I was reading some stuff at CNET News.com, and came across an article entitled “The coming crackdown on blogging“. Turns out the article doesn’t have THAT much to do with blogging after all.
Author Declan McCullagh talks about efforts to extend “a controversial 2002 campaign finance law to the Internet”. Such an extension would count hyperlinks to a candidate’s website as a contribution for example, and the impact on blogging is a question of whether or not blogs would be given press exemption. Bradley Smith, the gentleman interview by McCullagh, says the time is right to act because both Democrats and Republicans used the Internet to their advantage in the last campaign.
Here’s my question – how is this relevant? First of all, I don’t consider the Internet a form of media, like newspapers or radio for example. The Internet is more like another world, complete with it’s own newspapers, television, radio, etc. For that reason, I do not think the Internet should be treated the same as a form of “traditional media”. Secondly, the Internet does not equal the United States and the United States does not equal the Internet. What about people in other countries linking to a candidate’s website? Certainly the interest is there.
Trying to regulate the Internet is a bad idea. We’ve seen this many times over the last decade. When will the lawmakers learn?
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