Free speech meets campaign finance:
If someone sets up a home page and links to their favorite politician, is that a contribution? This is a big deal, if someone has already contributed the legal maximum, or if they're at the disclosure threshold and additional expenditures have to be disclosed under federal law.
Certainly a lot of bloggers are very much out front. Do we give bloggers the press exemption? If we don't give bloggers the press exemption, we have the question of, do we extend this to online-only journals?
Another case where the law isn't in synch with the technology. I have a feeling the Founders or Framers or whatever you want to call them would have a soft spot for us ploggers, posting our electronic pamphlets on the virtual tree in the virtual town square.
How is a blog gifferent than, say, a pamphlet? How is linking to a URL different from publishing a phone number? What if I LIST the URL but don't LINK it; does that extra cut-and-paste step I make the reader take make it less of a "contribution"? What if I write a letter to the editor of a print paper and include the URL?
Political speech should be the most protected speech of all and we bloggers need a break on this.
Jerome at MyDD: "If the 3 Democratic-appointed judges on the FEC panel manage to extend the 2002 campaign finance law to regulate political speech over the internet, we Democrats can say hello to the wilderness for sure."
I've been doing too much linking and not enough writing lately, leaving me with a lot of posts that are long quotes followed by one line of comment from me. In lieu of that I'll try a different format today and just give you a few links:
Politics
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