FEC May Regulate Online Political Activity 302
jgarzik writes "A recent federal court ruling ordered the U.S. Federal Elections Commission (FEC) to rewrite rules that currently exempt, rather than regulate, political ads and speech on the Internet. Well, it's looking more and more likely that the FEC will not be able to avoid some amount of Internet regulation. I always thought that freedom of speech originated in part because the framers wanted to protect political speech. I guess I was being naive..."
Internet ads should be treated like TV and print (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Does this mean that Politicians.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Internet ads should be treated like TV and prin (Score:2, Insightful)
Actually.. it was...
Nah, remember, (Score:3, Insightful)
I nominate the McCain-Feingold... (Score:1, Insightful)
forward, comrades! (Score:1, Insightful)
Camo green is so passe.
Re:BULLSHIT (Score:4, Insightful)
Are you saying that if bill gates wanted to spend $500,000,000.00 in advertising on google, amazon, ebay, msn, slashdot, etc., that you'd be able to match him to express _your_ opinion?
i doubt it.
And the money? (Score:5, Insightful)
Not "Political Speech" (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, they wanted to protect political speech. That is speech from a private citizen regarding the government. That is currently still supposedly the most protected speech there is. Someone running for office is *not* involved with political speech. The candidate is a public figure that is involved with the government from the moment that they start running. As such, they are regulated similarly to a political figure.
I know it is a contrary to common sense, but speech related to running for a political office made by the candidate is not political speech.
Re:Internet ads should be treated like TV and prin (Score:5, Insightful)
Attempts to do this may well backfire and amplify the power of those with deep pockets -- they will be in a much better position to afford the lawyer time to look for loopholes in the laws and regulations, use them, and then defend that use in court.
And as the regulations are incrementally patched to fix each loophole, they will increase in complexity, increasing the risks that the well-intentioned little guy will accidentally break them and end up muzzled.
There's no good answer here, alas.
I feel much better about regulations requiring a public audit trail of where the money came from and where it went, rather than attempting to create complex rules and "soft", "hard", etc., classes of money and donors.
Re:Internet ads should be treated like TV and prin (Score:3, Insightful)
I see no problems with that, so long as everyone is able to do it.
The only threat the printed word has is that it can be controlled, and that's just what the FEC is proposing.
Re:Internet ads should be treated like TV and prin (Score:1, Insightful)
If you genuinly believe that finance reform requires muting constituents, then I suggest you relocate to cuba, where you can enjoy a form of government that agrees with you fully.
This is a direct result of finance reform (Score:3, Insightful)
Its just like a complicated tax code; people find, exploit and profit off of loopholes and an unneccessarily complicated system. Make the system simple (flat tax for example) and stupid things like this don't happen. Let the candidates take as much money from whoever they want and spend it in any way they please and you'll find these awful "side-effects" of dumb legislation go away. You can't tell people how to spend their money and suggesting that gagging political organizations (or in the Sinclair/Moorse cases passionate individuals) during some artifical timeframe before an election is appropriate is simply unacceptable.
Re:Internet ads should be treated like TV and prin (Score:4, Insightful)
First Amendment: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
What part of "Congress shall make no law" don't you understand? It didn't say "Congress shall make no law except where it *really really* needs to. You either have free speech or your don't. Once you start limiting, there is no stopping how much you limit it.
Brian
Re:Internet ads should be treated like TV and prin (Score:3, Insightful)
Actually the first amendment does allow you to say anything, anywhere, anytime, but due to the courts believing that the framers of the consitution couldn't have possible meant ALL speech, they have contrued it to mean what you said. So know we live in a censored society, where speech is anything BUT free!
Just look twords McCain-Finegold Finance Reform (Score:2, Insightful)
This is a huge problem, because the power has shifted from groups that tried to accomplish something (i.e. NAACP, AARP, etc.) no longer are in the power seats of the campaign. Now it is a group that only wants to accomplish getting the other guy out of the way and putting their guy in office.
McCain-Finegold was a big slap across the face of the founders, because John McCain didn't want to be critized so much like he was in the 2000 election.
So this is nothing new, the people just have to throw these guys out of office that want to limit any kind of free speech. Howard Stern has just as many rights to be on the radio as Rush Limbaugh, and the option to change the channel is always there if you don't like what the person is saying. WE NEED TO STOP LOOKING TWORDS THE WHINY PEOPLE THAT WANT TO GET RID OF SOMETHING INSTEAD OF CHANGING THE CHANNEL.
I say send a message, by hitting them where it hurts, their wallet. Don't listen to the show, so the advertising numbers will go down and pull out.
