Free speech fight on the Internet

Congress is fighting over a bill that would protect bloggers from having to file onerous reports on their activities. Part of the fall out of the 2002 campaign finance law is strict regulations on campaigning and candidate support. The problem arises because the law is so vague that a private citizen with a lightly read blog who endorses a candidate for election would fall under the regulation of the Federal Election Committee.

Most of the original sponsors of the bill agree that they never intended to try to regulate the speech of private citizens, but instead were trying to limit the influence of well-organized groups. But the Law of Unintended Consequences kicked in on this one, as it seems to so often when legislators are involved.

Blogging, in principle, is no different than the pamphleteering that was so popular in the early days of the country. Tom Paine, one of America's greatest political writers and analysts, was a blogger. He wrote down his own thoughts, published them at his own expense, and distributed his thoughts to interested readers. That's blogging, and I don't think a Federal Commission should be telling us what we can and cannot write.

What baffles me is how this has become a partisan issues. Both conservative and liberal bloggers stand to lose from limits on free speech. It is almost always the case that if you seek to limit the speech of your opponents in the U.S., the laws come back around to bite you. What might look like clever political strategy today could be disastrous a year from now. More voices is a good thing, and I don't see the need for limits on speech. Right or left, the more the merrier--that is what America is all about.

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