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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.
...or news commentators have to do this? This is, pardon the crassness, total and unmitigated bullshit.
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"Lobbyists" are the guys who attempt to persuade politicians directly. This is about persuading voters. Shouldn't there be a difference?
If you don't know where you are going, you will wind up somewhere else.
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
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
no, your grassroots lobbying is ok as long as eithernoone is paying attention or you aren't getting paid for the blog posts. Thus Joe Shmo blogger who personally supports the EFF is free to post all he wants in support of the EFF as long as they don't pay him, or, if they do pay him, as long as he doesn't have more than 500 readers. This bill is made to ensure transparency in our government, so one can at least follow the money like in all other forms of lobbying.
Clones are people two.
Oh yeah? FTFA:
"The bill would require reporting of 'paid efforts to stimulate grassroots lobbying,' but defines 'paid' merely as communications to 500 or more members of the public, with no other qualifiers."
Here is Section 220 of 2007 S.1. It says it modifies 2 USC 1602. Section 220 appends certain clauses to 2 USC 1602. You are somewhat correct in that appended to item 7 of that code is the line "Lobbying activities include paid efforts to stimulate grassroots lobbying, but do not include grassroots lobbying." It also adds the following item: "GRASSROOTS LOBBYING- The term `grassroots lobbying' means the voluntary efforts of members of the general public to communicate their own views on an issue to Federal officials or to encourage other members of the general public to do the same." This would SEEM to indicate that if you're not getting paid, you're not who they're talking about. But then you have to examine 18 (C) which is also appended to that section of the US Code, because it defines the meaning of registrant. I quote:
Thus if you speak on behalf of, say, a political party of which you are a member, you are a member of a registrant as well (because the party would be required to register.) Also if we look at both 2 USC 1602 and 2007 S.1 Section 220, which deal with definitions, neither one defines "paid"! Kind of a serious oversight there given that now we have to ask the supremes (eventually) whether ad revenues count or not. The closest it gets is the following text:
`(B) PAID ATTEMPT TO INFLUENCE THE GENERAL PUBLIC OR SEGMENTS THEREOF- 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.
This is where the number 500 comes from. Incidentally, this particular item (B) is a particularly bad loophole in this law! It says that as long as you are not trying to influence more than 499 people at once, it's not a paid attempt to influence the general public. This is not good, not good at all.
Jump back to 2 USC 1602 for a moment with me and look at the government's definition of Lobbyist prior to any adoption of this bill.
The term "lobbyist" means any individual who is employed or retained by a client for financial or other compensation for services that include more than one lobbying contact, other than an individual whose lobbying activities constitute less than 20 percent of the time engaged in the services provided by such individual to that client over a six month period.
So currently if you receive any compensation for lobbying more than one person you are a lobbyist, unless your lobbying is less than 20% of the time spent working for the individual who hired you to lobby for them. That means they could pay you minimum wage for 101 hours; for 81 of those hours you sit on your ass and read the funny papers, the other 20 hours you
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
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.
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
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