrageous exaggeration, name-calling, and vitriol? I know it's been like that among politicians for quite a while, but I can rememebr a time when that was the exception in public discourse, not the norm.
Look, people: just because someone holds a belief that you disagree with, that doesn't mean they are evil or stupid. I highly doubt that the average Republican agrees with CFR or this measure. On the other hand, I would guess that almost all incumbents, regardless of party affiliation, agree with both. Not every issue has only two sides, and not all issues with only two sides can be split along repub/dem party lines. The kind of discourse you are engaged in will only appeal to those with whom you already agree. While that can be rewarding, is alienating people with whom you disagree really what you want to do? Would you not rather convice them of the correctness of your argument? It seems these days that no one wants to actually convince anyone else. Maybe that's because in order to get someone to listen to you, you must also be willing to listen to them. Everyone wants to be heard these days....but is anyone willing to listen?
http://xkcd.com/386/
The McCain-Feingold Act was an outrageous usurpation of our first amendment rights.
Whether you're left or right, liberal or conservative, fascist or capitalist, if you can read you can understand the plain meaning of the first amendment.
What part of "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." don't they understand?
Insert witty sig here.