Right Wing Nut House

If the first rule of government spending is “Why have one when you can build two at twice the price?” then the first tenet of government rule making should be “Why make one rule when four will serve the same purpose?”

Friday, June 3 is the deadline for comments on proposed FEC rules affecting the internet. And while they’re aren’t any daggers aimed at the heart of bloggers, there certainly appears to be plenty of pins ready to prick us till we bleed.

The good news is most of the 10 million or so blogs in the Shadow Media will be totally exempt from the regs. If you mention how much you hate Bush in between stories of teaching toilet etiquitte to your tot, you are safe from the long arm of the bureaucrats. If however, your ambitions include using your blog as an advocacy platform, things get a touch more complicated.

Disclosure seems to be the goal of the Feds. If you’re taking ads from a candidate or being paid by a candidate to promote the campaign, you will have to declare that on your site. But where? The Online Coalition makes a good point in their response to the proposed rules:

Furthermore, we cannot understand how a disclaimer would work in practice. Must the site feature a disclaimer on every entry? Only ones related to the campaign that made the payment? Suppose the blogger is paid by the campaign but does not write about the campaign specifically, but instead debates important current events? Is there some kind of “express advocacy” rule? How would disclaimers work with sound or video files? While we strongly oppose a disclaimer requirement, if the Commission insists upon pursuing this idea, it must set forth clearly what is required to comply with the rule.

The way these rules are written, it’s abundantly clear that the FEC simply does not understand who or what a blogger is or what we do. Neither do they understand the technical aspect of blogs (I don’t either but I’m not attempting to curtail free speech by regulating it now, am I?)

Then there’s the FEC’s problems with the English language. Now, admittedly, English is one of the more difficult languages to master - just listen to Pamela Sue Anderson try to give a speech . But generally speaking, if you’re going to write the definition of a rule and then write the rule ignoring the definition you just made, you’re going to have more confusion than even Pamela Sue could imagine:

The exemption is crafted in such a way as to apply only to communications by any broadcasting station, newspaper, magazine or other periodical publication. This awkward wording suggests that the FEC means to distinguish between newspapers and periodicals, whose Internet media activities are exempt, and some classifications of other persons and organizations, which are not. Yet, the explanation for the proposed rule states “the proposed regulation expressly rejects a policy that only a bona fide press entity with an off-line component is entitled to protection in their online news stories, commentaries and editorials.”

In short, the rulemakers can’t seem to make up their minds. Are bloggers journalists? Are blogs on-line publications or commercials for candidates?

There’s an easy way to fix this entire mess. There is a bill in Congress to exempt internet activities from FEC scrutiny. Entitled The Online Freedom of Speech Act,” the bill would exempt bloggers and other online publications from rulemaking by the FEC.

All we can be certain of is this: If the FEC goes ahead with their proposals for the internet, there’s little doubt that those who are targeted by the rules will find a way around them. This has been the pattern every single time that campaign finance laws have been changed.

Every. Single. Time.