Sunday, March 06, 2005

Regulating the Internets

It is true as many have asserted that to some degree the alarmist stuff about the FEC regulating internet activity was just someone with an agenda (gutting all campaign finance laws) blowing smoke. But clearly there's interest, especially by the GOP commissioners to do something. So, I don't think a little alarmism is inappropriate.

As I've said, I do think that there are reasonable extensions of campaign finance law to the internet - such as, say, requiring disclosure for paid advertisements or financial relationships between candidates/bloggers. But, the dangers are that they'll define "coordination" very strictly and start considering things to be "in kind contributions."