Liberty's Blog

We Won't be Silenced.

A lot has been written about the proposed implementations of the FEC attempting to regulate blogs as political contributions under McCain/Feingold, but not by me. I couldn't believe that they would have the guts to try to pull off something like that, nor could I imagine the blogosphere actually caving in.

FEDERAL ELECTION COMMISSIONER SCOTT THOMAS unnerved some prominent bloggers last Friday when he spoke publicly at a conference at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. about the agency's plans for regulating political donations online. While the media is generally exempt from regulation under campaign finance laws, Thomas indicated that the agency might nonetheless regulate expenditures to blogs and some online publications. "We have shown at the FEC a willingness to extend the media exemption to some Internet-based news services. But this media exception inquiry will go to the question of: 'What is a periodical publication?' and 'What is a legitimate press function?' It will also get into: 'What is news?'...'What is commentary?'...'What is editorial content?'" said Thomas, according to a transcript of his remarks posted at the blog RedState.org.

Although some listeners believed the speech was intended to encourage members of the blogosphere, a number of bloggers reported that it had the opposite effect. "Although it was supposed to be reassuring, it actually left me thinking that the FEC was thinking more seriously about regulating blogs than I had previously believed," wrote prominent InstaPundit blogger Glenn Reynolds on his site. "I wasn't reassured at all, and the complexity of the reasoning he outlined just illustrated how much discretion--and how little real guidance--the FEC has on these kinds of questions."

A few prominent bloggers have taken a stand. Dan Patrick of the Lone Star Times has offered to credential bloggers if the threats come to light. The common stance of bloggers is a willingness to accept civil disobedience. The precict chair offers this oath which I enthusiastically sign on too:

"We are the blogosphere, brothers and sisters, friends and foes, united together in support of freedom. We are diverse voices united in the pursuit of a multiplicity of goals and ideals, based upon our many divergent sets of beliefs and principles. Despite our differences, we together hold firm to this single unifying principle -- freedom of speech is the cornerstone of liberty, and we reject as tyranny efforts by any entity, be it religious, economic, political, or governmental, to regulate or forbid the free exchange of ideas on the internet. We pledge to resist, to the best of our respective abilities, any regulatory scheme which seeks to inhibit or prevent the publication or dissemination of facts and opinions on any matter of public concern, and promise our support to one another in that resistance. We are the blogosphere, and we will not be silenced."

Indeed ...

posted by Liberty @ 7:10 AM