Why do Marty Meehan and John Tierney Hate the Internet?

I've been meaning to post about H.R. 4194, the Orwellian-named "Internet Anti-Corruption and Free Speech Protection Act of 2005" sponsored by Chris Shays (R-Ct) and Marty Meehan (D-Lowell), for a while now, but Lynne did such a good job last week that I've put it off. Check out her post, which in turn points to this post at DailyKos.com.

While the Shays-Meehan bill would protect individuals who have blogs from having to report to the FEC under campaign finance law, it would not protect group blogs, such as DailyKos.com, MyDD.com, or any other group blog that spent or took in more than $1000 in a calendar year. The $1000 includes server space and bandwidth costs, which can easily exceed that much over the course of a year for a popular website. What does that mean for the blogosphere? It means that while Bill O'Reilly can stump for any candidate he wants on his TV or radio shows, any group blog or other web endeavor (a wiki, podcast, or mailing list, for example) that spends or takes in more than $83 a month could not do so without violating election law unless they register as a political committee.

Proponents of the proposed measures fear that a company, for example, could start up a blog attacking or supporting a candidate, and avoid campaign finance regulations altogether. They worry that without regulation, groups could spend unlimited amounts on Internet ads. If it's ads you're worried about, though, I think there's a limit to how much you can spend on Internet advertising before you run into diminishing returns. Plus, ads on the Internet generally require people to choose to click on them to see the detailed content. That's not true of TV ads that are pushed out onto viewers. That said, there's a difference between web ads and weblogs -- something that people unfamiliar with the medium may not understand. An advertisement has a measurable value -- the amount one charges to put it on the web. What is the value of a blog post? How would you classify it as an in-kind contribution?

Meehan's colleague, Congressman John Tierney (D-Salem), is a cosponsor on H.R. 4194. Of all of the Massachusetts Congressmen, only Mike Capuano (D-Somerville) cast a vote in favor of H.R. 1606 -- the bill which would have codified the FEC rules the Internet operated under during the 2004 campaign cycle. That bill failed, largely due to the efforts of Shays, Meehan and campaign finance groups that have good intentions, but don't necessarily understand the consequences of regulating speech on the Internet. I would hope that the rest of our Congressmen would either reject their new efforts or amend them so that at least Internet commentators get the same protections as commentators in the traditional media.