People in Their PJs v. BCRA: Round 1

I just read a trippy, TRIPPY article about how the mere presence of Blogs has the potential to significantly change our current campaign finance laws! And not for the better.

As we all know, the FEC suddenly discovered the Internet (maybe they met Al Gore?) and have decided to investigate regulating political speech on it. Now, the FEC doesn't really want to regulate speech on the Internet, but they've been ordered to by a federal judge. So, they've pretty much stated that they will do as little as possible - including extending the "media exemption" to bloggers. This means that labor unions and corporations, banned from political participation for a long time, will also be exempt as long as they limit their participation to the Internet.

In short, as everyone gets to own the equivalent of a printing press, and everyone can become a journalist, the corporate and labor limit on campaign activity stands to be swallowed up by the media exemption

And what happens a few years from now when we receive both our Internet computer access and television signals through the same cable or signal? Is a political program broadcast or beamed from your favorite (incorporated) environmental group or evangelical organization going to get the benefit of the media exemption?

Thus, it is not clear how the FEC can give a broad exemption to bloggers now without exempting all electronic media later. For some anti-regulatory commissioners, this may be precisely the point.

Trippy stuff...