Slashdot Mirror
San Francisco Attempts to Regulate Blogging
Lawrence Person writes "Forget about theocratic Iran or Communist China; today's report of a political entity trying to regulate blogging comes not from The People's Republic of China, but rather The People's Republic of San Francisco. 'The San Francisco Board of Supervisors [announced] yesterday that it will soon vote on a city ordinance that would require local bloggers to register with the city Ethics Commission and report all blog-related costs that exceed $1,000 in the aggregate." Worse, this is not an April Fools joke. It seems that 'campaign finance reform' is turning out to be the biggest Trojan Horse in the campaign to regulate free speech. "Are you now or have you ever been a blogger?"" Chris Nolan -- the "not a joke" link above -- is more reserved about the true scope of the proposed law (which would deal with election-related journaling specifically, not most diary-style Web journals), but has little good to say about it.
This is only applicable to blogs that mention candidates for local office. So I don't think you have to pay if you're blogging about your dog.
However, this might give corporates some ideas. For example, if your blogs contain certain movies, music, celebrities, you may have to start paying for the loyalty fee, like what radio stations are doing now.
Rock that crushes, Paper & Scissors that don't matter.
This is just the start of the wave of blog regulation. A recent appeals court ruling basically said that the internet should be viewed more as a broadcast medium then a print one. The short version of this means that you will start to see a lot of regulations of this kind coming forward. The last I heard there was a similiar issue in front of seattle's board of select man as well.
Why is it always the seemingly most liberal places that seem to be so conservative on certain issues?
Be better in bed. Wikiafterdark!
and report all blog-related costs that exceed $1,000 in the aggregate.
:)
Sounds like a tax deduction to me.
Greetings.
I live in San Francisco. I can't believe that this is happening, but since it is, I have a simple solution: move to another jurisdiction. No, I don't mean "pack your bags and go". I mean that, in this age of interconnected servers throughout the world, hosting your 'blog in another jurisdiction isn't hard to do.
I've ran a couple of servers from a neutral, European country for years. Whenever I want to post something that might piss someone off locally I just post it out of one of those machines and under a pseudonym. While this isn't untraceable by any stretch of the imagination, it makes things hard enough for idiots chasing the poster to give up.
That's the beauty of the Internet/cyberspace. "Here" is simply wherever you want it to be.
Cheers,
E
http://eugeneciurana.com | http://ciurana.eu
I still haven't been able to tell what makes a blog any different. I guess if it's whiney and useless enough, it qualifies as a blog.
My sig is blank, I typed this by hand.
I discovered this issue 18 months ago.
Virginia blogs barred from mentioning local candidates
Why is it that slashdot members can't seem to read articles before posting their uninformed two bits? This legislation only applies to communications that are paid for by a PAC. I am a San Francisco resident and I often blog about politics, but I would be unaffected (despite several hundred hits at a time) by the legislation.
They are regulating the communications of lobbists - not individuals - an action that slashdotters have seemingly always been for. For instance, this would keep microsoft on the level if they wanted to buy a candidate in SF office.
seeing as how over $25M was given by a single contributor (Geogre Soros) to a obviously Kerry campaign media outlet, how could you assume that anything else would happen?
you know the worst part? Rush Limbaugh, as tired as he is, was 100% right on this one. (i agree with Rush ~50% of the time - I'm libertarian)
Get ready for "See, i told you so" from Rush Limbaugh... he was on George Soros' side on this one - but NOOOOO you had to follow McCain down the road of fscking the 1st Amendment.
nice job.
guns kill people like spoons make Rosie O'Donnell fat.
However, only one law will be put into place that does make sense: Every candidate must create a report, written in plain English, that explains what that candidate intends to do during his term in office, if he gets elected. A panel of ten people or so, appointed by the government, will review these documents in advance and have the candidate correct anything that doesn't make sense. That way, there's no legalese and it won't be written in a way that nobody can understand; also, it will be short enough that people will actually make time to read it.
These documents, once finalized, will be published, by the government, into a book format, and distributed to bookstores all over the country, in much the same way that books like the September 11 report were distributed and sold to the general public. Free copies will be available at all libraries, on the Internet, to first-time voter registrants, poor people, and to whatever other groups the government deems necessary.
