March 25, 2005

Blogging (i.e., Speech) Under Attack

Yesterday evening, CNET posted an excellent overview of the earlier draft for FEC rules on Internet political speech, which you'll find here. It reinforces Mike Krempasky's conclusion (see also below) that the earlier draft would have drastically curtailed speech on the Internet, and especially by bloggers. (A CNET article from yesterday morning, which is still informative, is here.)

The 44-page document, prepared by the FEC general counsel's office and dated March 10, took a radically different approach and would have imposed decades-old rules designed for federal campaigns on many political Web sites and bloggers.

According to the March 10 document, political Web sites would be regulated by default unless they were password-protected and read by fewer than 500 people in a 30-day period. Many of those Web sites would have been required to post government-mandated notices or risk violating campaign finance laws.

And it agrees with many of us that the current set of proposals were scaled back after the blogswarm caused by Brad Smith's interview with CNET.

The explanation for the dramatic changes during the last two weeks, according to one FEC official familiar with the events, is the unusual public outcry that followed a public alarm that Commissioner Bradley Smith sounded about a pending government crackdown on bloggers. After Smith's warning, an army of bloggers mobilized to oppose intrusive regulations and prominent members of Congress warned the commission not to be overly aggressive.

Another excellent summary of the FEC/Pew/Blogging story appears at FrontPage today. Richard Poe ties the two elements of the story together with numerous links (including one to this post on DP).

More to follow.

— Winfield Myers

| Mar. 25, 2005 | 11:04 AM