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.

Comments

Loyalty Fee?

[fembots]

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.

Re:Loyalty Fee?

[Lehk228]

in other words, you have freedom of speech as long as you don't discuss politics? how long before i get my papers?

Re:Loyalty Fee?

[baldass_newbie]

Boy, all the Republicans against this bill pointed out that limiting campaign contributions was tantamount to limiting free speech. (I don't recall any Democrats against this as their two biggest special interests, Unions and the Press, are exempted specifically.)

Kind of like when Clinton signed the Violence Against Women act allowing prosecutors to dig into a person's private sexual history for background.

Nothing like the Law of Unintended Consquences, eh?

And counting down for the modbombing in 3, 2, 1...

Re:Loyalty Fee?

[imkonen]

" webloggers continuously hammer on the idea that they want to be treated as "real journalists". and now they are."

"real journalists" are allowed to express political opinions without begin regulated by campaign finance laws. Every major newspaper in the country endorses candidates in elections.

Re:Loyalty Fee?

[rekenner]

And some just want a place to air their thoughts. It'd be incredibly stupid to make people that talk about politics in their blog (which covers a very wide range of things) register their blog, regardless of if they prefer to think of themselves as journlists or not.

Re:Loyalty Fee?

[mizhi]

Are journalists or columnists in traditional media required to register with the local authorities, pay a registration fee because they're popular, report all their costs (such as travel, meals with sources, etc), or turnover their readership (auditing of server logs) to the government so they can see who might be reading certain opinions?

I doubt that they are. If they are, then that's, at the very LEAST, highly disturbing. The fact that you wish that bloggers would stop posting doesn't mean that the government, or anyone else, should be able to come in and regulate their speech. It's the same principle as the tv: if you don't like the programming, then change the channel, or turn it off.

The reasons politicians are interested in singling out blogs are pretty obvious. Blogs have a relatively low startup and maintenance cost, can be started by anyone, and whereas there are relatively few points of regulation for traditional media, blogs are highly distributed. The squashing of a scandal, omission of facts, or the redirection of public attention becomes incredibly difficult for people (politicians, corporations, etc) who have become accustomed to a certain amount of cover from the elitist press.

Traditional MSM are scared because of such scandals like Dan Rather's Forged Memo story. Before blogs, the fact that there were some serious questions about the authenticity of those national guard memos would have never seen a wide audience and would have been largely relegated to the lore of right-wing conspiracy theorists.

CBS and others are pissed because now their job, getting the story RIGHT, has suddenly become that much more difficult with people who are both knowledgable in such matters AND able to make that knowledge widely known. Furthermore, because of the rapid response made possible by blogs, the facts are checked over and over again and a truer picture of what actually happened becomes hammered out. Contrast this with the relatively slow response times of the NYT or WT, stories with innaccuracies are only slowly corrected and usually in the back sections of the paper. An inaccurate picture is usually what people are left with.

I think there is no clearer ideal of what free political speech looks like.

Re:Loyalty Fee?

[MillionthMonkey]

in other words, you have freedom of speech as long as you don't discuss politics? how long before i get my papers?

No. You can't be on the payroll of some politician or otherwise perform electioneering on his behalf without making it public that that's what you're doing.

Not all speech is protected by the First Amendment. Speech ranges from "I have a dream" to spam. The type of speech that enjoys First Amendment protection is politically protected speech. If you are spending money to sell a product, like turtle wax, that's commercial speech- which is subject to a limited set of restrictions. Examples are when they force pharmaceutical companies to mention the diarrhea and vomiting, or when weight loss ads are forced to put "ADVERTISEMENT" in the footer of real-looking news articles. Restrictions on commercial speech are perfectly constitutional as long as they are reasonable.

This business with campaigning is treading closer to politically protected speech, and overlapping with it, since the speech is primarily political rather than purely commercial in nature. The controversial campaign finance reform was controversial precisely because it attempted to regulate speech in this domain. But not all political speech is necessarily constitutionally protected political speech- depending on the circumstances, it may have a commercial character. I may be receiving money in response for saying what I'm saying. The campaign finance laws- however you feel about them- were part of an attempt to impose reasonable and legitimate regulation of speech in this domain. One of the main strategies that this legislation took was to enforce full disclosure of the commercial aspects of speech, and to make sure that commercial means were not used to escape political consequences of speech. That's why you hear "I approved this message".

This ordinance looks like a minor piece of accountability legislation. It says that if you spend more than $1000 in any venue performing electioneering for a candidate, you have to register. This is so that accurate information about election funding can be kept as part of the public record. That is all. This is a restriction in that you are forced to disclose this information to the public, but they're not preventing you from saying anything, and it only applies to the commercial component of your speech.

This is much ado about nothing. Political demonstrations and public gatherings are about the most protected form of political speech there is, but in the United States you have to remain inside designated fenced-in areas or they'll arrest you for leaving your "First Amendment Zone".

Re:Loyalty Fee?

