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Bill to Treat Bloggers as Lobbyists Defeated
Lawrence Person writes "The attempt to require political bloggers to register as lobbyists previously reported by Slashdot has been stripped out of the lobbying reform bill. The vote was 55 to 43 to defeat the provision. All 48 Republicans, as well as 7 Democrats, voted against requiring bloggers to register; all 43 votes in favor of keeping the registration provision were by Democrats."
It's as if a 100 million free-speech loving liberals cried out and were suddenly silenced.
(Actually, they were silenced when their heads exploded like Dantooine when they found out that it was Republicans who blocked the bill.)
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
Politicians are almost uniformly "technology stupid." (tube joke redacted) Their opinions of different technologies (and everything else) are based entirely on what lobbyists and the party platform tell them to support. Why would anyone think the two parties differ in this regard?
Give a man fire, and you warm him for the night. Set a man on fire, and you warm him for the rest of his life.
I could be wrong, but I think the target was talk radio and/or conservative sites that are advertiser funded like LittleGreenFootballs, but not MoveOn.org, which is funded by contributors (George Soros)
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
If anyone had bothered to read the text instead of buying the PR piece by a professional lobbyiest that went up yesterday as news, they would have seen that the provision in question only applied to blogging for pay by a client. Not getting money for your ads or anything else. This was aimed at astroturfing, not bloggers. And paid political speach, which is what we are talking about here, IS regulated already. This wasn't the evil to end all evils and an attack on blogs, it was an attack on lobbyists and it would have likely as not been a good thing if it had gone through.
7. What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence.
I wasn't aware that "our side" was the Democrats. Did I miss the memo?
This is not a freedom of the press issue. This would have required bloggers who receive money from causes to file as lobbyists. As CNet puts it:
certain political bloggers who make or spend $25,000 per quarter and who encourage readers to contact their elected representatives would be forced to register as lobbyists.
A blogger who gets money from coroporations, parties, or organizations to blog for them is a lobbyist and an astroturfer. This doesn't cover Billy Blogger who talks about the local sports team, or even unsponsored political blogs. It isn't a way to surpress dissent, any more than requiring the same of lobbyists is. "But it's on the Internet" does not change the fact that politically active bloggers with $100,000 salaries or budgets are lobbyists and should be treated like the normal K Street type.
MoveOn.org is a PAC -- they're already very much "registered".
Done with slashdot, done with nerds, getting a life.
What your missing is that the bill was never about making bloggers register as lobbyists - that was all spin, and slashdot nicely bought it hook, line and sinker.
... and then they built the supercollider.
Can anyone explain why there are _any_ limits on political speech? Isn't that the most important kind of speech to protect? Why do you need to "register" as a PAC?
Isn't there already a law that limits how much political speech can happen leading up to an election and who can say it?
We can all find the bad in pretty much every law on the books. What i can't find is the "good" about any political-speech-restriction laws.
There are lots of voices out there that i'd just as soon not have to hear, but silencing them via government intervention seems pretty unAmerican (for historical values of "American").
My opinions are my own, and do not necessarily represent those of my employer.
Perhaps you should actually read the bill*. Note that the part labelled "definitions", a "grassroots lobbying firm" is defined as someone who "is retained by 1 or more clients to engage in paid efforts to stimulate grassroots lobbying on behalf of such clients; and receives income of, or spends or agrees to spend, an aggregate of $25,000 or more for such efforts in any quarterly period."
The "500 person" rule you're concerned about describes the action of influencing, not the influencer. Specifically: "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."
To be affected, you must be all three of these:
So if you're a regular blogger, you likely are safe.
*=if that doesn't work, search for S.1 on thomas.loc.gov
"Our" side? They are rich American politicians. You are posting on slashdot. They are not on your side.
It is a mistake to think of "us vs them" as "democrats vs republicans", whichever way around you think of it. Everybody in congress is on the same side, and it's not your one.
Please, read the actual bill. It says you must reach 500 people AND make $100,000 working as a paid shill. Not OR!!!
Please don't link to a propaganda piece by a professional conservative lobbyist and claim it to be equal evidence to the above cited UCLA law professor and the above cited Orginal Bill. Payment and Reach were considered separately in the bill. Why don't you read the actual bill, and see if that alleviates your concerns.
The actual grass-roots bloggers (and whatever their criticism of whoever they wanted to criticize) were never in jeopardy. But the Republicans and some Democrats made sure that astroturfers aren't in jeopardy either. Most of the Democrats were on the ethical side on this one. Sadly, they couldn't get a majority today.
Ross (registered Republican, but not very proud of that association right now)
The phrase "paid efforts to stimulate grassroots lobbying" is not specifically defined in the bill; however, it is specifically defined that the bill does not affect blogs with less than 500 readers. This means you simply have to be a blog with 500 or more readers. Contrary to your little list, there is no minimum defined payment amount in the bill.
No. It's defined in Section 220 as "any paid attempt in support of lobbying contacts on behalf of a client to influence the general public or segments thereof to contact one or more covered legislative or executive branch officials (or Congress as a whole) to urge such officials (or Congress) to take specific action with respect to a matter described in section 3(8)(A), except that such term does not include any communications by an entity directed to its members, employees, officers, or shareholders.". It's in Definitions 18-A, which is right at the top of Section 220.