I am starting to think it would be a lot better if we paid polititions to stay out of office.
Re:Internet ads should be treated like TV and prin (Score:4, Insightful)
it has everything to do with free speech (Score:3, Insightful)
This has entirly to do with campaign finance, and whether Internet ads are included (or excluded) from campaign finance. It has nothing to do with free speech.
"Campaign finance" is a proxy for regulating speech. It's what the political class is using to stifle criticism. There are jail terms associated with broadcasting a political message that regulators do not approve of, now. The framers must be turning over in their graves.
This is the very speech that the 1st amendment was designed to protect. Not nude dancing, not obscenity, not flag burning, but political speech is what they were trying to protect. How can the 1st amendment be so expansive as to include those other things, but not the intended object of protection?
Naive (Score:5, Insightful)
I guess I was being naive...
What's naive is granting free speech (and all other human rights) to corporations as if they were "persons" and then wondering why the whole system went to hell. We wouldn't need this kind of regulation if only corporations were treated as the legal fiction they are. Allowing corporations to roam our society with all the rights of a person exposes us to ultra-wealthy psychopaths. [thecorporation.com]
A lot of money buys a lot of "free" speech. Real persons have no chance in hell of competing with corporations on the "free" speech playing field. It's time we recognized reality and revoked these misplaced rights and overturned the fallacy that corporations are persons.
Remember "No Face" from Spirited Away? Best to keep them out of the bath house.
Re:'Bout time (Score:4, Insightful)
-nB
Re:Internet ads should be treated like TV and prin (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Internet ads should be treated like TV and prin (Score:4, Insightful)
Wrong. That power was self-invested by the Supreme Court in the Marbury vs. Madison case in 1803, as an act of partisan politics against the Jeffersonian Republicans. Nowhere in the Constitution is any court given the power to "interpret" law.
So, what you're saying is... the First Amendent is wrong? That is what you're saying, because the First Amendment patently disagrees with you.
Now if we're gonna argue about whether or not the First Amendment means what it says, then I'll just go ahead and suggest we ought to make the Presbyterian Church in America the offical religion of the US, since the Constitution isn't supposed to be taken literally, or anything.
Re:Internet ads should be treated like TV and prin (Score:4, Insightful)
That is known as a slippery slope fallacy. There are, as another post puts it (in different words), reasonable and unreasonable limits. There are also different levels of protections based on what kind of speech.
While your argument has a point, free speech doesn't protect you from a libel or slander suit if you said something that was libelous or slanderous. The incitement claim is pretty valid too. You can't expect to use your freedom to deliberately hurt others without merit and expect there be no legal consequences. The constitution apparently can't be used to protect a right to lie, there really doesn't seem to be one.
Another example, if you take your first Amendment claim and apply it to the second, wouldn't you argue that the Federal government has no claim to prevent you from owning fully automatic machine guns? Or SAMs or fighter airplanes for that matter?
Money != Speech (Score:2, Insightful)
Money is not Speech
President Forbes? (Score:3, Insightful)
Are you saying that if bill gates wanted to spend $500,000,000.00 in advertising on google, amazon, ebay, msn, slashdot, etc., that you'd be able to match him to express _your_ opinion?
So, why didn't we have President Forbes? If money can buy an election that way, why did it not happen? Remember, he ran before McCain-Feingold.
Freedom of speech issues (Score:3, Insightful)
However, it seems to me that there is a difference between free expression and large-money campaigning before elections. So while I would not be unhappy about regulations regarding paid advertisements, it seems to me that blogging and other forms of free expression should be protected. It should be noted, however, that this is not a big issue.
Also political and commercial spam should be equally banned under the law, IMO. Mass-emailing opt-out or even one-time campaigns should not be an acceptable practice in business or politics. IMO, we should ensure that all such email is opt-in only.
Re:Internet ads should be treated like TV and prin (Score:5, Insightful)
You're taking the naive approach to freedom of speech. There is a concept that has been around for a very long time, and which the courts have hammered out quite clearly as the standard interpretation of the first ammendment called "protected speech".
If, for example, protected speech included everything you say or communicate in any way, then assault WOULD NOT BE ILLEGAL. Assault is clearly a case of laws being passed which restrict speech. Why should I not be allowed to say, "I'm going to kill you at 5PM tomorrow"? Why? because it's not protected speech.
Political speech is, for the most part, studiously protected, but there are strong exceptions when it comes to the funding that speech and consuming massive amounts of advertising "real eastate". These are reasonable measures taken to prevent one canidate from "buying" and election (and, in fact, I feel they're not strong enough as they do not prevent a small handfull of candidates from locking in an election among them).