[kfg]

The Supreme court has already dealt with this issue in the case of Steve Forbes. If you are spending your own money, as do newspapers and bloggers, your speech is protected by the First Ammendment. As it should be, even if you are filthy, stinking rich, or even if you are some kid (of any age) posting to the web from your mom's basement.

The extent to which this law might be supportable is highly dependant on the exact legal meaning of the word "electioneering" and only that portion of monies spent on such "electioneering" could be held to count, up until the time you accept payment of at least $100 from some other person to engage in electioneering.

But yes, the bill does not dicriminate (I've, like, actually read it and stuff). It is not aimed at bloggers and applies to any "Electioneering Communication" that is "distributed," "including, but not limited to" Cable, satellite, Internet, flyers, doorhangers, etc, etc, etc.

KFG

Re:Loyalty Fee?

[MillionthMonkey]

Dang - I must have the abbreviated version of the First Amendment. All my copy says is "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." Naturally your copy, and that of our esteemed judiciary, must have the small print version many of us lack.

(Emphasis mine)
You are correct. Interpretation of the Constitution is the Federal Court's Constitutionally mandated role, as per Article III.

Re:Loyalty Fee?

[learn fast]

Are journalists or columnists in traditional media required to register with the local authorities, pay a registration fee because they're popular, report all their costs (such as travel, meals with sources, etc), or turnover their readership (auditing of server logs) to the government so they can see who might be reading certain opinions?

No, and neither are bloggers. As many others on the this thread have pointed out, this is Yet Another Misleading Slashdot Summary -- the ordinance does not mention blogs anywhere, and only regulates spending by campaigns themselves. All it says is that any campaign has to register and report all media spending once it exceeds $1000.

What happened was somebody took this and sort of said something like "campaigns could spend money on blogs... so this ordinance regulates 'blogs'" so it sounds like the ordinance tries to regulate all blogs. No, that is not what's happening, what's happening is that local campaigns have to report all spending they do, in theory they could spend money on some blogs. So even if they did, it's not the blogs that are being regulated it's the campaign. The blogs themselves wouldn't have to report anything.

It's like saying the local police force has to track how much money they spend on bullets. So, bullets are a subset of "arms", so that means they want to regulate "arms". So, they want to "regulate arms" which is forbidden in the Constitution. It's like that children's game, playing telephone, but playing telephone with logic. It would be so easy to look up what the ordinance actually says, too, but I guess that's breaking the rules.

Re:Loyalty Fee?

[grammar fascist]

Nothing like the Law of Unintended Consquences, eh?

And counting down for the modbombing in 3, 2, 1...

Wow...you got the modbombing, didn't you?

Hey moderators: if you don't like what he has to say, reply . The man speaks the truth: it was primarily conservatives who were against McCain-Feingold.

Why did we all-of-the-sudden forget this around here on Slashdot? Or maybe...those with the mod points want us to forget. Let's not play that game, okay?

Re:Loyalty Fee?

[kfg]

That's correct.

Even though the laws escape legal censure because they are aimed at the flow of money, such monies are overtly those used to purchase access to pulic forums, speech.

In a best case scenario this innately results in a database of who is spending what money on what political issues, whereas the only "correct" interpretation of the First Ammendment is that this is "noone's fucking business."

But, of course, it doesn't stop there, and, as the blurb suggests, in the worst case scenario the laws can be leveraged against speech itself.

For instance, yes, registration is voluntary, and personal speech is still "free," but that does nothing to prevent someone from prosecuting a blogger for being in violation of the law, and said blogger is unlikely to have the financial resources to defend his speech that the Washington Post does.

So the blogger is forced to shut down, or worse, bankrupted, then forced to shut down. His speech is effectively suppressed, although within the bounds of the law as she is writ.

But let us consider the case where, just as a rhetorical example, I feel so strongly about some political issue that I am willing to spend a thousand bucks of my own money to engage in what would legally be considered "electioneering."

Say I print up a bunch of flyers and distribute them myself on the street corner, of my own volition, purely as an expression of my own view that a certain candidate should prevail.

My speech is still protected, but if I do not place my name in the database and open my personal finances to legal inspection I am guilty of a crime for having done nothing but exercise a right.

I find this concept abhorent, and to evade this situation I am perfectly willing to accept the obvious fact that rich people can print up more flyers than I can. A restriction on spending money on speech is still a restriction on my speech spending, even if I don't have that sort of money available to spend on speech. This is a concept that seems a bit too subtle for most, although to me it appears writ in large, flashing neon signs.

The ultimate solution is obvious, for speech to be so inexpensive that anyone can afford to reach the world, at will, at far less expense than any reasonable restriction on "campaign financing" could entail, and thus alleviate the need for such restrictions.

What we really need is something like. . .the Internet. Go figure.

Here on Slashdot alone this political speech that I am engaging in right now might be reaching people numbering in the millions (the lurkers outnumber the registered users), and, prorated against my annual expense for all computer communications activities (ooooooh, say, seven or eight hundred bucks a year), cost less than a penny. Adding a simple web page would increase my annual out of pocket expenses about . . .ooooooh, nothing at all.

