C-Span now.....Redstate.or guy. Talking about internet regulations

Help me understand why Democrats voted against the Bill in the House last week that would exclude the Internet from Election rules

on the Bloggers websites

Adam B. at the dKos explains it very well.

"This all started when Congress passed McCain-Feingold, which didn't mention the Internet at all -- and this was in 2002.

So the FEC, in passing its regulations to implement the law, explicitly said "none of the anti-coordination rules apply to the Internet".

The pro-regulation lobby sued, arguing that this went beyond the FEC's authority, because the spirit of McCain-Feingold meant that Congress really wanted to regulate such activities.

They won, and the district court ordered the FEC to regulate.

They've taken a narrow mandate to correct the anti-coordination gap as an excuse to propose all sorts of new restrictions on your internet activity, ranging from making group weblogs into regulated "political committees", to potentially imposing a "blogger code of ethics" with disclosure and disclaimer requirements enforceable by law (requirements otherwise unheard of for any other independent actor who deals with political campaigns), to intruding into the workplace to tell readers how much time they can spend participating in online political discussion groups. Plus which, they have no idea how to deal with podcasting, p2p networks or any of the emerging technologies for discussion.

This bill reenacts the FEC's original exemption, and is intended to say, "No, Courts, this is really what Congress itself wanted. Don't make the FEC regulate what we don't want them to touch." Its passage would forestall the FEC's current process, while leaving other issues open for future consideration by Congress or the FEC if the need arises."



Kos's