FEC-less
The FEC held hearings this week, 28 and 29 June, on their NPRM
(notice on proposed rulemaking) affecting the civlian web world. I
heard this on the radio
NPR : Campaign Finance Rules and the Internet and figured it was a good time to bring myself back up to speed on this. Another article that treated this in the last week FEC treads into sticky web of political blogs - Yahoo! News.
There are a handfull of differing opinions The FEC's position is
represented in their official notice [Notice 2005-10]. Here the summary
is useful, but for further details I found the recap of the NPRM in the
May FEC Record easier to follow. Both documents are pdfs and can be
found on this page
Federal Election Commission Rulemakings . I'll quote the summary here just to facilitate my post.
SUMMARY: The Federal Election Commission
requests comments on proposed changes to its rules that would include
paid advertisements on the Internet in the definition of "public
communication." These changes to the Commission[base ']s rules would implement
the recent decision of the U.S. District Court for the District of
Columbia in Shays v. Federal Election Commission, which held that the
current definition of "public communication" impermissibly excludes all
Internet communications. Comment is also sought on the related
definition of "generic campaign activity" and on proposed changes to
the disclaimer regulations. Additionally, comment is sought on proposed
new exceptions to the definitions of "contribution" and "expenditure"
for certain Internet activities and communications that would qualify
as individual volunteer activity or that would qualify for the "press
exemption." These proposals are intended to ensure that political
committees properly finance and disclose their Internet communications,
without impeding individual citizens from using the Internet to speak
freely regarding candidates and elections. The Commission has made no
final decision on the issues raised in this rulemaking.
From the web logging environment two groups have emerged with
broadly similar perspectives though varying in some significant
details. The Online coalition
Our Comments to the FEC
whose position is - no regulation realized through total exemption, it
is the libertarian perspective. I note that the Online Coalition is a
endeavor of the Web log Red State.org and has Michelle Malkin as one of
its earliest and most enthusiatic supporters.
the Decemberist, who I added to my roll last week, likes this
view and endorses it. It gives deceptive initial appearence of offering
the least resistence to full and unrestrained public dialogue. In the
post where he deals with this he reviews the farce that is
Commisioner Smith's hand ringing regarding the big ol bad
gov'mint inter-ferin' with the net:
Permalink : The Strange Logic of Bradley A. Smith. He is/was the leading voice for what the Commission will decide to do - he is the
government. Wherever the locus of power flows to here; he will have
sent it. Power in any society, is where its real government is. You
cannot make a large complex societies government smaller.
The other point of view belongs to George Washington University's
IPDI : Institute For Politics Democracy & The Internet. Their pdf is found here:
IPDI's comments to the FEC.
I find myself leaning far more closely to their concerns. The primary
question is [s]hould bloggers be given the media exemption? The IPDI
see's two consequences:
One is that a newly-expanded media exemption encompassing millions
of bloggers will create a new loophole that will eviscerate the
contribution and expenditure limits of the campaign finance law... The
other consequence is that the privileged status the press currently
enjoys will diminish. When that happens, an erosion of its most
important privilege,its ability through shield laws to protect the
anonymity of its sources, will surely follow.
The IPDI seeing that the last election showed tenitive but at
the same time exponential use of the internet in campaigning, doubts
that the reletively controlled and visible activity of this election
will be the future norm. They believe that pressures from this will
lead to the dissolution of the Campaign Finance Laws and possibly the
principles of press exemption, and press protection of sources (frankly
the latter seems gone already). They offer a somewhat nuanced path out
of this thicket. Admitting that journalistic enterprises existing
currently within in the media exemption can act in any fashion of
coordinated partisan behavior they desire, anf that a private citizen
with a web site can become in either formally or informally an arm of a
campaign. They would give the media the media exemption only to a small
subset of bloggers - the one that most resemble
professional jorno's. I suppose there would some hoop they would have
to jump through to gain this - they don't state this with any clarity;
they seem to want the FEC to come up with a formula. The rest (of us)
wouldn't get it. While these web loggers wouldn't necessarily have to
take on disclosing responsibilities, any campaign that paid them
directly or indirectly would disclose them. Much behavior that
occurred or was contemplated in the last election - would be public ie
regulated communication. Further the IPDI comments deal with what is my
primary concern in all this. Reaching back to their briefing by a panel
of campaign finance lawyers last month "Will the Revolution be
Regulated"
[|the three readily agreed that the threshold for
pursuing a complaint is so low that the FEC would open an enforcement
action, thus subjecting the respondents potentially to civil fines and
certainly to the payment of legal fees. In an increasingly partisan
political atmosphere, the fear of an opponent filing a
politically-inspired complaint is not unrealistic, nor is the fear of
incurring substantial legal fees to defend against a protracted FEC
investigation.|]
This they feel can be dealt with by raising the threshold
amounts of expenditures in political activities fairly high so that
average web loggers wouldn't likely cross them.
Log me in with those who feel that the wild wild west view of
the internet is unsustainable because the transaction costs of
obtaining good information would overtake the average users means.
Additionally the net could whipsaw that anarchy into society at large -
at least temporarily - then the revanchist retrenchment that follows
would leave it of little use to anyone.
11:49:15 PM  ;;
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