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."
From TFA, here's the full text of the bill:
That means that, if it had passed, anything posted on the Internet would be exempt from campaign finance laws. That means advertisements, editorials, etc. That means it would be perfectly legal for a political party to use campaign donations to hire people to write political blogs that they might not otherwise have written on their own time, initiative, and opinions. That means hiring people to comment on message boards and other people's blogs. In other words, it means astroturfing.
You may think this is a good thing, in which case it ought to be extended to the print and real worlds -- just remove all those limitations in the first place. But if you think we should be limiting the effect that money has on election campaigns, what makes the Internet special?
As it stands, anyone blogging on their own time already has free speech on the internet. So let's not cast this as a blogbing issue.
According to the Supreme Court, campaign finance laws do not violate the 1st Amendment. The argument basically goes like this:
So, now we're talking about the Internet. And here's the problem:
If someone has a political blog, that is probably free speech.
If someone pays a large number of people to have political blogs to support their view, is that still free speech, or is that diluting free speech?
What's the difference between paying for an advertisement on television saying that "Candidate so-and-so likes to have sex with black people and make bastard babies, don't vote for him!" and a company buying up advertisement on the Internet saying the same thing?
So, while I don't think that either the Dems or the Repubs have noble interests at heart, this is an interesting challenge. Do you just say "The Internet doesn't have to worry about campaign finance", and give the possibility of the delution of "pure" free speech as discussed by the Supreme Court and previous campaign finance laws, or do you try and put some language saying "If you get money based on your political views, you have to reveal who did it and how much and can only accept X amount".
I'd rather see a law like the "truth in advertising" - if you're getting money for writing the blog/hosting an ad, you have to state on your web site where that comes from and how much. This way people who are just running ads can say "Google adsense", and those getting it from campaign groups can disclosed if they are a hired gun or not. Granted, there is more to the language than this, but this is just my thumbnail sketch, so if you need to split hairs, at least come up with your own complete language to cover the complexity of the issue
It's an interesting question, and one that *should* be debated for a good and long time. If you notice, this was the failure not of a majority but of a "mega-majority" of 2/3 to pass the bill. Some further debate and clarification of the language should make it palatable to that majority in the end, which I believe is perfectly reasonable.
Of course, this is just my opinion - I could be wrong.
52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel
And Daily KOS supported the bill's passage. The actual story is *slightly* more complicated than the /. headline would suggest.
Well, most of the time Slashdot does have a political slant. It's just that this articles slant is not like the rest of them, and is slanted in a different direciton.
Remember who signed the DMCA--Clinton. I think free speech in the slashdot, eff sense is really quite orthogonal to party lines.
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?
In Slashdot, always read TFA, not just the comments on it. In politics, always read TFB (The F'ing Bill). What it says, and what people *say* it says, are often two different things.
The bill doesn't say "bloggers can post what they like." It says "all Internet communications are immune from federal election rules." That includes not just bloggers, but major media corporations and advertisers.
The community here knows that there's nothing magical about the Internet. Why should CNN or Fox be restricted in what they show on cable TV, but be unrestricted in streaming live online video to me over the same damned cable?
TFB needs to be more precise. But amendments weren't allowed, so it was voted down.
I've got to call BS on your comments:
Slavery and a lack of rights for women and minorities was against the Consitution.
This is just patently false.
1. Article IV Section II establishes slavery as a legal institution:
"No person held to service or labor in one state, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due. "
2. Article I Section II establishes the disparate value of free whites and "all other persons":
"Representatives and direct taxes shall be apportioned among the several states which may be included within this union, according to their respective numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole number of free persons, including those bound to service for a term of years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons."
The original Constitution emphatically does not provide for the equal rights of all citizens: it differienates between free and non free, recognizes forced labor and the ownership of forced laborers and generally does not do anything which you claim!
Free speech should be exactly what the Constitution says it is, and that we need additional regulations to protect it means that the Consitution is being shit on, and that makes me sad.
I wish I could just blindly say I agree, but the Constitution is intentionally vague. Does reporting on your financing abridge your right to a free press? How about forcing food manufactuers to print a lable and put that on their product? How about requiring porn makers to label their stuff with a legal notice? Are these all equal abridgements of the 1st amendment?
If it really were so black and white I think you'd be sorry.
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.
Amusing conspiracy rant but it doesn't have anything to do with 527 groups. To make my point, here is a URL for the list of the top 527 groups nationwide:m tes.asp?level=C&cycle=2006
http://www.opensecrets.org/527s/527c
Note that of the top 10, only numbers 4,5 and 7 are Republican and only one, 9, is reasonably non-partisan.
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?