• by Shankar Gupta , November 4, 2005

A proposed bill that would exempt the Internet from the 2002 Bipartisan Campaign Finance Reform Act, commonly known as McCain-Feingold, was defeated Thursday in the House of Representatives after being proposed under special rules that limited debate and amendments.

Because the bill was introduced under special rules, passage required a two-thirds majority; instead, the vote was 225 in favor of passage, to 182 opposed.

Some bloggers, including Michael Krempasky of RedState.org and Markos Moulitsas of DailyKos.com, had championed the bill. They argued that FEC regulation of public communications on the Internet potentially limits bloggers' abilities to express support of candidates by, for example, writing posts that advocate voting for them, or linking to their Web sites. If such posts or links were considered a form of advertising, the FEC could treat them as campaign contributions, which are subject to regulation.

Democratic political consultant Michael Bassik, who advocated exempting the Internet from campaign finance laws, said that the current rules could lead to the government treating political speech online differently than in print. "The rules were not written in a way that understood or even considered the Internet as being a viable player," he said.

But critics of the defeated bill argue that exempting the Internet from campaign finance laws would open a loophole for unfettered spending on Internet political ads by special interests and corporations. "We understand and we sympathize with folks in cyberspace who care about their free speech rights," said Celia Wexler, the vice president for advocacy for Common Cause, which advocates limits on campaign contributions. "But this bill went too far, because it would've opened the door completely up to special interests gaming the system and throwing millions of dollars into political ads that wouldn't be regulated at all."

Although defeated, the bill has not yet been killed, and could be advanced in the House under normal rules allowing debate and amendments. The bill is currently making its way through the Senate.