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.
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.
Uselessful technology (Air-Charged
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
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.
I discovered this issue 18 months ago.
Virginia blogs barred from mentioning local candidates
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
The ______ Agenda
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 problem? I was perfectly gruntled, until some numbnuts came by and dissed me.
"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.
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.