Slashdot Mirror
Democrats Defeat Online FOS Act
not so anonymous writes "The Online Freedom of Speech Act was defeated in the House of Representatives yesterday. The Act would have immunized political bloggers from having to comply with hundreds of pages of FEC rules." From the article: "In an acrimonious debate that broke largely along party lines, more than three-quarters of congressional Democrats voted to oppose the reform bill, which had enjoyed wide support from online activists and Web commentators worried about having to comply with a tangled skein of rules. The vote tally in the House of Representatives, 225 to 182, was not enough to send the Online Freedom of Speech Act to the Senate. Under the rules that House leaders adopted to accelerate the process, a two-thirds supermajority was required."
Ok, so I'm dusted. I see that the most liberal of parties opposes what is effectively Free Speech and the party which brought us the Patriot Act is advocating the it.
This means there's some reason other than what this post appears to say 'Hey, Democrats hate free speech!', like something has been attached which allows oil drilling in Yosemite National Park. From TFA:
Ah, there's the Why, a loophole for Campaign Finance law.The heading Democrats Defeat Online FOS Act and omission of the Why certainly colours this article. Why the omission? It appears the article poster favours websites/blogs which are covert mouthpieces of a particular interest group spouting dubious facts and leaving out highly relevant facts. Slashdot has effectively been trolled. Was this intentional, Zonk?
When black apears white or pigs appear to have sprouted wings, there's usually politics behind it, that's where Critical Thinking separates the herd. The Fine Print: We're probably not responsible for content, but in any event we are, we'll deny it.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
This is a joke. The Republicans control the House. In the House, the majority does what it wants. While the bill was brought up under a rule that required 2/3rds majority, the Republican leadership could right this very second bring it up as a normal bill that requires only a simple majority.
It is impossible for the Democrats to stop anything in the House.
The Dems must have decided that the Republicans get more advantage from blogging than they do.
No principles here, move along...
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
Sites like the Daily Kos can now be subject to campaign finance laws. Which means, essentially, their speech can be regulated during election seasons.
they are, as long as you agree with them :)
In the end there just isn't the budget or the manpower to enforce the same FCC political advertising guidelines online as are enforced in major boradcast media.
All it takes is one example. They don't have to go after every blog. Just a couple of them. A couple of high profile prosecutions will make political blogging a different sort of beast. FACE didn't require that every abortion protestor be prosecuted. A few prosecutions and everyone with half a brain and something to lose will conform.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Why does there have to be an Online Freedom of Speech Act? Why does there have to be anything other than the First Amendment? I am tired of how much our "free speech" has become regulated since the founding of this country.
The other thing that bothers me is the two party political system. Why wouldn't democrats want to protect our speech online? It seems all they're interested in is opposing the republicans these days (I used to be a republican, but I don't think they stand for conservatism anymore, so I'm libertarian/independent/non-incumbant now).
We need politicians that will bring us back to the freedoms our country enjoyed two hundred years ago, but everyone is interested in towing the party line--it seems even the voters. If you are of voting age, and in the US, please consider third-party candidates in the '06 congressional elections. I want to be part of a larger group than 0.5% of the population.
I mean, why go to all that trouble to screw with my freedom to talk? Wasn't McCain-Feingold bad enough as is? Surely the Dems could just inspire better bloggers, and then not feel so insecure about the impact of non-liberal bloggers on elections? Because the measure in question was, I think, absolutely central to free expression (my right to post things on my own damn web site, or even to pay someone to help me write that content, or even to pay people to help me get traffic to that web site)... and whatever those opposing the measure were thinking, they sure weren't thinking "First Amendment."
I can't stand (and thus, don't read) the wingnut blogs from the far end of either party... but if I want to catch up on how a pending election is going to realistically impact something I actually care about, I want to be able to read what some people would certainly consider political blogs, and right up until I cast a vote. And considering my ecclectic interests, I know that the people posting meaningful content covering what I can't see through the normal media sure as hell can't afford to do what they do and even begin to think about whether they are or aren't compliant with election bookkeeping rules. Blocking this measure was stupid, counter-constitutional, and just objectively the wrong thing to do.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
The fact that it is uniquely easy for J. Random Citizen to disseminate his own message of rebuttal.
