[CS-FSLUG] The coming crackdown on blogging

[jrichie@bible.edu]

I'm sad to see this. It seems an unfair regulation on individuals
freedom of speech. I run a personal blog and I talk with my friends
through it. I have no monetary gain. This could easily leak into some
very bad areas.

JSR/

On Fri, 2005-03-04 at 09:10 -0500, Fred A. Miller wrote:
> http://news.com.com/2008-1028_3-5597079.html
> 
> The coming crackdown on blogging
> March 3, 2005, 4:00 AM PT
> By Declan McCullagh
> 
> 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.
> 
> Smith and the other two Republican commissioners wanted to appeal the 
> Internet-related sections. But because they couldn't get the three 
> Democrats to go along with them, what Smith describes as a "bizarre" 
> regulatory process now is under way.
> 
> [...remainder of Q&A snipped...]
>