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March 11, 2005

Free Speech or Campaign Finance Reform

The blogosphere is all abuzz with scary visions of government crack-downs on political speech on the internet. Our country was founded on political speech expressed in the form of printed hand-bills -- flyers -- without which ideas of freedom and democracy would have never taken hold. There is no possibility that any law that sought to regulate the electronic version of the same thing would stand for a second in any U.S. court.

Even if it does, how could the government enforce it? The internet is replete with pornography that is clearly illegal in the U.S. Yet legislators and law enforcement is powerless to stop it because it is hosted on servers outside of U.S. juristidction.

Samizdata's Perry de Havilland, a London resident, says if needs be, the same strategy can be used for political blogging:

There are few things more corrosive to the power of the state than for it to decree something and then be seen to be unable to enforce its writ. So let Colleen Kollar-Kotelly do her worst. You want to link to a Democratic or Republican campaign site regardless of what regulations say you can or cannot do? Simple... off-shore hosting. Host your blog outside the USA and post using a pseudonym (like maybe "Tom Paine" or "Ben Franklin") and then link to whoever the hell you want to. Moreover put a banner on your blog saying "This Blog is in wilful [sic] violation of US Campaign Laws and there is not a damn thing you can do about it".

That would just about do it.

Posted by bubba138 at March 11, 2005 08:14 AM