The payment part is in the definition of a grassroots lobbying firm, which is also in the Definitions section (right below the previous definition).
The LOC links, by the way, only seem to work for 5 minutes.
I did read it. Here's what it says:
(19) GRASSROOTS LOBBYING FIRM- The term `grassroots lobbying firm' means a person or entity that--
`(A) is retained by 1 or more clients to engage in paid efforts to stimulate grassroots lobbying on behalf of such clients; and
`(B) receives income of, or spends or agrees to spend, an aggregate of $25,000 or more for such efforts in any quarterly period.'
$100,000 is an extrapolation of $25,000 over a whole year. The bill said simply that a person who makes $25,000 a quarter for political astroturfing ($100,000 a year salary) or is given the same amount to spend on astroturfing is a lobbyist. It's straightforward, true, and doesn't affect bloggers at all.
The ACLU was against the bill. Are the ACLU a group of Republicans?
"Sufferin' succotash."
Here's a permanent link to the bill in question.
That's head-spinningly ironic, given liberals' tendency to explain their position at length, and conservatives' tendency to use ad hominem in place of debate, and make their srguments up out of thin air. See your post that I am replying to as an example of such non-factual argument.
... and then they built the supercollider.
No, actually it was 25,000 a quarter and it required that you be retained by a client. Pretty clear. The 500 thing was totally different than the payment. Read the actual bill and not the crap spin that was spouted by a lobbyist on PR Wire and picked up here yesterday.
And I don't think it was dems not wanting competition. MoveOn.org is equal to anything the right has going in this area, and I can promise you the Dems sure don't want it to have to fall under K street kinda rules.
Ah, but you are a troll posting anonymously...
7. What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence.
Where the submission writeup says "previously reported by Slashdot," it should say "previously misreported by Slashdot." And presupposing that the way Slashdot "reported" it is right, as it happens, is a major piece of spin in this context. Because it's used to set up the rest of the blurb as an insinuation that Democrats were endorsing a bill that restricts freedom of political speech for bloggers (when in fact it's a bill that restricts commercial speech by people paid specifically to pretend they are unpaid advocates.)
Are you adequate?
Who wants to limit the freedom of the press?
Everyone. There have always been people who have wanted to silence "the other side". Not just politics, but religion and science and pretty much every other field of human endeavour where people disagree.
At some point, somewhere, the entire internet will be found to be illegal.
As it stands now doesnt it still target talk radio?
Whether or not you agree with the Rush and Hannitty's of the world, considering them under this bill is still a first amendment violation.
There is no spoon
I must have missed the memo too.
/. people automatically think everybody agrees with them. You find this in other forums, but it is most prevalent here for some reason. I really equate the /. editors to The View cast. However there is no Elizabeth Haselbeck among them to give a conservative view of the world.
I find it really funny that
So the Democrats position was to shut down a majority of people that critisize them?
Yes, because K Street lobbying has certainly been "shut down" by registration. You also think that "a majority" of Democratic critics are getting paid +$25,000/quarter? Where do I sign up?
Close, it's $25,000 per quarter, which comes-out to $100,000 per year. Even cheap astroturfing would be allowed.
Censorship is telling a man he can't have a steak just because a baby can't chew it. --Mark Twain
I think you are being blinded by intent; It's not an issue of what it is supposed to mean, but rather one of everything it could be interpreted to mean.
Let's say I run a popular website to stimulate a grass-roots election effort (thus 19 applies). The site gets millions of hits before an election, and my hosting is expensive (I never expected that kind of bandwidth usage!), so I have to pay $25k (this meets part B). I'm running out of money, and politician Bill McGreedy pays me $1 to "keep up the good work" (this meets part A). Oops. Now, this might get shot down at trial if the judge is a nice guy, since the case doesn't match the true intent of the law. However, you can bet your ass I'll need a good lawyer, and will have to go through a trial. Given the speed of the legal system, it won't be resolved until after the election, either. I think another poster had a more likely form of misuse however, which is that the bill can be used to assert hidden payment of bloggers and thus launch an investigation of them. That will either shut the blogger up or slow them down.
We don't need this law to "protect" us; We only need to tell people that random bloggers, just like people you meet on the street, might be lying. Don't trust random people you don't know -- It's that simple. A lying blog can always be countered with another blog which digs up the truth, and that is the appropriate way to respond.
Finally, I don't see the difference between one blogger paid 50k per quarter and 10 bloggers paid $5k per quarter. The latter is a yet more sinister approximation of a "grass-roots" effort, and would be completely legal under this (now defunct) part of the law.
So to recap, this law can be used for nuisance attacks, is based on the fundamentally bad assumption that you should be able to trust random people on the internet, and has a large loophole for exactly the type of shillery it is supposed to stop. Well intentioned as it may have been, I say good riddance.
As a citizen, I'd like that astroturfing labeled as such
As a person with a brain, I'm offended by the suggestion that I can't just evaluate speech on the merits. And as a lover of liberty, I'm extremely offended by the suggestion that liberty be infringed in this way.
Secession is the right of all sentient beings.