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From the diaries -- kos)
Please read this diary to understand what's being discussed here, and the scope of what I'm doing on behalf of clients you know and love.
The Federal Register today published its official Notice of Proposed Rulemaking regarding the regulation of political activities over the internet -- PDF, HTML.
Comments are due on June 3, and as I've previous urged, if you have any comment you want to make to the FEC regarding these regulations, you do not need to be a lawyer or have a lawyer. It is your right and obligation as a citizen to email your comments directly to the FEC at internet@fec.gov, and I strongly encourage you to do so.
[Side note: Yes, the Reid proposal, if passed, would eliminate the need for all of this. But we have to assume that we're going through this process. Also, this is not the space for Regulation = Bad; it's not within the FEC's discretion to do nothing here.]
So, the NPRM asks a number of questions, and I wanted to throw two out there for now for your debate and comment. But feel free to discuss here any issue that's raised in the FEC proposal.
1. Under present law, which the FEC is not proposing the change, the obligation is on the campaign to disclose if it's paying a blogger to post on its behalf, and not on the blogger to disclose that she has been paid. (Think about the Thune bloggers.) (And this is apart from receiving advertising, which we'll get to later.)
However, given that campaigns need only file such byzantine reports every three months, and given the instantaneous nature of internet communications, there's an argument to be made that some more direct, immediate disclosure (by the campaign or the website) is necessary for transparency's sake, or campaigns will be able to get away with even more dirty tricks in the future, the financial links undisclosed until it's too late.
On the internet, unlike print/radio/tv, new media sources can pop up every day, at little cost, with no indication of who's behind them, and can quickly affect the public debate.
So, what should be the rule here?
2. Current FEC regulations absolutely bar the use of corporate or labor funds on federal campaigns (save separate PACs), but there's an exception for employees to engage in volunteer activities and use company facilities at work so long as that use is "occasional, isolated, or incidental." In other words -- so long as you're not being paid by your company to engage in political advocacy, you can write a letter to the editor during your lunch break; you just can't spend five hours a day fundraising on your company phone on company time.
They're trying to expand that safe harbor to the Internet as well -- however, the current definition of what's "occasional, isolated, or incidental" covers only one hour a week, or four hours per month. Clearly, that's far less than what many here do on company time, but there still needs to be some regulation so that Wal-Mart can't have Fridays Are Post On FreeRepublic.com Days for their senior staff. So, the question is, what's a reasonable limit here?
Again, your thoughts on any of these issues are welcome. Thanks.