If free speech were an absolute, a large fraction of the laws in this country at the federal and state levels would have been shot down by the Supreme Court over a century ago.
Re:Here's a wrench for you (Score:3, Insightful)
And the DVD is our property, and we can do whatever we want with it. It's not protected in any way from our own whims.
Re:BULLSHIT (Score:3, Insightful)
Google is presumably not subject to graft if you are referring to the results of searches done using their software (in any ostensible way).
As for the rest, they are all subject to the mitigating effect people's affinity for personal blogs. Compared to whatever banners MS puts up and however much their marketing campaigns spend, popular discourse has considerable power if you visit the opinion sites. I use that as a model to assess the power of Bill's billions to influence opinion.
However, I have to admit, I'm immune to "infotainment" of the big networks, since I don't have a tv and don't make a habit of going to FOX, MSN, ABC, CNN, or whatever. I let discussions guide my searches.
If you don't do that you are more easily influenced by what the networks choose not to show you.
Active vs. Passive (Score:4, Insightful)
Television and radio ads are effectively because they are active advertising. The consumer _must_ participate in the advertisement in order to get back to normal programming. The advertisement takes 100% of the media stream. There are no ads for Kerry or Bush playing in the background while Metallica is playing in the foreground.
Advertising on the internet is much different. Let them spend all they want on internet advertising. Google will love it, Yahoo will love it, MSN will love it... but the consumers? Really I don't think internet advertising has much impact. I'm positive that search engines and launchpad websites can produce hundreds of studies to prove me wrong but their business relies on convincing people to spend money on internet ads. To the regular consumer, however, it's all too easy to ignore banner ads and get to the real content on a page. I have yet to meet anyone who has tried a new product or service due to internet advertising. I've bought things that were reviewed (eg. books) on a network bulletin board, but I've never bought anything from a paid advertisement. Internet advertising is passive advertising because it requires the consumer to willingly participate in the advertisement. If Bush or Kerry want to spend a billion dollars employing web monkeys to write a webpage then that's good for jobs and the economy. Unless they (illegally) hijack my browser, though, I'm still not going to view it.
So, again, why is the FEC wasting our taxpayer dollars arguing over 15 rules and trying to make them wrap around the internet?
Re:Silly rabbit, Trix are for... (Score:3, Insightful)
Regulating what an individual can put up on their home page on the net would be, IMH(IANAL)O, unreasonable, as long as the "value" of the resources you put behind such an effort fell within the unregulated end of campaign contributions.
What's quite reasonable is saying that a candidate or corporations and lobby groups supporting the candidate can't spend any more money on the Internet for advertising than they could on TV or in print. It's just another medium.
I do think that because of the interactivity of it, there should be some exceptions. Just for example, an unmoderated forum about a candidate should not be considered advertising.
Why am I not suprised? (Score:3, Insightful)
But let me say this. I will never submit to any law regulating my speech, and when the time comes that the Democrats pass a law that does infringe my speech, and it gets upheld, that is the day I use the 2nd Amendment to invoke that most primal right so well expressed in the Declaration of Independence.
"But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. --Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government."
Re:Slashdot does it again! (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't want George Soros or the Swift Boat Veterans for Bush to have more free speech than I do. I want them to have exactly the same amount, regardless of how much money they have or can gather. Simply because I get paid more than someone else does and can contribute more to someone's kitty for political ads doesn't mean that my views should be more widely disseminated.
Offshore webservers? (Score:3, Insightful)
Except... (Score:5, Insightful)
Free and unfettered speech means living with big money, and eliminating money from the equation necessarily means restricting free speech.
Except that corporations are considered "persons" under the law (with all the rights that entails), are psychopaths [thecorporation.com] , and are vastly more wealthy than real persons. Their vast wealth is swamping the speech of real persons and elevating their agenda over the agenda of the people.
Corporations are not persons.
Re:No way (Score:3, Insightful)
I can't believe that the American people will continue to stand for much more. I know I won't.
Yes, you will -- and the American people will too. The fact that you are bitching on Slashdot rather than doing anything constructive indicates that you will. Mainstream politicians know this, and use it to their advantage. If enough people were outraged, they would vote for a third-party candidate who would do what they wanted, but they won't for two reasons:
What is even more telling is that this article on campaign finance reform was misinterpreted as an attack on free speech. People who cannot understand the difference between regular laws such as this (which merely regulates previously-regulated campaigns, not The Internet), and evil laws (such as the INDUCE Act or the DMCA) are unlikely to mount an effective resistance against any laws, good or bad. And no, I don't count posting a Slashdot comment as "effective resistance".
