Almost four years ago, campaign finance "reformer" groups (dinosaurs, all of them), set out to destroy political blogging. They had allies, like Carol Darr, then the president of the Institute of Politics, Democracy, and the Internet at George Washington University, and Tom Allen, recently defeated Senate candidate in Maine. Working together, they set out to eliminate the nefarious threat of regular people discussing politics and organizing online.
One of our allies in that fight, Leslie Harris of the Center for Democracy and Technology, writes about those difficult times.
Just four years ago, a federal court ordered the Federal Election Commission to write a new set of rules addressing political activity in cyberspace. The 2004 presidential election cycle saw a flourishing of online political activities, and the commission had no guidelines on how to treat such activity vis-à-vis campaign finance rules.
Some lawmakers and advocates clamored for rules to govern online political speech, and a court in Washington backed them up, requiring the FEC to move forward with a notice of proposed rulemaking to impose campaign finance rules on the Internet.
In a first draft written by FEC staff, the agency started down a problematic path by suggesting a host of rules that would have subjected even the most banal online political speech to a myriad of campaign finance reporting and federal recordkeeping.
Every link from a citizen's own site Web site to that of a candidate would have triggered potential campaign finance regulations and swept many bloggers into the purview of the law. Ordinary citizens might have been compelled to consult lawyers before they engaged in online political activity.
The situation prompted a stark question: Would the Internet be allowed to foster a new era of citizen political activity through openness and innovation, or would it be turned into a chilling regulatory minefield, subject to arcane and ill-fitting finance laws?
Our own Adam B worked pro bono to represent the interests of three bloggers -- me, Matt Stoller, and Duncan Black (Atrios), and by extension, the broader netroots. He tirelessly wrote briefs, reviewed draft rules, lobbied decision makers in DC, helped organize our allies on the Hill, and served as the nexus of our pushback against the well-heeled, powerful, and unaccountable "reformer groups". We teamed up with conservative bloggers. Many of us testified at FEC hearings. Stoller was ambushed by Carol Darr, who spun a fantastic story about Haliburton -- gasp! -- starting a blog!!!! It was clear that the prospect gave her night terrors. During my testimony, I sat next to a wanker complaining that if the Arizona Republican Party put up a picture of John McCain on its website, that they needed to count the number of pixels in that picture, divide it by the resolution of the website, and then apply that cost to a federal account. Or some crazy-ass nonsensical bullshit like that.
More from Harris:
Flexing its newly found online political muscle, the blogosphere came alive and a coalition was formed using the Internet as an organizing tool. My organization, the Center for Democracy and Technology, helped lead an online campaign that urged the FEC to protect individuals' online political speech from burdensome regulation.
Although we sought to protect blogs as much as possible, we also reached farther to protect all political speech by individuals, whether in blogs, video, e-mail or any other electronic form. The FEC paid attention and backed away from harsh mandates in favor of narrow rules that left most citizen-initiated online political activities open, innovative and free from regulation.
It was actually a thing of beauty -- the FEC's commissioners tossed out their draft rules and wrote new regulations that were even more protective of our nascent medium than we had dared hope. Ultimately, they gave us net-connected riff-raff complete freedom to do what we wanted online. It was a stunning concession to people-power, and a remarkable display of foresight by the commission's bipartisan members.
It was particularly welcome because the "reformer" groups had garnered significant support (led by Reps. Marty Meehan and Tom Allen) in Congress to pass far more restrictive legislation, waging a brutally dishonest campaign to scare and mislead their fellow House members about the intent and effect of regulating our activities. I don't exaggerate when I said that had we failed in those efforts -- either at the FEC or in Congress -- this site wouldn't exist in its current form.
The most important lesson is to trust the Internet. The Internet is not a "problem to be solved" as lawmakers often view it. It is our most important and innovative tool for reinvigorating our democracy and returning power to the people.
Internet values -- openness, innovation and freedom -- are American values, and if lawmakers can resist the constant pressure to fool around with those values, the Internet will return the favor by doing its part to help advance a range of important societal goals.
I doubt there is a member of Congress elected this year who hasn't directly benefitted from the FEC's decision to allow political speech on the Internet to develop unfettered. This is surely a lesson from the past that should be carried forward: When Congress start to engage in policymaking involving the Internet it must start from that understanding.
When we treat the Internet as a problem and a danger, we get into trouble; yet, when we recognize the Internet as a problem solver, as an opportunity giver, we empower people to find innovative answers to tough problems.
It's important to remember that this great empowering medium exists because people fought to open it up in the face of foes determined to destroy it. The medium may be markedly different in 2008 than it was in 2005, and there's no doubt we have far more allies these days than three years ago, but we can't remain complacent as we protect the ground we've won and move the fight into new territory, such as the big net neutrality showdown expected in the next couple of years.