The coming crackdown on blogging

[Walt Starr]

Bradley Smith says that the freewheeling days of political blogging and online punditry are over.
In just a few months, he warns, bloggers and news organizations could risk the wrath of the federal government if they improperly link to a campaign's Web site. Even forwarding a political candidate's press release to a mailing list, depending on the details, could be punished by fines.

Smith should know. He's one of the six commissioners at the Federal Election Commission, which is beginning the perilous process of extending a controversial 2002 campaign finance law to the Internet.

In 2002, the FEC exempted the Internet by a 4-2 vote, but U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly last fall overturned that decision. "The commission's exclusion of Internet communications from the coordinated communications regulation severely undermines" the campaign finance law's purposes, Kollar-Kotelly wrote.

<snip>

http://news.com.com/The+coming+crackdown+on+blogging/20...

This is chilling.



Regulating the internet will be the doom of free speech for all time. No longer will we have a free people's press because the big boys don't like it.

[hiley]

1. it really sucks

and is frightening at the same time.

[Catherine Vincent]

2. What are they afraid of?

[MadHound]

4. The truth!

Can't have this misadministration caught by bloggers with their drawers showing, ala Gannon/Guckert.

And Lord knows, those 911 "conspiracy theorists" are probably getting to close to the truth of that "Pearl Harbor type event". Can't ever, never let that cat out of the bag.

[OTownGuy]

14. NOONE...

Is EVER going to believe 9/11 was an inside job except radical Dems like us. It would be just WAAYYY TOO "out there" for the rest of the country to grasp.

[Walt Starr]

5. I don't know but it's the DEMOCRATS pushing this shit!

And the Repukes are fighting it!

[Catherine Vincent]

8. Really?

Now I'm definitely confused.

[undergroundpanther]

3. Bullies

Will always try to cut off voices of those they victimize and opress.
Hearing a vitims voice a dissident voice shows a bully for what he is,
How can a bully tell if someone they are hurting, or opresssing is in pain from what they did? they cry out against it in anger and tell thier story.

Bullies hate having the truth come out about what they are and what they do..
THe bullies in the WH want to silence bloggers because the bloggers are free press,telling it like they see it and you know a free press is a politicians P.R. mess.When said politician is a corrupted lying sack of shit.(99% of politicians are sociopathic bullies running on lies "charm" and fake image IMHO)

[Options Remain]

6. Cant be enforced

they will try though.

TearForger

[Walt Starr]

7. Didn't they rule McCain-Feingold constitutional?

If so, they CAN and WILL do it.

[dzika]

9. Video -CNN: Federal Election Commission may regulate Blogs, links, emails!

mentioned on CNN this afternoon



Video in Real Media format (3 minutes)

[ultraist]

15. Thanks for the link to that report...DAMN..this would REALLY put a dent

in grassroots campaign involvement. Why should individual bloggers doing volunteer work be viewed any differently than individual volunteers that physically go into a campaign office?

There is no difference!

[Interrobang]

10. Colleen Kollar-Kotelly is a ringer for limiting online speech...

She was the same judge who presided over the DeCSS hearings -- see http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/DeCSS/index.html (Dave Touretzky's DeCSS page). I saw that article earlier on Eschaton and I thought the name looked familiar...

[Gabi Hayes]

11. Translate to English, please?

I checked link and it's all fortran to me

or cobol

or something

[Walt Starr]

17. DeCSS was the open source code that decoded the encryption

on DVD's which allowed the teenager who wrote the code to watch his DVD's on his Linux box.

Microsoft has licensing to decode DVD encryption so you can play DVD's on your Microsoft box.

[Cleita]

12. Then we will have to do it the old fashioned way with

printed underground periodicals and short wave radios. The truth can never be silenced no matter how hard they try.

[ultraist]

18. And what is the difference between physically canvassing campaign items

and canvassing campaign items via email or blog? Both are distributing materials through volunteer labor.

I really don't understand their premise here. Does this also mean we cannot drop campaign lit door to door or phonebank?

[Cleita]

20. If they censor us, then we will have to get information out

covertly. Voice of America used to broadcast behind the iron curtain from free countries and underground presses spread information under the noses of the authorities. Of course if you got caught, then it would be the gulag for you. I think our Canadian neighbors would be more than happy to host such radio programs and presses.

[ultraist]

23. Good point, some of our international friends could host blogs too

We could send info but not post it ourselves. There are a lot of ways around this, as you alluded to.

[Stop_the_War]

13. I knew this was coming

The regulation of the internet is one of their ultimate goals. They know the internet is the last bastion of free speech and credible news reporting in America.

[bpilgrim]

16. hey, china's doin it?

maybe they know something we don't

peace

[HEyHEY]

19. Oh no! So now bloggers will have to read press releases?

And filter and write an article on them Like REAL reporters...then they can start calling themselves that.

[FourStarDemocrat]

21. He'll never get away with that- it's interfering w/First Ammendment rights

Even online newspapers link to political candidates sites all the time. At least it's my first take on this, without reading all the legalese.

[sendero]

22. What's the beef?

All I see here is "if they improperly link to a campaign web site".

You could take those links off of the blogs and so what? Those links are not necessary - nobody needs them anyway.

If I want to find a candidate's web site, it will take me and Google about 5 seconds to do so.

Someone explain just what's up with all the "sky is falling" rhetoric here? They might have some legal grounds for how campaign sites are linked - but what does that have to do with DailyKos or other blogs?

Not a damn thing.

[FlemingsGhost]

24. Good. The more they try to shut us down, the stronger we become.

It's almost as if no one in the Bush administration has EVER read a history book.

[pabloseb]

25. What about blogs hosted abroad?

and what if the blogger is not American? How would it play out?