Regulation (Score:3, Insightful)
In the more gray area would be online commerical speach since the courts tend to view commmerical speach rights as being less than those of actual humans.
Re:Slashdot does it again! (Score:3, Insightful)
Look at the majority of gubernatioral, congressional, and senate races around the country. There is almost always at least one candidate who has a significantly greater amount of money available to them, and they are almost always leading in the polls. (If they are equals, the incumbent tends to lead.) When was the last time we had a presidential candidate that wasn't already wealthy when they got there?
It's a serious problem, but I have a very hard time advocating a restriction on freedom of speech, especially political speech.
Big difference between Internet and TV/Radio (Score:4, Insightful)
That's not a wrench, it's a nail. (Score:3, Insightful)
It isn't speech at all.
It's a file that I have on my computer.
When you're done with your sophmoric semantic quibbling, you can try applying the same idiot logic to, say, newsprint. "It's not speech, these are ink marks on a piece of paper." Speech is not an effect of the media used to transmit it, but the intermediation of ideas from one interlocutor to another regardless of medium.
Re:FEC announces regulating politics on the intern (Score:3, Insightful)
Fahrenheit 911: facts never disputed. Mike's still waiting for someone to dispute:
Bush's connections with the Sauds, the 7 minute wait (actually more like 19 - there was a photo session after "My Pet Goat"), the redirection of the "war" from AQ to Saddam with baseless accusations, the creation of a police state, the profiteering, the ignored death of the Iraqi civilians, the SS guarding the Saudi embassy... it's all true, and frankly not exactly news to people who read the news every day. The 'pubs HATE Moore, but that is not a contention of the facts.
They can't contend with the facts, so they go for the man.
Stolen Honor: accusers were discredited, facts nonexistent, pure ad hominem by political opponents. One of the signed vets was never told he had signed the accusation, a surprise to him. Not a "disputed" matter except in the minds of the operatives and those who want to believe the accusers.
Re:Freedom of speech issues (Score:2, Insightful)
'Should' be regulated? I think the point is, where does government draw the line? The campaign finance law left a lot of room open for regulation and so where the line gets drawn is still an open question.
As much as people would like to say that money != speech, regulating money will regulate speech in some fashion because it's open to interpretation where one stops and the other starts. Technology enables speech and money enables technology.
As to what gets banned, who gets to decide what constitutes speech? I interpret the Constitutional defintion of speech as communication. There are written and spoken words. Does it matter how they are conveyed?
Re:Internet ads should be treated like TV and prin (Score:3, Insightful)
Not at all; to interpret law is one of the primary functions of a judge. To find and argue interpretations is the main function of a lawyer. This state of affairs is a logical necessity, not a cruel and arbitrary caprice. Humans are not capable of writing laws that require no interpretation. The delicious silliness of your post is that the position you are trying to argue itself requires interpretation. Here is the text of the first amendment:
Speech, press, assembly, and petitions are all mentioned, but for some reason the Internet is not. You have interpreted speech or press in a broad sense to include the Internet. So all you are really saying is that your interpretations are valid, and the Supreme Court's are not.
Re:You haven't read the constution, have you? (Score:3, Insightful)
The only question is whether "The Judicial Power" mentioned at the beginning of the sentance conveyed more than jurisdiction over law and fact of Cases (in other words, the ability to choose which laws applied to which situations, and to judge which situations actually happened). On the face of things, it seems like a weak claim to say that this phrase conveys more power than is explicitly stated through the rest of the section; and there's more evidence to weaken your claim still further, both in the situation as designed and in the writings of the authors and signatories.
I'm not going to go on -- this is Slashdot, and I'd be wasting my time. But think about it -- the founders built a federal republic and attempted to implement checks and balances. Would they have placed an unelected institution above both of the elected ones, and above the constitution itself? Why would they make amendments so hard to get if amendments could be practically achieved by the court's choice of interpretations?
-Billy
Re:That's not a wrench, it's a nail. (Score:3, Insightful)
Freedom in general (and of speech) are something of a religion to me. It's all about tolerance--anybody can accept what they like. Freedom of speech happens when society accepts the right for people to hold or even proselytize points of view that most of society *doesn't* like.
Which, paradoxically, means that if one claims not to be a bigot, then one must accept the right of other people to be bigots. (Note, bigotry has nothing to do with race; it's far more offensive to freedom of thought than that. Look it up.)
Anyhow, you may enjoy a book called "The absurdity of consensual crimes in a free society", subtitled "Ain't nobody's business if I do".
Have fun.