Thursday, March 03, 2005

It Turns Out SoCalPundit Was Correct Not To Endorse A Candidate For LA Mayor

Because if we had, we might have set our self up to have to pay some fines to the Federal Elections Commission. It seems that although traditional news organizations are exempt from being fined under current election laws, the same might not be extended to bloggers such as SoCalPundit.com.

In 2002, the FEC exempted the Internet by a 4-2 vote, but U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly last fall overturned that decision. "The commission's exclusion of Internet communications from the coordinated communications regulation severely undermines" the campaign finance law's purposes, Kollar-Kotelly wrote.
Why wouldn't the news exemption cover bloggers and online media?
Because the statute refers to periodicals or broadcast, and it's not clear the Internet is either of those. Second, because there's no standard for being a blogger, anyone can claim to be one, and we're back to the deregulated Internet that the judge objected to. Also I think some of my colleagues on the commission would be uncomfortable with that kind of blanket exemption.
UPDATE: Instapundit.com is updating on this subject here.



0 comments: