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Campaign Financing Cyber Loophole

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the corrupt-like-a-voting-machine dept.

goombah99 writes "The Washington Post is criticizing a little-noticed bill wending it's way through congress that would allow unlimited and unreported campaign contributions by corporations and individuals as long as it was confined to internet advertising and publicity buys. While internet spending was only $14 million last year it is growing at a rate of 30 fold over four years poising it to overtake conventional media spending."

3 of 292 comments (clear)

  1. Maybe not by Kawahee · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I don't think that we're going to find billions dumped into internet advertising, why? Because internet campaigning isn't going to be growing at 30 fold forever.

    Campaign 1: $.5 million invested online
    Campaign 2: $15 million invested online.
    That's 30 fold (and 14.5 million).
    Campaign 1: $100 million invested, Campaign 2: $120 million invested.
    That's 1.2 fold (and 20 million).

    Nobody is going to target the internet with large amounts of money when it's more feasible to target the general public using television/newspaper ads. Nobody is going to say, "Hey! Look! I can donate $100 million in internet advertising" *when the money can be better utilitised somewhere else*.

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    1. Re:Maybe not by aussie_a · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I don't think that we're going to find billions dumped into internet advertising,

      I don't think that's the point. The point (in my opinion) is why are they going to allow online donations to be unlimited (under a particular circumstance), but in the same circumstance offline it isn't allowed to be unlimited? It's crazy.

      When will the government stop treating everything "online" as something completely different and therefore subject to completely different laws? I'm surprised "accepting campaign donations online" hasn't been patented yet.

  2. better the Internet than TV by bersl2 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    1. I can block it more easily.
    2. Fewer stupid people will passively receive ads than with TV, per ad dollar spent. It's better that they waste their money online.
    3. Dollars spent on ad space will be far more distributed and to substantially less rich people, effectively redistributing income. At least, the money is much less likely to end up in the pocketbooks of Big Media. Yay, capitalism and (partial) socioeconomic justice at the same time!

    Why, again, would this not be an improvement?