Sure, you can spend arbitrarily large amounts on a simple web page (I could, for instance, spend a half million on a stupid logo my mom would do for a pizza), but these expenditures really have nothing to do with the cost of the speech; and regulating the money spent on such has no effect on "reforming" political campaigns.

Call me old fashioned, but I believe that in America The People are still entirely responsible for the government they get.

The fact that the people are largely idiots is unregulatable.

KFG

Re:Loyalty Fee?

[xpurple]

Congress shall make no law

They should have stopped there :)

Re:Loyalty Fee?

[xpurple]

Freedom of speech is a right. A right can not be taken away.

Rewrite the Bill Of Rights, Rewrite the Constitution. Burn them for all that it matters. Those documents are nothing but paper.

None of those actions can take away my right to free speech.

Re:Loyalty Fee?

[Maestro4k]

Freedom of speech is a right. A right can not be taken away.

Rewrite the Bill Of Rights, Rewrite the Constitution. Burn them for all that it matters. Those documents are nothing but paper.

None of those actions can take away my right to free speech.

• And that wasn't the grandparent's point. You still have your freedom of speech. Mainly what the judiciary has done over the centuries is define what speech isn't covered under the first admendment, and that is speech that infringes on other people's rights. You have the right to free speech, you do not have the right to speech that intentionally harms another person. This is no different than the right to bear arms. You have the right to bear arms, but you don't have the right to kill someone in cold blood with those arms.

• That's what the grandparent's point was, the judiciary is involved in determining what passes constitutional muster and what doesn't regarding laws. Congress can pass a law saying you can speak the word blue, the president can even sign it into law, then the courts will get involved and find it unconstitutional and it will eventually be striken from the record. This is all part of the checks and balances put into the constitution to make sure things like that don't happen.

Not suprising given the recent court ruling

[moofdaddy]

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?

Re:Not suprising given the recent court ruling

[Anonymous Coward]

Your absolutely right about the issue of broadcast. But I think these sorts of regulations will never stand because they are grossly unconstitutional when applied to the Internet. Political speach is highly protected, but regulation is allowed in broadcast media because the public does not have equal access. Those who own the broadcast medias, or are wealthy enough to buy access, have an unfair advantage, so they need to be regulated. But the on the Internet this is not really true because it is cheap and easy to get your views out (in fact that is what blogging is really about). So any regulation which could target the average person posting their policatal speach would never stand up in court.

Re:Not suprising given the recent court ruling

[Daniel Dvorkin]

There's just as much PC on the Right as on the Left, it's just that you're supposed to say (or not say) different things. Nobody in the mainstream media dares to say anything bad about the recently departed Pope, f'rinstance. (This is part of a general, long-running, PC-of-the-Right reverence for religion.) Extremists on both sides will always try to muzzle those with whom they disagree. You can keep believing otherwise if you like, of course ... right up until they take you to the camps.

Re:Not suprising given the recent court ruling

[gsfprez]

>Nobody in the mainstream media dares to say anything bad about the recently departed Pope, f'rinstance.

there's a difference between actively, with government help, SILENCEING people who say things against a political correctness, and simply not liking them.

There is a difference between the government using the force of law to silence someone with any number of 4th Amendment violations, and for the masses to simply be pissed as your ass.

f'rinstance.. "The Left" at Cal Poly San Louis Obispo, a student was, by the government of the state of california, told to remove a flyer from a wall because it was offensive, told to write a letter of apology because he offended a couple of easily offendable black folk, and was threatened with expulsion and forfieture of his tuition. That is ACTUAL censorship. That is done by the government against the people with the force of law.

on "The Right" - when we didn't like what the Dixie Chicks had to say, we didn't send Janet Reno out to get them to lay siege to their house longer than it took to take over Baghdad and then light it on fire... we simply stopped listening to the Dixie Chicks and buying their CDs.

there's a big fscking difference there, my friend.

Re:Not suprising given the recent court ruling

[bonch]

Actually, the "Left" came to like the Pope in the past few yearsfor speaking out against the Iraq war and various policies of the Bush Administration. He also made undeniable contributions to the advancement of freedom in some countries, which is more than the Left or the Right can say for themselves. I don't think it's a PC issue so much as respect for the recently departed. There will always be time for criticism.

Re:Not suprising given the recent court ruling

[the gnat]

when we didn't like what the Dixie Chicks had to say, we didn't send Janet Reno out to get them

If "we" means the administration, yes, this is most certainly true, because even this administration recognizes the limits of executive power. However, I have been reading right-wing blogs and news sources for years, and I have consistently seen individual writers advocating, say, treason trials for anti-war protestors. As noxious as I find leftist attempts to ban "hate speech" and the like, on the left only the hardcore commies are advocating shooting people who say things they don't like.

