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Political Bloggers May Be Forced to Register
Thebes writes "Under Senate Bill S.1, political bloggers with a readership of over 500 who comment on policy matters or hope to incite 'grassroots' action amongst their readers would be forced to register with the Federal Government as lobbyists."
Huh. I thought it was only the Republicans who were after our 1st Amendment rights. But here are the Democrats assaulting our freedoms again by trying to control who says what.
<sarcasm>Oh, never mind, they just want to make sure we have "our papers in order" before we can criticize them.</sarcasm> And we thought that they would be for our rights. But it looks like they are just interested in using the power to stay in power.
It's time to lose the naivte and realize that politicians (whether Republicans or Democrats) are only interested in one thing--getting re-elected.
how else would Congress know where to send the checks?
there is no need to sign your posts. this isn't usenet. your username is right there above your post. stop it.
Even if this passes, I can't imagine a judge would uphold it in court.
/. editors bay be forced to work soon.
Our civil servants are committed to being our uncivil masters.
/. members who can to vote "NO" to *anything* regarding McCain, and hope that this poor little non-accomplisher can exit to the well-deserved status of non-entity.
The one upside to the US is that the process is documented and public *as* *it* *happens*.
I would encourage all
668: Neighbour of the Beast
So how exactly are you supposed to accurately count the readership of a blog? By the number of web hits? Comments? "Friends"? Death threats? What if the two people who do read your blog print off your rants and distribute them to thousands of people that you have no idea are reading your blog?
Maybe it's just a common sense judgement because the 500 people figure falls in the valley between having a blog that anyone cares about, and having a blog that you really, really, wished anyone would care about.
Each of my blogs has only 499 users.
But if one of my blogs did indeed gain an extra reader, how would they ever know?
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
The bill just redefines what it means to be a lobbyist, and seeing as this comes from a grassroots lobbyist, I would argue that this exact article is exactly the type of lybbying the Senate wishes to be kept informed of.
The road to tyranny has always been paved with claims of necessity.
but before i begin, i'd like to ask the 501st of you who are reading this comment to stop right now. thanks
i think that the us government...
wait, what?! why are you still reading!?
OH NOES I'M DOOMED
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Go fuck yourselves. Hard.
...or news commentators have to do this? This is, pardon the crassness, total and unmitigated bullshit.
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500 is such a low number that it's clear all the government wants to do is keep tabs on bloggers. Lobbyists are required to file reports of their activities quarterly. Other laws regarding lobbying are mostly to do with spending money on a politician (not really relevant here, since bloggers *aren't actually lobbyists* and so they probably don't do that anyway). Also, politicians are banned from becoming lobbyists for 2 years. That means that politicians wouldn't be able to keep political blogs (since I assume their readership would be > 500) for two years after leaving office. How is that a good thing? While lobbying reform from earlier in 2006 was mostly a good thing, it also emphasized that being a lobbyist was worse than not being one from a number of perspectives. What the proposition aims to do is effectively restrict the freedom of political bloggers. Some might indeed be in need of some restricting, especially if their viewpoints clash with mine :cough: but really it's just too sweeping of a suggestion.
I like basketball!!1!
The good folks at M-W.com http://www.m-w.com/dictionary/lobbyist have this to say about lobbyists:
intransitive verb : to conduct activities aimed at influencing public officials and especially members of a legislative body on legislation
transitive verb
1 : to promote (as a project) or secure the passage of (as legislation) by influencing public officials
2 : to attempt to influence or sway (as a public official) toward a desired action
Shouldn't this then mean that when a blogger has 500 or more public officials as readers?
If a blogger is being paid by a lobby group, it simply makes them a shill, and has no more influence on lawmakers than actual public opinion might. This is, after all, how public opinion is formed, by listening to our peers, the news, and other sources and making up our own minds.
Should political magazines be required to register as lobbyists? Would a preacher/priest/etc. be required to register as a lobbyist if he mentions politics from the pulpit and the church has more than 500 members? This would cause tons of problems for certain demographic groups in the US.
