More fun with campaign finance reform

[Chmee]

http://www.reason.com/hitandrun/2005/03 ... l#comments

The next target of the federal campaign-finance bureaucracy could be the Internet. Declan McCullagh reports:

In just a few months, [Bradley Smith] 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.

For the whole article, including an interview with Smith, go here.

Campaign finance reform is possibly the most serious threat to the first amendment of the last few years (which is saying something, given the competition).

[nobody]

fuck

[Zaelath]

Yeah.. that's just getting silly.. I can understand why even the politicians want the massive slush funding of wealthy interest groups cut back, but it's hard to even see a real "finance" link to web commentary, especially something like blogs..