WP: FEC Considers Restricting Online Political Activities

FEC Considers Restricting Online Political Activities
New Rules May Apply to Web Ads, Bloggers' Endorsements

By Brian Faler
Special to The Washington Post
Monday, March 21, 2005; Page A17


The Federal Election Commission has begun considering whether to issue new rules on how political campaigns are waged on the Internet, a regulatory process that is expected to take months to complete but that is already generating considerable angst online.

The agency is weighing whether -- and how -- to impose restrictions on a host of online activities, including campaign advertising and politically oriented blogs.

Election officials are reluctantly taking up the issue, after losing a court case last fall. The FEC, which enforces federal election law, had issued scores of regulations delineating how the campaign finance reform legislation adopted in 2002 ought to be implemented. But Reps. Christopher Shays (R-Conn.) and Martin T. Meehan (D-Mass.), who sponsored the legislation, complained that many of those rules were too lax, and they successfully sued to have them rescinded. The commission must now rewrite a number of those directions, including ones that left online political activities virtually free from government regulation.

"We are almost certainly going to move from an environment in which the Internet was per se not regulated to where it is going to be regulated in some part," said FEC Commissioner David M. Mason, a Republican. "That shift has huge significance because it means that people who are conducting political activity on the Internet are suddenly going to have to worry about or at least be conscious of certain legal distinctions and lines they didn't used to have to worry about."...

***

Should bloggers who work for political campaigns, for example, be required to disclose that relationship? Should they include a disclaimer indicating that they were paid by a campaign? What if a campaign supporter links his Web site to a candidate's home page? Is that considered a campaign contribution subject to government regulation? What if an independent blogger endorses a candidate? Or posts a campaign's news release? Are those contributions?...


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A51986-2005Mar20.html

look what the progressive 'blogosphere' has created already. They are aware of the impact this WILL have on 2006/08.

you can't regulate the internet.

Try, try, try, though they may, as long as the web exists in it's current form, you'll not be able to stop people from posting their opinions and others from reading them.

These fascists really make me :puke:

were for freedom.

Would we know that GOPUSA and Bush are an 'item'?

Nothing about regulating politics in newspapers or tv...huh?

Why are they picking on the internet?

'Cuz of Dean? 'Cuz of online petitions? 'Cuz they cheat?

OR IS IT BECAUSE....THEIR REDNECK FAITHFUL DON'T NOT HAVE PC's?

The old peer-to-peer model will be quashed in favor of a broadcast superior/subordinate model.

:eyes:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPcap/1999-11/29/002r-112999-idx.html

Facing Legal Action From Bush, Creator Cites U.S. Tradition of Parody

Washington Post
Monday, November 29, 1999; Page A02

Sign on to www.gwbush.com and an altered, obviously fake image appears of a gleeful-looking Texas Gov. George W. Bush with a straw up his nose, inhaling white lines.

Www.gwbush.com is not, needless to say, the official Bush campaign Web site (which is www.georgewbush.com).

<snip>

When asked at a news conference in May what he thought about the site, Bush let loose, saying it was produced by a "garbage man" and suggesting that "there ought to be limits to freedom"--a line Bush's online critics have vowed to never let the world forget.

<snip>

The Bush campaign also filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission, accusing Exley of violating election laws and demanding that he operate under the rules and regulations of a political committee. FEC officials said they could not comment on the complaint but acknowledged last week that they are reviewing it.

...more...

oh yeah, there ought to be limits to freedom - :wtf:

I keep wondering when people will have had enough.

are serious about their Internet and so are we.

This is why. Does anybody think that the Democrats and the Republicans who voted for this did it for the good of the country? No, they did it to protect their jobs. McCain-Feingold is bad for America. Damn them for introducing it.

monies. they all get the same amount of money.

what they do with it should determine who is best to run our country.

We need no restictions. Unions can donate unlimited, corporations can donate unlimited, George Soros and Bill Gates can donate unlimited.

donation limit from $1,000 to $2,000.

It is a horrible shackling of free speech. It is unconscionable. Making it illegal to mention candidates for office is repulsive.

overturned it by they didn't.

:argh:

makes the politicians and corporatists in control of our government look bad.

Swamp them with email and outrage:

http://www.fec-usa.com/contact/req-info.htm


Edit: contact info