2.5 Cheers for the FEC
By krempasky Posted in FEC — Comments (1) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
I've been quiet on the final FEC regulations fir a few days - I wanted to get the chance to get through the 96 page document that was posted late last week. The FEC will vote on the rule tomorrow morning at 10am. The rule will pass - so start reading it, folks.
For extended analysis, I recommend:
- Brad Smith
- Allison Hayward, who has about 47 posts on the topic
- Bob Bauer
- A good summary from Commissioners Weintraub and Lenhard
- Adam Bonin
Now that you've read all those - let me say - these regulations aren't bad for the blogosphere. They codify the media exemption, provide an exception from the ban on corporate participation for incorporated bloggers, and bloggers would not have to disclose payments from campaigns. (although, campaigns would be required to do so, which has been our position all along)
So kudos to the FEC - especially Commissioners Weintraub and Toner. The FEC's relatively light touch on the blogosphere is a positive result after this year we've been engaged on the topic.
Now...now comes the fun part. Will the "reform" groups sue over these fairly permissive rules? Can we get a pool going? I mean, I can't imagine anyone would accuse them of simply pandering and posturing in their recent Road to Damascus conversion on internet speech...would they?
Reading the rule, it was clear that the FEC was not just posturing in their attempt to defend free speech and apply a minimalist approach to regulation, of the blogosphere but of campaign speech in general. Their words have the ring of truth to them.
I wrote last week on this that the standard ought to be transmission, that if you cause something to appear that a person wasn't expecting and can't avoid, then you may need to be regulated. It seems the FEC, in looking at the comments people made to them, realized that while that would exclude web sites from regulation, that it didn't quite hit the mark; the standard ought to be money changing hands.
Given that there is regulation of any campaign ads, that's probably the best way to do it.