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Online User-Generated Political Content Spared In Campaign Finance Law Reform

Federal regulators have brought political advertising on the Internet under the nation's campaign finance law, by unanimously adopting a rule that requires anyone placing a political ad on a site to abide by federal campaign spending and contribution limits. However, the ruling was also clear that other political Internet activity, such as blogging, e-mail, and starting one's own online publication, would not be covered by the campaign law. Ads for or against federal candidates will be paid by money regulated by the law, which limits individual spending to $2,000 and bans union and corporate donations. Some Internet users had feared broader restrictions, but instead the new ruling gives "categorical and unqualified" exemption to all individual and group political activity on the Web, except paid advertising. This means that bloggers, for all their loudmouth punditry, would be entitled to the same exemption from campaign finance law as newspapers and other forms of traditional media--as bloggers should be. Having said that, I can also see big corporations dumping lots of money into blogs that would look and sound suspiciously like official candidate Web sites.

Read the whole story at Associated Press »

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