Myanmar's Campaign Finance Reform

Agitators said that money has corrupted 'the political process'. Thus our wise incumbents realized that to save democracy they had to place limits on citizens spending money on speech to defeat them. I'm sure that Myanmar agrees with John McCain that it's in the interest of the state to keep political opposition at a minimum.

...among things forbidden by Myanmar's Web regulations, introduced in January 2000, are the posting of "any writings directly or indirectly detrimental to the current policies" of the government. The rules also forbid "any writings detrimental to the interests of the Union of Myanmar." news.com

The OpenNet Initiative found that Myanmar blocked 84% of internet sites likely to have politically 'sensitive' material, "including nearly all political opposition and pro-democracy pages tested. These findings align with Burma’s well-documented efforts to monitor e-mail communication by its citizens and to control political dissent and opposition movements."

Some might call this a violation of free speech. But since the passage of McCain-Feingold I think of it more as campaign finance reform.

Like Myanmar, our congress passed, our President signed, and our Supreme Court upheld a law called McCain-Feingold (despite something called the First Amendment), that classifies and restricts a new form of speech called: "Electioneering Communication." Apparently this is how the law doesn't violate the first amendment: it's not free speech, it's 'Electioneering Communication'.

And you wondered what the big deal was about the UN taking over governance of the internet. After all, Myanmar has a right to have a voice in how the internet is run, do they not? Along with China, and Iran.

China: "We feel that the public policy issue of Internet should be solved jointly by the sovereign states in the U.N. framework...For instance, spam, network security and cyberspace--we should look for an appropriate specialized agency of the United Nations as a competent body." news.com

China's campaign finance laws are so much more advanced than ours. Their elections are completely publically financed with no taint of private or filthy corporate cash corrupting their political process. Oh, wait they don't really have national elections do they? Has McCain heard about this yet? Whatever you do don't tell him about that or China's newest campaign finance reform which will regulate Electioneering Communication on the internet.

"The state bans the spreading of any news with content that is against national security and public interest," the official Xinhua news agency said in announcing the new rules, which took effect immediately.

The news agency did not detail the rules, but said Internet news sites must "be directed toward serving the people and socialism and insist on correct guidance of public opinion for maintaining national and public interests."

Established news media needed permission to run a news Web site, it said. New operators had to register themselves with government information offices. news.com

Thank god that could never happen here. This is America, not a third world dictatorship.

If Congress doesn't change the law, what kind of activities will the FEC have to target?
We're talking about any decision by an individual to put a link (to a political candidate) on their home page, set up a blog, send out mass e-mails, any kind of activity that can be done on the Internet.

Again, blogging could also get us into issues about online journals and non-online journals. Why should CNET get an exemption but not an informal blog? Why should Salon or Slate get an exemption? Should Nytimes.com and Opinionjournal.com get an exemption but not online sites, just because the newspapers have a print edition as well?

Why wouldn't the news exemption cover bloggers and online media?
Because the statute refers to periodicals or broadcast, and it's not clear the Internet is either of those. Second, because there's no standard for being a blogger, anyone can claim to be one, and we're back to the deregulated Internet that the judge objected to. Also I think some of my colleagues on the commission would be uncomfortable with that kind of blanket exemption.

So if you're using text that the campaign sends you, and you're reproducing it on your blog or forwarding it to a mailing list, you could be in trouble?
Yes. In fact, the regulations are very specific that reproducing a campaign's material is a reproduction for purpose of triggering the law. That'll count as an expenditure that counts against campaign finance law. news.com

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