Generally the Republican politicians themselves are more realistic, aside from the occasional accusation of treason. But it would be a gross exaggeration to state that the GOP rank-and-file supports unfettered free speech.

Re:Not suprising given the recent court ruling

[the gnat]

Saying ANYTHING politically INCORRECT is very much a right-wing/libertarian point of view.. always has been, always will be.

Gee, how about when Bill Maher made some tasteless remark about the WTC attackers, and Ari Fleischer responded that "people need to be careful of what they say"? For that matter, the entire right wing has been telling the other half of the country that we're all traitors for not blindly supporting the president during war (that he started).

And FYI, I'm a libertarian and 1st Amendment absolutist, but cut the bullshit. The right wing never cared about free expression until it realized that leftists could be just as oppressive as they could. It's a defensive maneuver, not a matter of principle.

Re:Not suprising given the recent court ruling

[rhysweatherley]

on "The Right" - when we didn't like what the Dixie Chicks had to say, we didn't send Janet Reno out to get them to lay siege to their house longer than it took to take over Baghdad and then light it on fire... we simply stopped listening to the Dixie Chicks and buying their CDs.

I guess I must have imagined all of those book burnings, removal of the teaching of evolution in schools in favour of creationism, fines against TV networks over Janet Jackson's breast, etc, etc, etc, ...

The idea that the Right doesn't do this is fanciful in the extreme. The Right is the primary practioner of censorship in the world right now, based on "moral values" that don't hold up to even minimal scrutiny.

The Left is not blameless, but it has come to terms with its extremist tendancies by putting checks and balances in place to prevent the worst abuses from recurring. The Right doesn't care one whit about checks and balances (witness the recent Shiavo mess).

Re:Not suprising given the recent court ruling

[imkonen]

and as a matter of fact, yes, me and others like me are quite ready and prepared to be the first ones taken to the camps... We are already seeing the signs and are determined to not change our thoughts.

Oh get down from your cross. That's such a tired old line of crap. You're not living in ancient Rome being fed to lions...you're actually by far the most politically powerful religion in the U.S. Even fake reporters busted for running gay prostitution sites try that old line.

now, we'd be perfectly happy for you to hate Jesus and want to screw each other in the butt all day long if you'd just let us say we think its wrong.. but then, that would be hate speach, wouldn't it?

What a complete and utter lie! You do realize that not explicitly making gay marriage illegal won't result in YOU having to marry a gay guy, don't you? You're church can go on refusing to perform gay marriages. But when you want to make it illegal for everyone, that is far beyond merely wanting to "say we think it's wrong."

there is already legal precident in Canada stating that the Bible is hate speech...

The link points to a law making it illegal to advocate genocide. A search of the page shows no hits for the words "bible" or "jesus". If you really think the bible advocates genocide...well...you're the one who has to sleep at night knowing that's your religion.

Re:Not suprising given the recent court ruling

[DunbarTheInept]

when Bill Maher made some tasteless remark about the WTC attackers

When did that happen? What really happened is that he made a truthful comment about the WTC attackers - the comment that people should stop calling them cowards because frankly, performing an act to further a cause when you know it will get you killed is not cowardice in the slightest. That doesn't make it right, and that doesn't justify it. But he pointed out that while there were many reasons that what they did was wrong, cowardice couldn't possible be one of them. And in fact it was wrong because the people involved had way too MUCH conviction and certainty. The point being that conviction and certainty and willingness to die for your cause are not the automatically good and wonderful things people claim they are. It varies depending on what cause it is that you have conviction toward. The 9/11 terrorists are the perfect example of why that is. Blind obedience with utter certainty is not a virtue, but it is not cowardice either.

That's not tasteless. It's right on the mark, and it's important to mention it at a time when people were using the terrorist attacks as an excuse to promote the attitude that more blind obedience to your country is a happy, happy, good goal to shoot for.

What's a blog?

[JeffTL]

How do you define a blog, and how does it differ from a frequently-updated website?

It'd be more easily enforcable (i.e. less loopholes) to apply such a regulation to all mass media, especially if preventing political bribery is your goal.

Re:What's a blog?

[usefool]

Maybe they don't want mass public participation in a particular political discussion?

Websites don't usually allow active discussion on a certain topic, but blogs are encouraging that.

Re:What's a blog?

[Glonoinha]

It has to do with campaign contribution laws, if I had to guess. An individual is limited to how much $$$ he can contribute to a particular candidate. If it costs $5,000 a year to run your blog and you spend every day raving about how great a particular candidate is ... have you, in effect, contributed $5,000 to his campaign?

I think $2,000 is one of the magic limits, but I'm not entirely sure how that works.

Re:What's a blog?

[Anonymous Luddite]

>> if it's whiney and useless enough, it qualifies as a blog.

Off I go to edit wikipedia's entry for 'blog'

muhahaha

Move to another jurisdiction

[ciurana]

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

News for news

[jfengel]

Has anybody got a link to an actual newspaper article on the subject? While bloggers and advocacy sites can break news stories, they're also full of innuendo, rumor, and things blown way out of proportion.