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
Well first the "main-stream" media are already pointing the fingers at the Dems and sort of not making it clear why they are doing it. And slashdot is being ignorant and playing along. Now the Republicans are taking advantage trying to make the Democrats look bad by crushing what they consider to be a "free speech" issue. Where the problem is actually more related to campaign finance and would basically set the stage for the internet to have more advertising in 2008 then I see on TV, hear on Radio or see in the paper combined with no apparent limit.
Remember who signed the DMCA--Clinton. I think free speech in the slashdot, eff sense is really quite orthogonal to party lines.
I've come to expect dupes, glaring ommissions, and outright falsehoods from Slashdot, but up until now it had resisted posting blatantly partisan rhetoric.
You must be new here.
can someone explain?
Sure. In a nutshell, you've been lied to. I would never assert that the Republican party has always vote pro-Freedom (yeah, we wrote the Patriot Act. Sorry about that.), but censorship has often been a Democratic pastime. Remember, the DMCA was signed by a Democrat president, and the PMRC was a pet project of Tipper Gore.
And yet, to hear liberal groups tell it, it's always the Evil Republicans (tm) who want to silence everyone. The truth is far more complex, but how often do you hear of both parties' sins?
P.S. I don't know which party Jack Thompson affiliates with. I won't blame either party for that nut.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Disclaimer: I am mostly Republican.
The issue is that the bill would have allowed almost unlimited political spending on the Internet. The Republicans almost always have WAY more money than the Democrats, but how they can spend it is sharply constrained by campaign finance laws. The Democrats do not want to allow the Republicans to 'buy' the election by spending vast amounts of money on unregulated messages over the Internet.
Rep: "Pass this bill" so we can pay people to blog for us with no oversight.
Dem: "Stop this bill" or we will lose our asses in the next election.
It's not about free speech, really. It's about campaign finance and tactics.
The amendment would have created a loophole in campaign finance reform and allowed unlimited political spending on the web. The amendment would actually suppress free speech to the extent that independent views could be drowned out with politically financed astro-turfing.
In the fine tradition of many other laws and bills that have surfaced over the past five years, the intent of this amendment was the exact opposite of that implied by its title. If Orwell were alive, he'd be rolling in his grave.
Slashdot: faux infotainment for nerds.
We don't see the world as it is, we see it as we are.
-- Anais Nin
Ultimately, the Democratic position would probably limit free speech among bloggers to a certain extent. The problem has to deal with the "Schenck v. United States", where a person has a limited amount of time to make a decision based on statements that he/she has no ability to verify (because of that time).
New campaign laws seek to limit the type/amout/method of information being disseminated in the weeks directly before election. Let me give an example...
Lets say a large group of bloggers decides they want to impact an election. 2 days before an election one anonymously blogs that Candidate X was accused of date rape in college and that the accuser is afraid to come forward. The day before the election, all of the other bloggers pick up the story and start talking about it in huge numbers. Then, the day of the election, every voter has to make a decision of risking to vote for a date rapist. I know this sounds silly, but it was a very effective strategy against a college student body president campaign at my alma mater only a few years back. A similar strategy was employed against a Republican candidate for house in 1996 in NC (although it wasnt bloggers, it was a mass mailing).
While there is no precedent against bloggers, it seems silly - I think - to give them a complete immunity when it is very possible (if not inevitable) that such an immunity would create a haven of this kind of attack.
The most important speech that must be protected is the vote.
Can you even imagine having the RNC pay 5-10 people a day to create a bunch of accounts on here to post on political articles of relevance? You may be thinking that no one would care enough to do it, but with the kind of money involved, they could hire 50-1000's to do it on as many American news sites/blogs as they wanted. All of that aside, its nigh impossible to enforce broad internet legislation that is not copyright oriented (so the RIAA pays for its enforcement).
I am and always will be a stereotype, because who in their right mind prefers mono?
Remember who signed the DMCA--Clinton. I think free speech in the slashdot, eff sense is really quite orthogonal to party lines.
And a Republican congress passed the law to begin with. Both major parties have similar agendas in this regard--most people, sadly, choose to ignore that fact and simply spout "my party is all that is good and light. Your party is teh suck" tripe.