The availability of this information will do two very important things:
First, it will allow people to see past the bullshit of traditional campaign advertising, which generally doesn't tell anybody anything, much less serve any purpose other than making people remember someone's name, and that this person's opponent is a piece of lying, cheating rubbish. The advertising and the garbage can go on in the background, but reasonable people will buy the books, read them, and make an educated decision.
Secondly, people will be able to keep these books, and two, four, six, or however many years later, they'll be able to look at them and say, "Did this candidate for whom I voted actually do any of the things he promised, past his first day in office?" This will be great for making re-election decisions, when unsure.
Yes, there will be abuses, but in politics, everything is bullshit. Besides, it'll be great for the economy, with all the advertising moneys running all over the place by various organizations that want to screw over various other organizations.
Certainly, this means that people with less money will probably get less advertising, but did the lack of money stop things like open source software from making Microsoft scared shitless?
I say, the less laws, the better off we'll all be in every respect. And to that end, I think there should be some sort of fund set up with a nonprofit organization of lawyers, kind of like Groklaw, but for pointless, unnecessary laws. This group would dig up all kinds of laws that don't make sense anymore, or shouldn't be on the books, and it will lobby Congress to rethink these laws, remove them, modify them, etc., providing suggestions for something better. Such an organization, if well funded, would help the entire country get over a lot of crap that's on the books and probably will be forever, as we accumulate more and more and more and more and more laws.
this is a direct result of mccain-feingold. the moment you decide to define 'legitimate media', for purposes of granting their political speech exception, you effectively create regulation of all media. once Congress, the President, and the Supreme Court decided that some citizens, based upon their full-time employment, enjoy free speech rights separate from everyone else, how else would you imagine that those speech restrictions be enforced?
the blogosphere cannot become complacent about intrusions like this -- its actually what MSM and our representatives prefer, largely because it enhances their own power and/or kills open source journalism. so there will be no MSM outrage over this -- they want to hold onto their roles as gatekeepers.
i rule.
I live in SF and I write a blog. It's not very political, but when it is, it is a very liberal blog. And if you continue on this path supporting this foolishness, and if it actually passes, I will do everything in my power to make sure you, and any supervisor who votes for this INSANE idea, are not re-elected.
This is Simply Wrong.
Rawls: Unfair, unjust, and unreasonable. Look it up.
It is unfair, because it singles out a form of free expression as a form of speech that requires regulation. Pure Hate Speech and shouting fire in a theatre are regulated free expression. Blogs have no business being regulated like that.
It is unjust, because it would treat all blogs the same. IF the blogger says "Bush is the Spawn of Satan", or "Liberals are the rotting core of Evil in the Universe" or "Go out and vote - it's important" it's all the same: political statements. This would clearly be an injustice.
and it is unreasonable, as a blog can be about a million things, and often are. Politics is often a central theme, but it is not the only. Therefore, it is unreasonable to paint semi-political yet popular blogs the same as some fire breathing partisan blog.
This legislation is also completely and utterly STUPID. Why? Because someone might live somewhere, but the blog could be hosted in FINLAND. Now: try and regulate political speech in Finland from San Francisco. Guess what: It Isn't Going To Happen. Ever.
The internet is international. Get used to it.
Worse, you have single handedly made San Francisco an international laughing stock, and more over: They Are Laughing At You.
Smooth move Maxwell.
I've always known you're not the sharpest knife in the drawer, but this latest embarrassment is really over the top.
I will not register. Furthermore, I will cheerfully join a class action lawsuit to fight this, right to the Supreme Court, if necessary. If that fails, then me and my family will take our leave of this city. We moved here many years ago, because it was a city of free spirits. Then the dotcom idiots did their dead level best to ruin the place, and now incompetent politicians such as yourself are putting the final touches on it final implosion.
I hope you're proud.
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
especially on /. is that, given the predictable percentage of replies on how "unfair" and "outrageous" this is, no one is using one of my favorite words: unconstitutional. the issue at hand here is not whether they should do this or not. nor is the issue that for the proposed legislation the majority of bloggers would be unaffected. the issue instead is that it is not within the legal restrictions of the government to impose this ordinance. since it is, however, restricted to campaign related blogs, there are laws which stipulate, at least in certain media i know, that you have to give each candidate, given certain criteria, equal time/space. while i still think this is superfluous, it is a damn sight better than restricting free speech. yes, i understand that they're not trying to keep people from blogging, or restrict what they blog about with this piece of legislation. but, honestly, how long will it take for similar laws to get pushed in other states? and no, not all of them will pass, but the point is that once a majority of the nation does something one way, the majority of congress will mirror it because they're from those states.
this scares me in a way that i normally reserver for senator orrin hatch, but i guess he's got some competition now. i guess we'll have to see how this pans out, but i must admit i'm alarmed by a number of the articles i read now, politically speaking.