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
For those who would like the full text of this bill see here. The article is just a bunch of FUD. The actual text that has the author so concerned, about a readership of greater than 500 counting as paid, is actually being misread. The actual text is "The term `paid attempt to influence the general public or segments thereof' does not include an attempt to influence directed at less than 500 members of the general public." (from here). This means that you can be paid for grass roots lobbying and not have to register if you have less than 500 readers, which actually protects your rights.
Clones are people two.
The article is rather misleading. The section in question applies to astroturf operations, not bloggers:
...so it explicitly does not apply to what we normally think of as bloggers.
--MarkusQ
Suffice it to say that anyone who wants to post to slashdot would definately have to register. Aaah... sweet civil disobedience of posting as AC. Won't that just ruin the moderator system?
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
500 hits per day? 500 unique readers in a ten year span? 500 "friends" linked on your myspace page? 500 links from incestuous follow-backs or google bombs?
Free speech is one of the most important rights we have; why is the government so keen on regulating it? You can't regulate a right, it is a right. I can understand regulating the lobbyists for organizations, corporations, and interest groups--groups are not citizens. But individuals who ARE citizens have inalienable rights. A hearty "Fuck Off!" to those who seek to "regulate" individual rights.
More music, fewer hits
So, my grassroots lobbying is ok as long as nobody is paying attention? And if I do post something which gathers a political following, suddenly I've got papers to fill out?
Why would anyone bother in the first place? The point of grassroots lobbying is to influence a large number of people. Paid lobbyists, OTOH, are paid instead to influence only a handful of very important people. IOW, this bill would effectively stifle citizens groups fighting for their rights in favor of corporate lobbyists.
So, by all means pass this bill! Then act surprised when DRM becomes a mandatory component of computers. Act outraged when Corporate America(TM) patents everything short of tying your own shoes. Protest the tax breaks given to Big Oil. But don't dare blog about it unless you can be certain that nobody cares about your stupid opinion (they probably don't anyway, but one can hope).
Nothing like stifling democracy by restricting fourth amendment freedoms.
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
You bet. I also realize that many of them like doughnuts, have siblings, and read books. Further, I concede that they often have heartfelt opinions about matters of punctuation and some (but not all) of them did well in algebra.
But most importantly, I can recognize a straw man from a kilometer away. Bloggers taking advertising doesn't mean that their advertisers are paying them to influence public opinion, anymore than the lawyer whose face is plastered all over the city buses around here is paying people to use public transportation.
Nice try though.
--MarkusQ
Not only do you have to be paid by a "Grassroots Lobbying Firm" but also that firm`(B) receives income of, or spends or agrees to spend, an aggregate of $25,000 or more for such efforts in any quarterly period.'
which I would hope is a small subset of firms since that is a substantial amount.
You do realize that there's a Democratic majority in the House and Senate, right?
And that the Democrats proposed the bill?
And that GWB didn't propose the bill?
But what the hey, it seems like a good enough reason to impeach him. What I'm more confused about is your mention of the "return of fascism." I must have missed the good ol' fascist days here in the US.
Was "vaginal discharge" really important to your point? I just vomurped a little.
the more miserable you are now, the funnier the story will be later
Sponsered by Senator Harry Reid(D) on 1/4
Cosponsored by: Bennett(R), Brown(D), Cantwell(D), Collins(R), Durbin(D), Feinstein(D), Lautenburg(D), Leahy(D), Liberman(I), Lott(R), McConnell(R), Menendez(D), McKulski(D), Salazar(D), Schumer(D), Stabenow(D), Webb(D). 17 cosponsors so far.
For those who didn't become politically aware until after the republicans gained power in 1994 and thought the democrats actually practiced what they preach about the First Amendment, I welcome you to reality. The Democrats will tell you anything you want to hear to achieve power just like the Republicans do. The only way to fix it is to scale the federal government back to its Constitutional powers and you can be damn sure that they will do anything they can to stop that from happening.
