Opening commercial: I am bemused by the ease with which the political system and the courts have sneakily recast the reformist mission. The original rationale of campaign finance laws was the need to alleviate the corrupting influence of large-scale expenditures. This has transmogrified into a view that any expenditure of money, however trivial, is a jurisdictional hook that allows -- indeed, compels -- the FEC to limit political speech.

And behind this constitutional travesty is the corrupting influence of large-scale expenditures by tendentious foundations, which are, like their academic doppelgangers, opposed to market society.

Now the news: The FEC issued its proposed rules on Internet Communications.

TechDaily (subscription required) says that the Commission backed off from its initial draft under the pressure of the Internet community, and summarizes:

[They] would give the writers of independent Web logs, or blogs, a substantial exemption from campaign-finance disclosure laws, and would leave most of the reporting requirements to campaigns and candidates who pay for Internet advertising. During a somewhat tense hearing, commissioners were defensive, frustrated and bemused at times, but there was general consensus about the need to keep the proposed regulations as narrow as possible to avoid quashing politically related speech online.

Law prof Eugene Volokh worries that the FEC will count Internet activity as a "contribution" unless it is conducted completely via equipment owned by the individual. He notes:

I'm typing this on a UCLA computer right now; I don't personally own it. . . . . The material is being posted on a PowerBlogs host, which I also don't personally own. If the Conspiracy were organized as a corporation — as are most newspapers and magazines — that owned the computers and let the bloggers use them, then I wouldn't be using a computer that I personally own, either. Likewise if I were to blog . . . from a friend's house, or from an office at a school at which I'm visiting.

At TechCentralStation, James Miller thinks the MainStreamMedia will push the FEC to go after blogs.

posted by James DeLong @ 2:40 PM | Internet: P2P, Search Engines...

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