I prefer to get my news from some organization without an axe to grind.

Re:News for news

[great_flaming_foo]

I prefer to get my news from some organization without an axe to grind.

You must be new here...

Click whore

[michaelmalak]

(Second time I've posted it in the past week.)

I discovered this issue 18 months ago.

Virginia blogs barred from mentioning local candidates

Re:Let's see how...

[Jackie_Chan_Fan]

point taken. Not all liberals understand liberty, and not all conservatives get conservatism..... coughBUSHcough. ;)

Actually there is an issue here, and its valid. Its just one of those issues where there is hardly an answer for. Frankly regulating bloggers is a stupid way to get bloggers to disclose their campaign connections.

The best way to deal with "trojan bloggers" or "trojan talking heads on tv" is to simply investigate them secretly and expose them, and assasinate them publically based on the facts of their doings. If someone has taken money, then expose them the old fashioned way.

GO YANKS!

Read the damn legislation.

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Read the damn legislation.

[mcc]

So now the government has the right to regulate speech so long as the person performing that speech receives some sort of monetary restitution for this?

Perhaps there are better ways to create fair campaign finance regulations than this.

As for me, I'm frankly unsure to what extent I can prevent this from affecting me. I will probably be creating a politics-related website within the near future which will eventually explicitly cover elections and such, but I am starting to fear I will be unable to run it off of a donation model since apparently if the wrong person clicks that paypal "support this site" link I suddenly mutate from being a free citizen exercising my right to operate a free private press into... well, something else. I wonder, is it possible to be infected with the you're-a-PAC-now virus if your hosting-bill funding comes from selling t-shirts?

The fairness doctrine

[bsandersen]

The end of the fairness doctrine during the Regan administration has blown the lid off of most any effort to have accountability on the airwaves and elsewhere. Instead of politicians speaking directly, their message is usually delivered by proxies. The Republicans have been masterful at this, deferring to talk radio hosts much of their message. Since the Right(tm) nearly owns all of the AM dial and all of the FM talk dial not associated with Public Radio, this has been an very effective conduit for them.

Even if some wrong-headed blog-managing rules were put into place by SF, CA or the US, proxies would appear quickly and funnel the same information to those who might listen, with the source one-level-removed.

Attempting to regulate speech is problematic, as I'm sure those behind this effort will discover.

Uh RTFO?...

[Momoru]

Did the person that wrote the article (personaldemocracy.com) RTFO? The city ordinance does not specifically mention blogging as they seem to imply. It simply says that anyone participating in electioneering for a specific candidate, and spending more then $1000 needs to register. This covers print, internet (where they derive the blogging inference) etc. Your average blogger doesn't spend $10, let alone $1,000, and most political blogs are not for one specific SF candidate.

Re:Uh RTFO?...

[cgenman]

Link to the PDF.

It's a general ordinance referring to "electioneering communication." Essentially, if you spend over 1,000 dollars specifically trying to promote a single candidate, in any media, you have to register this for sake of tracking election funding. And that's it. The bill defines "electioneering communication" as any communication to broadcast, cable, radio, internet, or telephone, or mailings, flyers, doorhangers, pamphlets, brochures, cards, signs, billboards, facsimiles, or printed advertisements that: refers to a clearly identified candidate for City elective office or a City elective officer who is the subject of a recall election; and is distrubuted within 90 days to an election for the City elective office sought by the candidate or a recall election regarding the City elective officer to 500 or more individuals who are registered to vote or eligible to register to vote in the election or recall election. There shall be a rebuttable presumption that any broadcast, cable, satellite, or radio communication and any sign, billboard or printed advertisement is distributed to 500 or more individuals who are eligible to vote...

This is a minor piece of campaign finance accountability. You can't buy thousands of dollars of airtime for a candidate without registering that with the city. It mentions the internet in passing, once, and no where else.

And to be eligible, you have to have spent 1,000 dollars in the 3 months prior to get a candidate elected. How much of your blog is devoted to getting a candidate elected? Is your blog costing you 4,000 dollars a year?

The ordinance makes explicit exceptions for spoken communication, news stories, communications to all members of a specific subgroup, communications during a debate, anything on bumper stickers, pins, stickers, hat bands, badges, ribbons, or other memorobelia, etc. While the 1,000 dollar threshold generally rules out having to register to be a blogger, if people were really worried about it, they could add such a thing here.

Re:Let's see how...

[Bullfish]

The issue at heart is that there are now so many venues to surreptitously flog political viewpoints disguised as something else. If someone thinks they are reading a personal blog with a political viewpoint and it is in fact a paid action on behalf of a candidate, they have a right to know that up front.

This is happening in many areas and politics is just one. Marketing disguised as objective scientific evidence, etc. I've heard on these boards people dissing the BBC and the CBC because they receive government funds. Yippee, if Fox isn't an organ of republican viewpoint, I don't know what is... so this is really less about free speech and more about truth in advertising.

this is just the beginning....