Don't leave your mind so open that your brain falls out. Don't close it so much that you cut off the blood.
Readership is not even the right axis of measurement. Controlling lobbying used to be about controlling money spent to make sure people couldn't just buy elections. Now that the Internet allows the dissemination of ideas for next to nothing, they're trying to control speech with "readership of 500". The cat's out of the bag with this bill's text -- "controlling lobbying" is all about those in power wishing to remain in power by controlling ideas, and not about keeping the fat cats at bay.
The difference here is that the article referenced basically cuts out an important adjective: "paid". The bill wants to address PAID political bloggers, not someone stating their own opinion.
Traditional media stating their opinion is called Journalistic Opinion pieces. Some guy on the internet stating their opinion to lots of people is called a blogger.
Traditional media *being paid by campaigns to say what the campaign wants* does NOT produce Journalistic Opinions. Anyone being paid for an opinion piece about a campaign must register.
To apply the exact same point you made, but with the correct assumptions, what makes the paid political blogger so special that he doesn't have to abide by the same rules as print media?
Come on Slashdot, I'm getting sick of the way I'm being lead around by my nose. At the very least this is a knee jerk reactionary piece of drek, at best it's a forebearing to a law that isn't even out yet and has been misproven multiple times in this comment section already (read the law is the simple key).
Next time you want to bitch about a law LINK THE LAW not what some idiots have on a website.
Finally would someone explain why idiots who want to do grassroots style work doesn't want to be labeled as a lobbyst. HINT THEY ARNT JAILING THEM! THEY ARE TELLING THEM TO BE LISTED AS A LOBBYST IF THEY ARE PAID FOR THEIR BLOGGING WORK AND HAVE MORE THEN 500 READERS! IF THEY DONT AND KNOW THEY SHOULD BE LISTED THEN THEY ARE JAILED.
Being a lobbyst doesn't mean you're guilty of a crime, except maybe lying to your public. At least it'll prove who is being paid and who is actually doing the work they actually support, which is perhaps the only reason this is being met by so much resistance because they are afraid they'll be found out to not be so alturistic as they claim to be.
> Huh. I thought it was only the Republicans who were after our 1st Amendment rights.
/. earlier in the week about Russ Feingold wanting the "Fairness Doctrine", otherwise known as the abolish talk radio law, back on the agenda and it is clear they simply desire to keep power this time by outlawing opposition.
I know you are being sarcastic, but a lot of "Republicans" do want your 1st Amendment Rights. Almost no Conservatives do though. But RINOs like John McCain are happy to join forces with almost every single Democrat to shut down the 1st. Other RINOs like Rudy want to join forces with Democrats to eliminate the 2nd. But make no mistake, while you can almost always find a RINO to agree with any limitation of essential liberties, the bulk of the votes will come from Democrats. Hell, the Civil Rights act was passed over the opposition (including, I do seem to recall, a filibuster assisted in by none other than the current #3 in the chain of succession) of Democrats.
You think I'm being overly partisan, just slagging Democrats? Consider this then: They get back from the wilderness after a twelve year period out of power and look at the first thing out of the chute? This is Senate Bill #1. I.e. the very first thing they proposed after getting control over the agenda. Combine with the story on
Listen up folks, this is the big fight. None of the rest matters if we can't get the 1st Amendment back. McCain/Feingold already damned near voided it, this will finish the job. If we can't peacefully assemble (in places like blogs for example) and petition our government (i.e. lobby) for redress of our legitimate greivences then the only option left will be messy.
Reasonable people can argue whether the 1st Amendment protects some things, but if it doesn't protect political speech during an election season what the hell is it good for anyway? What sort of diseased mind can claim that the 1st protects porn but supports outlawing buying a billboard to support/oppose a candidate for political office?
Democrat delenda est
And the way this could be used is if someone here on slashdot raised the eyebrows of a powerful lobby (err.. politician) and they decided to go after you. They could put you in jail for saying something they don't like, on the grounds that you are lobbying without a permit.