What part of "shall not be infringed" is so hard to understand?
I think that you've touched on something really important here without even realizing it.
When you're watching television, and a political advertisement comes on, you did not opt into receiving that communication. You did not seek it out, you did not take the initiative to view it. The same is true of direct mail-- it came into your mailbox, and so you're going to at least give it a cursory look.
What makes those different than the so called "astroturfing" that is mentioned in the grandparent? Quite simply, it is that these are overt and obvious attempts by a campaign to sway your opinion. Astroturfing and blogs (at present) don't have the same kind of restrictions.
I'm not saying that J. Random Citizen's blog should say "Paid for by J. Random Citizen" at the bottom of each post, but if J. Random Citizen is, in fact, J. Random Campaign Employee, then it definately should make very clear that these views are being paid for by a campaign.
When Senator Kerry or President Bush's ads ran last year, we saw the "I'm John Kerry/George Bush and I approved this message" at the end.
Slap that kind of a regulation into place and then rewrite the law to indicate that only individuals not compensated by, or directly volunteering for a regulated political party/action committee/organization are exempt.
Otherwise, you're turning a decent law into a gaping loophole.
Killfile(TGK)
No trees were killed in the creation of this post. However, many electrons were inconvenienced.
Breakfast served all day!
Consider this scenerio:
Some PAC raises one million dollars from unlimited, unreported donations.
They use the money to pay 1000 bloggers to promote their issue.
They don't need to report that these bloggers work for them, or how much they get paid.
Rinse. Repeat.
Is this free speech?
The Democrats have neither sufficient numbers in the House, nor rules favorable to allow them to defeat anything. In the House the Republicans rule. Everything that happens in the House happens at the discretion of the Republicans. The title of the article should have been "Large numbers of Republicans break ranks to defeat bill...", but that's not something a right-leaning reporter would ever say because it implies that Republicans are not 100% in agreement on something.
Which should not be affected by this anyway. What WOULD cause J. Random Citizen problems is if he was being paid by a political candidate or related entities. Free speech is what it is. Paid speech isn't. Unless I'm missing something.
Hi All -
The reality is that neither party respects our liberties (i.e., fully embracing both the enumerated and unenumerated, and retained rights as outlined in the 10th Amendment of the Constitution). They tell us to look at the US Constitution and ask "where are you given that right?", rather than asking the question Madison would have, which is, "where did you give up that right?"
Both political parties have a shared monopoly on power (I think we called this a duopoly in Econ 101), and will resist any attempt to take away this power. Yes, they will jostle for advantage over one another, but when this duopoly is threatened they will unite against it (see, opposition to any redistricting reform by the mainstreams of both the Republican and Democratic parties in California).
Looking back at the 2004 election, the mainstream of the Democratic party was hit right between the eyes by the power of the Internet and Blogs, as demonstrated by the insurgent campaign of Howard Dean. The look at this and wonder what it might have been
Couple this with that there are still a few Republicans who value liberty (as understood through the lens of enumerated and unenumerated rights), over staying in power, and you see why this got fair broader support among them.
This isn't the first time something like this happened. Rewind back to the election of 1968, and TV was the breakout media. Eugene McCarthy used it effectively in New Hampshire to force Johnson from the primary process. Nixon and Wallace (running one of the most effective 3rd party campaigns since Teddy Roosevelt (even if I despise what he represented), used it to great benefit.
So, in the Congress following this election what happened? An incredible level of restrictions on TV in political campaigns were put into place, which effectively put access to TV in the hands of those in power.
Like McCain-Feingold (and I say this with the greatest respect for both of these gentleman), giving the FEC oversight of Bloggers will only diminish the level of free speech and dialog in the public square. The internet and blogs dramatically reduced the barriers to entry to commentators, because as A.J. Liebling noted, "Freedom of the press is limited to those who own one." All of a sudden, a whole lot of people now could own the equivalent of a printing press. And the result is as you would expect (applying Sturgeon's Law that 90% of everything is crap), with a lot of nonsenses and garbage spewing forth, but a few gems mixed up in the overall stream.