[headrock]

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.

It is for the elected official themselves!

[tungwaiyip]

I haven't fully comprehend the proposed ordinance. But I think you guy pull the trigger too quick. I think what proposed amendment is target for elected officials, not your average citizens. The whole thing is probably spawn the supervisor Chris Daly's blog and they feel there is need to clarify the the guideline for themselves.

Daly starts blog on city Web site District 6 supervisor first official to keep diary on city's site

Grossly Misleading Histrionics

[LMariachi]

From a somewhat cursory examination of the legislation being proposed, it looks like the summary is substantially misrepresenting it. It says that any person who spends over $1000 on "electioneering communications" has to file a statement with the Ethics Commission detailing where that money was spent and if they received any payments from anyone for the purpose of that electioneering. Furthermore, there's a list of exemptions which includes "news stories, commentaries, or editorials distributed through any newspaper, radio, television station, or other recognized news medium" which certainly might include a web page.

The purpose of this legislation is not to "regulate blogging," as the submitter so breathlessly exclaims, it's to provide transparency in election financing. No one's being prevented from saying anything, or even from taking money to say a certain thing, but if anyone, whether blogger or billboard company or bumpersticker printer, receives money from a campaign or PAC to advocate that campaign or that PAC's issue, it's in the public's interest to know that fact. This is no different than the Federal laws that require political ads to identify the source of their funding ("This message has been brought to you by Citizens For Financial Obfuscation," that sort of thing.)

Bloggers are understandably defensive at the moment, since the serious political commentators and newsgathering blogs are frequently lumped in with the likes of Free Republic and teenagers' LiveJournals, but misrepresenting the issues at hand to turn everything into "the mainstream media/government/alien overlord is threatened by blogging!" is not a worthy strategy.

Re:Not suprising at all

[Jeffrey Baker]

Well Mr. John Morris of DeRidder, Louisiana, as much as we in San Francisco love to include alternative viewpoints, you can, quite frankly, stick your ignorant backwater opinion right back up your asshole from whence it came.

Pop quiz: which of these people is a Republican:

• McCain
• Feingold

If you answered "McCain", congratulations! You have enough political knowledge to come out on the winning side of a 50/50 chance! Your "crowd of Democrats" appears to include equal numbers of Republicans and Democrats.

Quiz number 2: Which of the following Soviet dictators signed the McCain-Feingold act into law:

• Lenin
• Stalin
• Khrushchev
• Brezhnev
• Chernenko
• Gorbachev
• George W. Bush

If you selected "George W. Bush", you're right again! Beloved Father of America Bush signed the McCain-Feingold Free Speech Destruction Act into law, thereby acheiving for the Republican Party what Soviet Russia could never do: limiting political speech in America.

Final question, regarding tolerance of other viewpoints: which of the following prominent politicians issued a threat on Thursday against any federal judge who dared oppose his wishes?

• Tom Delay, Republican from Texas
• Tom Delay, Republican from Texas
• Tom Delay, Republican from Texas
• Tom Delay, Republican from Texas
• Tom Delay, Republican from Texas
• Tom Delay, Republican from Texas
• Tom Delay, Republican from Texas
• Tom Delay, Republican from Texas
• Tom Delay, Republican from Texas
• Tom Delay, Republican from Texas
• Tom Delay, Republican from Texas

See if you can pick the right answer.

The article is summed up in the title of the post.

[merpal]

"San Francisco Attempts to Regulate Blogging"

Enough said.

This is like the UN trying to regulate the entire Internet. (April Fool's post)

Re:You keep using that word

[b17bmbr]

actually, there are legitmate liberal and conservative labels. taken in the classical sense, a liberal seeks change, while a conservative seeks the status quo. now, how do you define liberal and conservative. we often make the mistake in America of labeling secularists and traditionalists with the lib/cons labels. and there is a huge difference. in fact, secularists could be quite conservative, and traditionalists quite liberal, as per above definition.

today's lib/cons debate tends to break down along three areas, 1) role of government, 2) property rights, 3) individual liberty

liberals generally want more government (higher taxes, more spending), less property rights (gun control, environmental laws) and more liberty (abortion). conservatives generally want less gov., more prop rights, and less liberty, or at least less nihilism.

now, bush is no conservative. he wants a big government, massive spending, and has a federal solution for everything. his foreign policy (save for all the ignorance around here) is very liberal, in a wilsonian/rooseveltian manner. he has eschewed the republicans favored Realpolitik and stability (so Bismarckian) for a proactive policy of change. (and no the war wasn't about oil, or even wmd's. sorry excuse for what will historically be a great policy.) guys like dean really aren't as liberal as secular. bush's soc sec. plan is actualyl quite liberal, while the opponents are quite conservative.

where does that leave the debate, it's really a left vs. right debate, which ahs nothing to do with lib/cons labels. leftism has a decidely deterministic (marx, hegel) outlook, whereas rightism sees history as mutable and the result of great ideas and people (the classical, aristotelian approach. i.e. thucydides, herodotus). it's really more a way of looking at the world. for example, those who see the iraqi war as for oil, believe in the deterministic view, that external forces (class oppression) thus it's an evil venture. whereas those who see the history as shaped by events (thus democracy can reshape the middle east) are usually in favor of the war.

there's of course other factors, as those "conservatives" opposed to the war, i.e. pat buchanan, are influenced by outside forces (anti-semitism, the church, etc.) and thus are more traditionalist leftists. (his opposition to abortion and free trade)

yes, i do teach this stuff. this is a brief summary, but it's more accurate to define left vs. right, which is a substantive debate.

