Concern about the possible application of campaign finance restrictions to the Internet and the blog world is causing a re-examination of exactly how these laws came to be, anyway.

Thid exhumation is finding some things that aren't pretty, including the huge amount of money that went into agitprop in favor of McCain-Feingold, as detailed by Ryan Sager of the NY Post, here and here. Links to source material are on Sager's blog, under the title The Goods.

Now we will see what the general media does with this material, which is particularly embarrassing because it proves that media coverage of the campaign finance issue had certain shortfalls in the competency department, the honesty department, or both. Those of us who studied the matter knew this, but, pre-Internet, had no effective way to communicate the knowledge.

Aside from the media and the foundations nailed by Sager, the institution that comes out of this the worst is the Supreme Court, with its 300 pages on the evils of big money in McConnell v. FEC, most of which now appear irrelevant to what was actually going on.

If the "reformers" persist in their efforts to eliminate political speech from politics, including the Internet, there will be some interesting confrontations, including massive Internet-based civil disobedience. Net mobs -- a new concept.

posted by James DeLong @ 3:43 PM | Internet: P2P, Search Engines...

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