America tries to silence political bloggers
[ratings]
A new senate bill in bill in the US will force any political blogger to register and report quarterly toCongress in a similar fashion to Street Lobbyists. Section 220 of S. 1, the lobbying reform bill currently before the Senate would amend existing lobbying reporting law by creating the most expansive intrusion on First Amendment rights ever. This is definitely a first, all critics of the US government will have to register and go before Congress to explain themselves.
They are sneaking this law in under the guise of any blogger who makes money from politics needs to register. Their interpretation in this case is that bloggers who have a readership of over 500 are making money from it. This isn’t always the case of course, and blogs, considering their readership are usualy quite web savvy, do not benefit much from advertising.
Thousands of bloggers have already called the Senate office with complaints about Section 220 which seeks to prevent their freedom of speech, they claim.
Even more suspect is the fact that by paying money, you can avoid having to report. In other words, this is only going to negatively affect small/medium time bloggers who want to air their views.
As one blogger stated: “Congress is trying to blame the grassroots, which are American
citizens engaging in their First Amendment rights, for Washington’s
internal corruption problems.”
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UPDATE
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Well it looks like the votes are in. And the result is….the political bloggers are free to roam the world and deal out critique as they please, just about.
[ratings]
on January 19th, 2007 at 10:05 am
\o/ Yay for democracy
on January 19th, 2007 at 10:34 am
The vote was close, 57 for, 43 against. The ironic thing now that you say that Dan is, the 43 against were all ‘Democrats’.
on January 19th, 2007 at 11:31 am
Admittedly I didn’t actually look at the list closely, but I’m genuinely surprised at that …