My Reply To Maxwell

[Ralph Spoilsport]

What part of the first amendment do you not understand?

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

what i find interesting....

[to_kallon]

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.

For the sake of argument...

[YrWrstNtmr]

Let's say that slashdot was hosted/incorporated in SanFran.

-Expenses over $1000/year?
Check

-Poitical section of their site?
Check

-Hosted direct statements and opinions from candidates?
Check

-Has discussed San Francisco City elections?
Probably.

exemptions which includes "news stories, commentaries, or editorials distributed through any newspaper, radio, television station, or other recognized news medium" which certainly might include a web page.
Or it might not. Does this let all 'web pages' off the hook? Certainly not.

So...would they have to file IAW this ruling? It would appear so.

does slashdot count as a blog?

[the-build-chicken]

...because no one here ever presents political opinions and I'm sure many would blow over $1000 worth of man hours here a year?

Re:Let's see how...

[mpthompson]

The issue at heart is that there are now so many venues to surreptitously flog political viewpoints disguised as something else... ...so this is really less about free speech and more about truth in advertising.

People like you truly scare me. If this issue isn't about free speech (exactly the kind of speech addressed in the first amendment) then I don't know what is.

The U.S. founding fathers gave citizens some credit for using being able to use their own brain's to figure out and form their own political opinions. However, two centuries later we seem to have reached a point where a substantial segment of our society believe's that raw political opinions are too dangerous and must to be vetted and sanitized through a nanny-state machine before they are fit for the masses. Laws such this are just a start.

People who support these types of laws must remember they are a double edge sword that can and will cut both ways. Your particular political opinions may be supported for the time being with such laws and those you disagree with suppressed. However, there will come a time when the tables are turned and the same laws you support to silence your foes are used against you and your political allies.

Our founding fathers had it right. Keep your and governments grubby hands off my free speech. For both my sake and yours.

Re:You keep using that word

[mcc]

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.

Free speech

[katorga]

"Its only applicable to blogs that mention candidates"

Ummm. The First Ammendment's entire purpose is to protect political speech.

No candidate or elected official should ever be shielded from the voice of the people. The 60 day moratorium on political speech by the public prior to an election is one of the most nefarious laws I have ever seen passed in the USA.

The entire purpose of the US Constitution and the Bill of Rights is to define the limits of government to act against the people. The campaign finance law has this all turned around.

And notice that it did not seem to actually work. The last election was awash in money.

Please read the Ordinance !!

[fluffy99]

So campaign finance disclosure is now a bad thing?

Once again, it is apparent that /. authors and readers don't bother checking facts and blindy believe any piece of misleading drivel they find on the internet. This is yet another BS article blowing things out of proportion and trying to stir up controversy (and maybe slashdot readership?). If I want to readed misleading, inflammatory, blown out of proportion crap then I would just head down to the supermarket and open the Enquirer!

For those of you who didn't bother to actually read the ordinance before spouting off an opinion, The SF ordinance applies to people actually campaigning and doesn't specifically mention blogging. It says that if you are running for SF political office you have to disclose your expenditures. Standard policy. If you follow the editting marks in the ordinance, you'll see that it previously only referred to "expenditures". The revision added a lot of verbage to include "electioneering communications". Presumably that includes newspaper ads, radio spots, billboards, spam emails, a web site, setting up internet blogs, etc. I would be upset if a city didn't require candidates to disclose their expenditures.

The ordinance does not apply to the average Joe on the street. It does not apply to newspaper articles and blogs not commisioned by the campaigner.

Re:Not suprising at all

[learn fast]

make judges pay a price for usurping the lawmaking powers that are NOT the province of judges.

Judges cannot write laws. They never could.

So what's happening?

The GOP talking points now dictate that what used to be called "judicial review" or "separation of powers" should now be called "judicial activism" or "legislating from the bench."

It's really an homage to the power of words. All you have to do is call it "legislating" and people actually think that judges are out there writing laws. It's fucking absurd, pardon my french.

Judges have not "usurped" lawmaking powers. This is an absurdity. Judges have not and cannot write laws. All that's happened is some Republican media mouthpieces started calling Constitutionally-denoted judicial review lawmaking. That's the only thing that's changed. Judges have done not adopted any new practices of extra-constitutionally writing laws. Let's not even mention that the executive branch would also have to be extra-constitutionally enforcing these pseudo-laws -- Funny how this "separation of powers" stuff works.