It is your personal duty to fight for what is right on a daily basis. Ignoring injustice is identical to approving
Quote from the parent post: "But here are the Democrats assaulting our freedoms again..."
Quote from the article: "That amendment was introduced by Senator David Vitter (R-LA)." The person who introduced the bill is a Republican.
I notice that those who call themselves Republican are often dishonest and more interested in expressing their own anger than in managing government. See my summary of Republican corruption. I encourage you to write your own summary and send it to members of Congress.
By saying:
-----
Amendment I
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
-----
Where in this statement does it say that political or corporate statements should be regulated by any law? Speech is done by people, even if paid by someone else. Why is there a standard of "who can say what" when it concerns corporate speech and political speech?
Now, repercussions can result from said speech, and that is a separate issue (libel, slander, threatening...).
After reading the entire legislation, including section 220, several things become apparent to me:
It seems to me that in the spirit of lobbying transparency, this bill is a step in the right direction. However, due to the vagueness of Section 220, with respect to several terms, and the fact that there does not appear to be an explicit exclusion for paid bloggers who maintain "official" blogs that are open to public viewing for organizations, I would recommend that anyone who is concerned about the freedom to engage in grassroots lobbying, to oppose section 220 until it addresses these concerns.
You can do this by contacting your senators and telling them to support the Bennett amendment to remove section 220 from S. 1..
If I have misread anything, please correct me.
"First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win." - Mohandas Gandhi
Democracy 21 has the correct facts. Bloggers are fine, unless they are paid astroturf shills:
I have a blog.
But I would bring up at least two fixes to this law:
A) The 500 readers -- Just HOW do we know how many readers there really are? Sure, in plenty of cases it might be clearly yes or no, but... Instead, they should measure hits (yes, that doesn't accurately measure readership, but it IS something we can measure) and set the limit at 2000 hits/day or something.
B) Register? No way. There's no reason to force registration with the government. Instead, they should make them disclose the sponsorship, e.g. "Disclaimer: I was paid $x by FooCorp for this post." or "Discliamer: I work for FooCorp." On the other hand, I have no problem with forcing the sponsors to disclose to the government how much they paid which people for "grassroots" (e.g. astroturf) activities. Bonus points if those filings are publicly available.
WRONG. Read the posts above -- you'd only be in trouble if someone's paying you to get on Slashdot and advocate. Astroturfing, in other words.
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
Requiring registration with the government in order to be allowed to publish is a restriction on free speech. You don't need to register with the government to publish other kinds of material. An eligible person who fails to register under this law is subject to penalties, and those penalties would be incurred because of the person's speech. That's a restriction on free speech. As I said, I'd have less of a problem if this was simply a disclosure requirement, without the government registration aspect.
There's no comparison to something like dentists, since there's no constitutional right to operate on someone else's teeth.
Another problem with this law is that the definitions seem quite vague, and there's plenty of precedent for laws like this being applied far beyond their initial ostensible intent. If you get paid money to support your activities in publicizing something, you're arguably a hired agent, and that's where my Al Gore example was coming from. Ditto for what it takes to be classified as stimulating grassroots lobbying.
That may be because people think they're getting something that they want, and haven't thought it through. It's quite fascinating that all it takes to get support here for a law which imposes legal restrictions on speech on the Internet, on blogs, is to ostensibly target an unpopular group.
My bet is that this is all moot anyway. Even if this becomes law, someone'll challenge it and courts will throw it out. I don't see how it can be constitutional.
This is bullshit. The press release is by Richard Viguerie, who is the head of American Target Advertising. This basically affects his business because his business is astroturfing. So he seems to have started his own little astroturfing campaign to stop this bill from being passed:
a n_Target_Advertising
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Viguerie
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Americ
Read the bill. Pretty much everything in the press release is a lie. Shame on you, Slashdot.
Did you ever notice that *nix doesn't even cover Linux?