Thursday, March 03, 2005

The coming crackdown on blogging

"Bradley Smith says that the freewheeling days of political blogging and online punditry are over.

"In just a few months, he warns, bloggers and news organizations could risk the wrath of the federal government if they improperly link to a campaign's Web site. Even forwarding a political candidate's press release to a mailing list, depending on the details, could be punished by fines.

"Smith should know. He's one of the six commissioners at the Federal Election Commission, which is beginning the perilous process of extending a controversial 2002 campaign finance law to the Internet."

Ha! Oh, wait -- this is for real. Good lord.

2 comments:

JohnFen said...

Yeah, we'll see. I doubt this will even really happen -- that it's basically grandstanding. Even if it does, though, I predict it will have only cosmetic effects. At worst, US bloggers will start handing stuff off to bloggers in other countries to post. Good luck tracking all of that.

Mac said...

I think it's pretty dubious, too. Like the myth that the Big Bad Post Office was somehow going to charge for email...