See, the problem is that separation of powers gets in the way of real power -- power that the Constitution incidentally forbids. Three branches of government, checks and balances and whatnot. Apparently that all means nothing if a few propagandists changed their wording slightly.

But, let's forget all of that. What I really want to know is what exactly you mean by making judges "pay a price". What are you going to to, kick their ass? Arrest them? What?

Please fill me in. I eagerly await further enlightenment.

That is garbage which was tacked on afterwards

[Julian Morrison]

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. 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.

BTW, free speech isn't a right because of the constitution - it's in the constitution because it's a right! (Oh, and guns likewise, might as well mention while I'm already up on the soapbox ;-)

I feel the same way about gun rights

[ccmay]

Freedom of speech is a right. A right can not be taken away.

Rewrite the Bill Of Rights, Rewrite the Constitution. Burn them for all that it matters. Those documents are nothing but paper.

None of those actions can take away my right to free speech.

Right you are.

And the same goes for the right to keep and bear arms. Pass any law you want. I would kill, or die, to defend my right to be armed, and that outweighs any worthless piece of paper.

The survival of freedom depends entirely on the willingness of people to resist their government, preferably non-violently, but with armed violence if necessary.

-ccm

Re:You keep using that word

[RobotRunAmok]

I would be very concerned if I was in a class where the teacher felt the need to simplify all politics into "left vs right".

I woul be very concerned if I was in a class where the students were citing Wikipedia.

Seriously. If you're trying to make any kind of credible argument outside of the slashdot/kuro5hin parallel universes, you need some references more legit than the wiki.

Darn the liberal media

[fprefect]

CBS and others are pissed because now their job, getting the story RIGHT, has suddenly become that much more difficult with people who are both knowledgable in such matters AND able to make that knowledge widely known.

Despite all the conspiracy theories about the "liberal media", for the most part they report stories factually -- there have only been a handful of cases where the facts don't pan out in public.
Count all of the cases (Rathergate, NYTimes, etc) and you're talking well over 99% accuracy.

Compare that to bloggers like Drudge, who repost rumors and hypothesize stories by the handful only hoping to hit an occasional truth. On the Internet, even a 50% success rate is great, and political pandering and bias ensure a steady stream of advertising.

Now, I'm not saying all Internet bloggers and fact-checkers are bogus, but I am saying that they aren't held to the same standards as the professionals in the "traditional media". Instead, I prefer to think that blogging works rather like open source software -- thousands of eyes (or voices) make many problems shallow. I support the critical review of politics, media, etc as an important part of democracy, as well as anything that makes it easier for the masses.

Could be so simple, couldn't it?

[Pac]

One thing you should have mind is that, no matter what your local neocon operative is telling you, the Courts haven't suddenly started interpreting the Constitution because Clinton nominated a few dozens "terrorist" judges. It has always been the role of the higher courts.

Just for me to understand your line of thought, please define the words "establishment", "religion", "prohibiting", "free", "exercise", "abridging", "freedom", "speech", "press", "right", "people", "peaceably", "assemble", "petition", "Government", "redress", "grievances". For extra cookies, define both the meaning the Framers wanted them to have and the necessary adaptations to modern day. Note that I am noting trying to be difficult here - but that's what the courts are for...

"Well-regulated militia"

[StupidKatz]

Let's assume for the moment that only 'well-regulated militia's can carry man-portable arms. I don't agree, but for the purposes of this argument, we will overlook that.

US Code, Title 10, Section 113 defines who the members of the "militia" are:
(a) The militia of the United States consists of all able-bodied males at least 17 years of age and, except as provided in section 313 of title 32, under 45 years of age who are, or who have made a declaration of intention to become, citizens of the United States and of female citizens of the United States who are members of the National Guard.
(b) The classes of the militia are -
(1) the organized militia, which consists of the National Guard and the Naval Militia; and
(2) the unorganized militia, which consists of the members of the militia who are not members of the National Guard or the Naval Militia.

Hm. That would mean, at a bare minimum, any "able-bodied" male from 17-45 has the right to own a Glock 23, an AR-15, an M4A1, a Stinger missile, an M240 (perhaps not an M60), a bandolier of fragmentation grenades, satchel charges, etc. Anything portable by "a man".

Just in case you think the exception mentioned excludes a lot of folks:
(a) To be eligible for original enlistment in the National Guard,
a person must be at least 17 years of age and under 45, or under 64
years of age and a former member of the Regular Army, Regular Navy,
Regular Air Force, or Regular Marine Corps. To be eligible for
reenlistment, a person must be under 64 years of age.
(b) To be eligible for appointment as an officer of the National
Guard, a person must -
(1) be a citizen of the United States; and
(2) be at least 18 years of age and under 64.

As for your funky 'shooting spree' comment, we already have laws that cover murder, etc.; no need to imply that without infringing firearm rights, we'd be legally sanctioning such offenses.