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What follows is a transcript of the introductory portion, of the Internet Advisory Caucus' panel on the FEC's rulemaking process. McCain-Feingold in Cyberspace.

This transcript portion includes remarks by John Morris of the Center for Democracy & Technology. A full index of panel transcripts is available here.

John Morris, Center for Democracy & Technology: Well, thanks very much, for inviting me. I mean let me say, I want to start out by making the same point that Mike just finished with, but I’m afraid I can’t possibly top the 350 year old rat analogy. But I mean, CDT has, dating back to the late 90’s when the FEC started really looking at the internet, we’ve been an advocate of keeping a deregulatory approach to online political speech.

Because we fundamentally don’t view the Internet as part of the problem: we view the Internet as part of the solution to many of the concerns raised by the campaign finance laws. Our perception is that underlying those laws are fears that big money can buy political influence, and fears that big money can drown out small speakers. And we see the Internet as helping to address those problems directly. The Internet has radically broadened the sources of political news for Americans, and it enables millions of small speakers to express their political views in ways that just were completely impossible um, a few short years ago. So while we don’t argue that online speech cannot flatly be regulated, we do think that it’s a critical thing that any rules that the FEC finalizes and promulgates must ensure that small speakers can express their political views online, and can do so without hiring a lawyer.

I mean just as Mike just said, the rules are very, very complicated, it’s very difficult to know what you can do in this, in a particular situation. And so I’m hopeful through the process we can move to some simpler and easier-to-understand rules. And, and let me say that we applaud the FEC for the cautious approach that they have started out in, and headed in, in their Notice of Proposed Rulemaking. By focusing the NPRM on situations where money actually changes hands, they’ve gone a great distance to, to limit the reach and the scope of what they’re doing, and, and we really do appreciate those efforts.

But, having said that, we have very serious continuing concerns about the potential harmful impact that the new regulations will have on online political speech. And our concerns are really rooted in, kind of three almost fundamental points about, about the campaign finance laws, and how those laws map onto the Internet.

First, the Internet is really, we think, a fundamentally different medium from most other forms of mass communication, so that the very theory of the campaign finance law doesn’t really map well. With broadcast, cable, newspapers, billboards, the general assumption is that you have to spend a fair amount of money to be able to communicate um, to a large audience, and, and that is obviously, you know, quite different than the Internet. In contrast to, you know, the thousands or tens of thousands of dollars that it costs to, to place an ad on TV, we measure the cost of individual Internet ads in pennies. And, and so the, the assumptions that a paid political ad is, inherently means big money simply doesn’t necessarily translate over to the Internet. So we need to...simultaneously figure out a way to be concerned about the massive expenditure of money, but still not prohibit small expenditures of money.

So, secondly, we, as has already been mentioned, we’re very concerned about the concept of the news media, and, how the traditional concept of the media will translate onto the Internet. I mean we perceive that the, there’s kind of an implicit assumption that the news media is a relatively well-defined, relatively well small group of organizations and some individuals. But, you know on the Internet, as we know, there are thousands, or tens of thousands of sources of information. And many of those sources are run by individuals or very small groups, they’re run by small speakers – just precisely the kind of speaker that, that I think we’re trying to promote, and trying to facilitate their ability to speak. So, I mean, here again, we need to be sure that the regulations don’t have the opposite effect of our goal, and don’t end up discouraging the small speakers from, from being able to speak.

And third, let me say that I appreciate that the task of applying the campaign finance laws to the Internet is like trying to fit a square peg into a round hole, and the FEC is trying hard to do the right thing. But, I’m very concerned that, that the effort today, and the efforts you seen in the NPRM, and the questions that the Commission raised, are trying to accommodate political speech in today’s internet, but are going to fail to accommodate political speech in tomorrow’s Internet. Because we can’t sit here right now and imagine the forms and modes of speech that are going to be available to us in five years, or in ten years. And by focusing only say, on blogging, and perhaps even putting blogging in some special reserved place, we may well be, you know, making some other form harder. And in fact, what’s the bigger concern is that we may even discourage the development of the other form of communication.

In other words, if blogging has a special place, or if we define a certain type of communication that’s “OK,” that’s regulation free, but someone has a slightly different idea, we might discourage the development of that idea. So, I mean, we feel that it’s very important that the rules that are applied to the Internet leave a very wide berth for innovation and new models of political speech.

And let, let me close by saying that, and I believe as, as I think that Chairman Thomas already said that, that the FEC already knows very well that it doesn’t fully understand the Internet. And, and I heard at the meeting last week, I heard a number of, essentially, requests or pleas to the Internet community to help the FEC work through these, these very difficult factual questions about how this all will play out in the Internet space. And, and so I mean, I don’t want to suggest that the Commission is not trying to address the very concerns that I’m raising. CDT is already working with a broad coalition of organizations to try to identify some of these possible, potential impacts. And we look forward to working with the Commission and working with, really I think a broad range of stakeholders to see if there are ways that we can both pursue, and, and fulfill, the goals of campaign finance reform, but still allow a broad range of speech to go on the Internet.