The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it.
-Oscar Wilde
In case you haven't noticed, nearly every radio station is owned by one organization.
I'm sure that's what the textbook or dictionary or whatnot says those words mean. I'm sure that's how you explain those words to your class. I'm even sure there must be somewhere mediums for formal debate where those words hold those meanings and are possibly even useful for expression.
Unfortunately, outside of a classroom or maybe a handful of political journals, language is defined by use, not authority. Which means academia isn't the one who gets to decide what "liberal" and "conservative" mean. The television is the one who gets to decide.
And unfortunately what the television says right now is that "left" means "liberal", "right" means "conservative", and that both of these words simultaneously hold so many different contradictory meanings that they cease to have any meaningful definition whatsoever.
At least insofar as slashdot discussions go.
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
In practice, it is likely to take weeks, months or years to track the affilitions of a "trojan" (as you put it). By the time you have untangled the web of obfuscation, the election will be well and truly over. And the "trojan" typically won't care that his/her reputation is blown.
By requiring the connections to be disclosed upfront (on pain of legal penalties), you reduce the "trojan"s influence on the election outcome. For me, the real question is whether the disclosure of just financial links would be enough to make a difference.
Your knee is jerking badly, IMO.
What is the problem with registering? What is the problem with disclosing that a someone is funded to be someone else's mouthpiece? Surely, if a blogger can register (on pain of penalty) that he is NOT funded by some scumbag, then that only increases the credibility of his viewpoint.
"preventing political bribery"
This will not prevent bribery, it just cuts the little guy out of the loop the big boys want to protect.
Rick B.
The 1st amendment is about freedom of speech, which congress may not abridge, period. Any damn thing you want to say, no ifs ands or buts.
This is an absolutist view of "free speech" that is actually common on Slashdot, but doesn't make much sense in the real world. Think about what you're saying- any damn thing you want to say, no ifs and or buts. Such an interpretation would permit death threats. It would grant Constitutional protection to bribery and scams. It would undermine verbal contracts. It would prohibit laws against slander and libel. And it would grant Constitutional protection to spam- those idiots who post First Amendment arguments in every spam thread would have a point.
Which is ironic- such an absolutist definition of free speech is ahistorical for the US, to say the least.
So, all the crap about commercial and political speech has basically been tacked on illegally afterward, by a politically compliant judiciary, to allow the FedGov to "regulate" far beyond its defined remit.
This really part of a larger discussion about the two competing views of the Constitution: as a "living document" or a "dead document". The debate concerns how much to rely on "strict constructionism", which ostensibly relies on the original intent of the poeple who actually wrote the Constitution, versus relying on an understanding based on evolving values and meanings, as applied by case law. The "living document" view has prevailed over most of the past 200 years, but recently the "dead document" position has come into vogue, advanced principally by Scalia, and vigorously promoted by many who praise it for consistency- but who may in fact be aiming to remove power from the judiciary, the only remaining branch of government still not under their influence.
The US Constitution is a Case-Law Constitution. That gives it the advantage of flexibility. It is also a very brief Constitution. Its brevity is one of its greatest weaknesses, as well as a source of strength. For example it is the oldest Constitution for its age in the world. But the brevity requires significant interpretation. Courts are put in the position, for example, of having to determine whether the First Amendment protects nudie bar dancing. If you feel that a right should not exist unless it is specifically mentioned in the Constitution, or if you get upset about "liberal activist judges", you are probably sympathetic to the "dead document" interpretation. Nudie bars are mentioned nowhere on the actual parchment.
This view has certain advantages. First of all there is consistency. It removes discretion from individual judges, by forbidding the very function that Article III mandates that they do- interpret the Constitution. (Effectively, Congress would unofficially take over this job.)
However, it has the disadvantage of being false on its face. The mechanism for the citizenry to amend the Constitution is written right into it. As can be seen in contemporaneous writings, it was obvious that members of the Convention expected, and even hoped, that the Constitution would not be a static document, but that it would be amended by the people through legal means, sometimes as Constitutional amendments, and often as the result of judicial challenges (to refute the concept of "activist judges"). For example many members of the convention would obviously have been thrilled to see that there is no longer slavery in the US. This despite language in the Constitution explicitly discussing the international sale of slaves.
