{"id":7354,"date":"2005-03-24T06:01:59","date_gmt":"2005-03-24T13:01:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/2005\/03\/24\/all-your-blogs-arent-belong-to-us-yet.html"},"modified":"2005-03-24T06:01:59","modified_gmt":"2005-03-24T13:01:59","slug":"all_your_blogs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2005\/03\/24\/all_your_blogs.html","title":{"rendered":"All your blogs aren’t <\/em>belong to us … yet"},"content":{"rendered":"

The FEC has assured bloggers that — for the moment, at least — their political posts and links<\/a> are not considered regulable political expenditures in favor of a candidate.<\/p>\n

Political bloggers would continue to be exempt from most campaign finance laws, according to highly anticipated rules that federal regulators released Wednesday.<\/p>\n

The Federal Election Commission also proposed that online-only news outlets and that even individual bloggers should be treated as legitimate journalists and immune from laws that could count their political endorsements as campaign contributions.<\/p>\n

The 47-page outline of proposed rules (click here for PDF file)<\/a> takes a cautious approach to the explosive question of how Web sites and e-mail should be regulated, with the FEC saying throughout that its conclusions are only tentative ones and inviting public comment. The comment process is expected to be approved by the FEC at its meeting Thursday.<\/p>\n

This whole kerfuffle started when an FEC commissioner suggested<\/a> that political blogs which too closely toed a candidate’s line — linking to their website, forwarding their press releases — might be considered organs for political advertising, and thus subject to McCain-Feingold regulations.<\/p>\n

The commission has generally been hands-off on the Internet. We’ve said, “If you advertise on the Internet, that’s an expenditure of money — much like if you were advertising on television or the newspaper.”
\nDo we give bloggers the press exemption?<\/p>\n

The real question is: Would a link to a candidate’s page be a problem? If someone sets up a home page and links to their favorite politician, is that a contribution? This is a big deal, if someone has already contributed the legal maximum, or if they’re at the disclosure threshold and additional expenditures have to be disclosed under federal law.<\/p>\n

Certainly a lot of bloggers are very much out front. Do we give bloggers the press exemption? If we don’t give bloggers the press exemption, we have the question of, do we extend this to online-only journals like CNET?<\/p>\n

Well, gads, we can’t have that.<\/em><\/p>\n

For those who think political speech is free, but that campaign ads should be restricted, here’s a nice slippery slope cautionary tale. Because, frankly, you can make that very case, and just because the FEC ruled now, <\/em>and tentatively, <\/em>that bloggers are off the hook, doesn’t mean that the principle that they are forever has been established. Once you begin to treat speech as advertising, and declare the latter as a legitimate target for regulation, the former is bound to follow in some fashion.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The FEC has assured bloggers that — for the moment, at least — their political posts and links are not considered regulable political expenditures in favor of a candidate. Political…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3,9,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7354","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blogging","category-politics-law","category-zt-pc"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":8894,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2006\/03\/28\/talkin_about_fr.html","url_meta":{"origin":7354,"position":0},"title":"Talkin’ about freedom","author":"***Dave","date":"Tue 28-Mar-06 2:25pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Remarkably enough, a regulatory agency has decided, correctly, that it doesn't need to regulate everything. Regulators brought Internet political advertising under the nation's campaign finance law Monday but declared that...","rel":"","context":"In "Blogging & Internet"","block_context":{"text":"Blogging & Internet","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":44671,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2014\/08\/28\/egads-an-fec-deadline-is-coming-you-must-donate.html","url_meta":{"origin":7354,"position":1},"title":"Egads, an FEC Deadline is coming! YOU MUST DONATE!","author":"***Dave","date":"Thu 28-Aug-14 8:06am","format":false,"excerpt":"I get a lot of email asking for political donations. I actually get email from the Dems and the GOP, because of various mailing lists I've gotten on.\u00a0One tactic used by both sides is some sort of breathless announcement that some Federal Election Commission Filing Deadline is coming, and if\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/08\/RV-AJ832_ARIELY_G_20130301173238%5B1%5D.jpg.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":132609,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2017\/01\/22\/yup-paid-actors.html","url_meta":{"origin":7354,"position":2},"title":"Yup. Paid Actors","author":"***Dave","date":"Sun 22-Jan-17 7:02pm","format":false,"excerpt":"All those cheering folks at Trump Tower when Donald announced his run for President? Yeah, a lot of paid extras. As documented by the Federal Elections Commission, which decided to drop any criminal complaint about delays in reporting the campaign expenditure as required by law.A trivial lie, perhaps, but ...\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":29106,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2012\/08\/02\/big-money-no-whammies.html","url_meta":{"origin":7354,"position":3},"title":"Big money! No whammies!","author":"***Dave","date":"Thu 2-Aug-12 10:50pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Given the flood of corporate and individual and anonymous money into elections, it seems almost anticlimactic that what laws there are turn out to be easily flouted by those who choose to do so, with few if any repercussions. That's just ... discouraging. Embedded Link IRS: Toothless. FEC: \"Thoroughly Broken.\"\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5372,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2004\/03\/30\/full_disclosure.html","url_meta":{"origin":7354,"position":4},"title":"Full disclosure","author":"***Dave","date":"Tue 30-Mar-04 5:37am","format":false,"excerpt":"Hey, look what happens when you combine FEC campaign contribution statements with the Internet: a tool for looking up how much your neighbors contributed to whom. All calculations are based...","rel":"","context":"In "Politics & Law"","block_context":{"text":"Politics & Law","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/politics-law"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":41455,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2014\/03\/18\/money-is-speech-my-friend.html","url_meta":{"origin":7354,"position":5},"title":"Money is speech, my friend","author":"***Dave","date":"Tue 18-Mar-14 4:51pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Or that's the direction that the Supreme Court has increasingly taken over the years, striking down campaign spending and contribution laws based on the idea that, just like funding a knight to fight in the Crusades would net you a plenary indulgence to wipe away your sins, so, too, spending\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7354","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7354"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7354\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7354"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7354"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7354"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}