If I had my magic legislative wand, and could make one change to improve the political process in this country, I would wave it and do away with our FEC as it exists and our various restrictions on political spending and embracing Justice Brandise maxim, "sunlight is the best disinfectant; electric light the best policeman", I would require the following:
1. That within 24 hours of any political donation being made, that this fact be posted for all to see and search on the Internet. Any legislation in which this party has an interest will also be identified. If this donation was made by a PAC, then the membership of that PAC must be clearly visible (i.e. I can follow the money).
2. For scheduled meetings, 24 hours in advance, and for unscheduled meetings within 24 hours, any meeting with a lobbyist (defined as someone educating on an issue or requesting legislative action) will be disclosed for all to search on the Internet. The topic of this conversation will be disclosed along with any legislation discussed or related to the topic of conversation. The source of funding for this lobbyist, organization, or individual, must be made transparent, all the way back up the chain. If Lobbyist A was hired by Organization X who received funding from PACS 1, 2, and 3, who in turned received funding from PACS 4, 5, and 6, I should be able to follow it all the way back to the companies and individuals making the donations.
3. The calendar of all members of the Legislative and Executive branches, along with their staff members, will be made available and search-able on the Internet. Common, unique identifiers will be used to enable cross referencing.
Yours,
Jordan
Bear with me, this connects
Not to long ago, an idea was presented to link voter registration with getting your driver's license. The underlying idea, reportedly, was that, by making it easier for the average adult to register to vote, there would be a greater population of registered American voters thus making elections more reflective of "the will of the people".
Seems like a good idea really, but the debates on C-SPAN went a little differently
The Republicans were not happy and saying that this was just a ruse to get a disproportionate number of Democrats registered to vote. The implication is kind of interesting. Apparantly, Republicans (and likely Democrats) were of the opinion that persons of the GOP were more likely than Democrats to register without the assistance of the "motor-voter" legislation - at least that was my interpretation.
With the present situation, the implication seems to be that Republicans have more cash reserves than Democrats and, by making blogs not susceptible to campaign fund contribution limits, they can more easily use that advantage.
So, both sides seek to exploit a "hidden" advantage in a particular legislation. It's like the old saying, for every endeavor there is a "good reason" and the "real reason".
and the games go on
A goal is a dream with a deadline
Remember, the DMCA was signed by a Democrat president
And passed by a Republican majority congress. The sins of both parties are legion, and whenever someone comes around to challenge the status quo, left or right, they band together and squash the threat.
It is so funny to me to listen to the Democratic Party's newly found fondness of federalism, where for 40 years prior they treated support of states' rights and federalism as mere code words for supporting racism and segregation, and out of touch with core American values. Now that they're outnumbered at the federal level, they have all kinds of respect for checks and balances and fiscal responsibility.
Good point about limited vs. unlimited resources. If we're just talking about blogs, or individual websites, it comes down to the poster's honesty. ("I'm saying X because I believe it" vs. "I'm saying X because the campaign paid me to say it.")
But we're not just talking about blogs and individual sites.
This bill would have made it perfectly legal for the Democratic party to buy every single ad space on CNN. Obviously this is an extreme case -- it would be too expensive and wouldn't return on the investment -- but it should illustrate the point that any regulation that affects print, television, etc. would have been circumvented simply by distributing something over the net. And we're moving toward distributing everything over the net.
Radio? Broadcast over the web instead of the air, and your restrictions are gone.
Newspapers? Switch from paper to the web. Same thing.
TV? We keep hearing about broadband becoming the new method of distribution, and we're starting to see it with ITMS.
Movies? Same as TV.
Phones? VOIP.
Think of anything that campaign finance laws limit. Now, pretend you want an IT patent and add the words "on the Internet."
It does when the one Democrat was on every TV and radio show to explain how censoring kids' music would make them happier, healthier, and safer. I'm pretty sure she invented the phrase "think of the children!".