BTW, free speech isn't a right because of the constitution - it's in the constitution because it's a right!
Truer words never spoken.
Silly rabbit -- the interpretation of the Constitution that says you can't yell "FIRE" in a crowded theater or that you can't say "Kill the " to incite a riot is not "illegal". It could, maybe, be viewed as unconstitutional.
"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."
The amendment does not say "Congress shall make no law abridging speech", just the "freedom of speech".
So is requiring a disclosure of who paid for your "opinion" an abridgment of freedom of speech? I don't think so. It doesn't dictate what you can and cannot say. I think it benefits the American people to know.
Otherwise, you could have some radical right-wing political element create a news channel and claim it is "fair and balanced" and deem everyone who doesn't agree with them a "liberal". We wouldn't want that sort of thing to happen in this country.
Except when it comes to gay marriage,
Individual "gays" can marry the same as individual straight folks. There are no more or fewer restrictions on them. A marriage is between a man and a woman -- always has been. Gay men are welcome to marry women and gay women are welcome to marry men. It's equal rights for all individuals.
dying with dignity,
Only if you want to.
smoking marijuana,
Agree. Should be legalized.
playing D&D in the community center,
The community center is a big government boondoggle. It's controlled by the government. Politics decides what the goverment does. Politics decides what the government allows in the community center. Don't like it? Then privatize the community center (or tear it down and build a Wal-Mart, or whatever). Play whatever game you want on someone's private property. And stop building the damn big government centers so we can stop listening to people whine when the politics doesn't go their way.
or a thousand other personal issues. Then it's regulation hell.
In general, no. In general, the conservative side wants fewer regulations. How many conservatives have to tell you they want fewer regulations and smaller government before you'll belive that at least some conservatives want smaller government and fewer regulations?
Don't water it down by claiming there are only "some" Bible-thumpers trying to tell us what to do. These Bible-pushers have become the most powerful force in the Republican party, and are only too happy to ask the government to regulate my personal activities.
Who are these people you're talking about? If they're so powerful and they're such a danger to your personal freedom, then you ought to be able to name a few things you used to be able to do 20 years ago that these people have succeeded in outlawing.
I have switched the majority of my site [jackwhispers.com] to a blogger BLOG [jackwhispers.blogspot.com]. It's been a way for my site to grow easily. It's also easy to gain revenue from BLOGs that otherwise might not have been successful. I also can post small or insignificant posts that relate to my site's content, get reader feedback, and allow people who disagree with my editorials to return comment.
... until someone here on slashdot pointed it out to me, I didn't realize that Weblogs Inc was formed for the specific purpose of generating ads on BLOGs. Engadget is such a BLOg and the most successful of Weblogs Inc ventures.
Your engadget reference is a good example of this
Yell & scream & rant & rave... it's no use... you need a shaaaave ~ Bugs Bunny
and yes, it is BAD. No, the slashdot summary is not misleading, it is dead on.
...".
The ordinance defines "electioneering communication" as mentioning a specific candidate for city office within 90 days of the election.
It requires ANYONE engaging in "electioneering communication" to include in the communication "Paid for by
It also requires anyone who spends more than $1000 a year on such communications to file a report with the city UNDER PENALTY OF PERJURY.
There are exemptions for person to person conversation and for major media outlets, such as newspapers and tv news organizations. It is very clear that the ordinance covers bloggers.
Recent Supreme Court decisions have distinguished spending from speech. It seemed like a logical distinction at the time, but we now are seeing the results of that sort of thinking... There is no a HUGE loophole in the First Amendment. Any form of speech other than direct person to person communication requires spending at least a little money.
Oh well, 200 years of (mostly) Free Speech is better than anyone else has pulled off yet.
I'm actually surprised that there aren't more of these anti-liberal hate rants yet. But let's take a moment and breathe here. One Supervisor in a left-leaning town has proposed a law. Therefore SF will vote on it. It hasn't passed yet, there isn't yet a mass round-up of bloggers, they aren't yet burning the bible and killing babies in City Hall. Bad laws get proposed all the time, and most of the time they get voted down. Chill out.
That's gotta fit into your schema somewhere