July 12, 2005

FEC Hearings

The Washington Post today has a good story on the current state of the FEC's hearings on blogs and blogging. Several prominent bloggers seem to want complete media exemption, and several non-bloggers think that they must be regulated by campaign finance laws.

The commission, which is evenly split between Republicans and Democrats and needs a majority vote to approve new policy, is expected to decide the issue this fall. Ellen L. Weintraub, one of the Democratic commissioners, said the FEC appears to have all but decided against regulating bloggers and is now hashing out what, if anything, it needs to do to protect them against government oversight. The FEC could give all bloggers the media exemption, or it could massage other provisions in the law to provide what some said would amount to similar protections.

Perhaps this will all turn out ok, but I think the best thing for the FEC to do is to just stay out of the entire debate altogether. Of course it really doesn't matter to me as I'm going to keep doing what I'm doing no matter what they decide.

(ht: Volokh Conspiracy)

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