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Online Freedom of Speech Act Introduced in House

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the speak-freely dept.

Fox Cutter writes "Today in the House of Representatives, Congressman Jeb Hensarling (R-TX) introduced a companion piece of legislation to Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid's bill (S.678) to exclude the Internet from the definition of 'public communication' in the Bipartisan Campaign Finance Reform Act of 2002." If the bill passes, this would free the internet from FEC regulation.

3 of 391 comments (clear)

  1. This is bullshit... by John+Seminal · · Score: 5, Insightful
    What congress is trying to do is make loopholes into compaign finance laws. By excluding the internet, members of congress are giving themseleves a place they can spend as much money as they want in elections. This is bad because the only people who will be able to run for office will be the very, very rich or those who are funded by corporations and groups. In effect, unless you are Ross Perot or funded by companies (the right) or unions (the left), you will not have the money to run.

    I believe the avarage senate seat now costs over one million dollars. The president raised over $60,000,000 of hard money. The days of going door to door, meeting people is over. The days of long talks about what you believe and why is over. The new 30 second soundbyte is in, and the negative attack ads.

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    Rosco: "If brains were gunpowder, Enos couldn't blow his nose."

  2. Cong short-sightedness by william_w_bush · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Perhaps... perhaps we shouldn't /. this as "good news". I know we all hate M$, and love linux, and hate sw patents... but maybe we should sit down a sec and think about what this bill is doing.

    The Internet is "not" a public communications medium, so... it's a cheese bagel?

    This is not about free speech, free speech is letting me say what I think w/o going to jail. This is about the net as a political medium.

    That said, I am not against this bill, but the /. "hypocrisy is ok as long as it agrees with me" logic should take a back seat to common sense. Giving extremist political groups more room to shout their message for money is another thing we all think is "a bad thing(tm)" right?

    I disagree with the supreme court ruling that says $ = speech, because that implies rich people have a louder voice than poor people, which seems not so good.

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    The first rule of USENET is you do not talk about USENET.
  3. Bullocks... by Kr3m3Puff · · Score: 5, Insightful

    This isn't a freedom of speech campaign, this is trying to get PAC money on the Internet and not allow restrictions. Basically it allows campaigns to do what they can't do now, pay for "free speech."

    I don't see freedom in this. I can still blog away, as long as I am not accepting regulated campaign funds to do so. People bat this around like they are making us more "free" when all it does is allow the guys with money to influence our true freedom of speech.

    This is like paying the New York Times to write a nice acticle about your campaign. The FEC doesn't allow that, nor should they allow money to influence one of the last bastions of true free speech.

    Think about it people!!!!!!

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    D.O.U.O.S.V.A.V.V.M.