Both sides of the aisle were in on this one, but Tipper was definitely the starring attraction.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
And the Republicans AND Democrats have way more money than every other political party...where's the laws bringing that into balance? Oh wait, we third party people don't even argue about that... We just want elections that are fair where when we get on the ballot we don't get dragged into local courts by the big parties with them arguing we should be taken off because we have no chance to win...because we aren't them... where our Presidential candidates, if they are on enough ballots to (in theory) get enough electoral votes to win, can participate in Presidential debates...where the ballot boxes aren't stuffed and voting machines aren't rigged (both big parties guilty of this)... In other words, we want Free and Democratic elections in the United States (well....everyone sems to want them for Iraq, or this or that third world piss poor country, only fair we should want them here.) That would be election reform. Who gives a shit about "campaign finance" at a stage where everything else is broken?
That aside, it's not clear to me that the rules are such a bad thing. They basically say that if a political party spends campaign money on the Web then it has to be reported - just as the case if said party spends money on TV ads. This is perfectly reasonable. Despite what some party-funded astroturfers would have you believe, this does NOT restrict J. Random Blogger from posting whatever he wants. It just says that if he gets money from the RNC, the RNC has to report it.
Human genome = 3 billion base pairs = 6 GBit. Windows + Office = 20 Gbit. Which is more impressive?
Doubtful. The internet is swamped by paid for porn advertisments and penis enlargement pills... but I still found your comment to reply to. The signal to noise ratio on the internet is very low and no amount of legislation will change that. DISTINCT messages still seem to get through (thanks to search technologies and "reputation"). Constricting new content is not the way to improve signal.
Many on the far right would claim that fox's slogan is in fact a play on the rest of media claiming it is fair and balanced, while in fact biased to the left. (Witness CBS releasing and standing by fake documents in the last election)
These are the same people who will call Fox mid left, and everyone else extreme left. That most of Europe would consider the US media mid right is not important to them.
Oh.. now the liberal and emotional readers of Slashdot will have to figure out a way to pretend that Democrats really do protect free speech. The way I see it though, Dems have been foaming at the mouth since the advent of talk radio and blogging because the mainstream media can no longer spread liberal tripe unchecked. If they could do it, dems would ban talk radio and blogging altogether.
The media is not liberal. there are liberal aspects, but people like Rush would ahve you believe that all media is liberal and spins liberal. This is simply not true.
Clinton cheated on his wife, and was beaten to a pulp publicity wise. Even when most polls showed that a large percentage of american didn't care, it still went on.
Bush lied to get us to war, Haliburton id getting no bid contracts, etc ad nauseum. he hasn't gotten half the negative press Clinton did.
I find that the media is a lot closer to center, and all arguements I have heard otherwise have just been strawmen.
AS far as this issue goes, it is very completcated. AS we all know, they can't enforce this accross the board and go after every offended. What they can do, is shut down the occasional site for violating these rules. They do exist for a reason.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
ifwm said:
I am glad we are now talking about campaign finance and not "the Democrats are stealing our fr33doms!!1".
You are certainly entitled to your opinion that limiting campaign spending and contributions results in limiting free speech. Unfortunately for you, the majority of the American people, the Congress, and the Supreme Court have consistently disagreed with you.
Let's look at why this might be. If there was no limit or regulation of campaign finance then there is no question that the voice of the rich and powerful would increase. It is generally assumed that the increased voice of the rich and powerful comes at the cost of decreasing the voice of everyone else. In fact, without regulation, the voice of the rich and powerful can come disguised as the voice of the common person.
If the bill had passed, there is no question that the Internet would be flooded with soft campaign money. It could easily drown out the voices of individuals. Just as your freedom to move your arm and fist stops at my nose, your freedom of speech stops when it is so loud and pervasive that it drowns out the free speech of others.
We don't see the world as it is, we see it as we are.
-- Anais Nin
Indeed as you point out bloggers on both sides of the fence and even the middle were all for the passage of this bill.
Which makes it even more rediculous the Democrats by and large sunk it! Take a look at the list of people voting against, hardly any were Republicans.
This bill being killed was all about the people not in power disliking the freedom blogs had to say what they wished, the freedom of blogs on thier own side be damned. Perhaps the Republicans would have acted the same in the same position, but all we know for sure is that the Democrats DID kill this bill. The people of the U.S. who are members of the Democratic (and Republican for those few cases) parties need to REMEMBER the votes on this bill come primary and election time.
It really is as simple as it looks this time.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley