Dear FEC: The founding fathers would have loved the internet

Here's my note to the FEC:

Dear FEC;

The internet will dramatically change political discourse.

But it will do so in a way that the founding fathers would love.  

They'd be thrilled to see every citizen able to run their own press.  Ben Franklin would be beside himself, and his blog would be world-renowned.  Tom Paine would have been a blogger.

They'd be thrilled at the flexibility and speed that it adds to our discussions on important issues.  Tom Jefferson would have a blog apiece on botany, liberty and winemaking, I suspect.

They'd be wiring Independence Hall, videoconferencing with their peers in Europe and California.  They'd have contemplated technology-laden concepts like online voting and instant runoff elections.

(more...)

(crossposted from www.43rdstateblues.com)

The founding fathers would have recognized that scarcity of radio and television would create expensive barriers to fair/equal political speech in the US.  And that, unlike radio and television, the internet frees us from scarcity, the single biggest factor in the huge costs associated with political speech in America.

Yeah, the founding fathers would have loved the internet.  

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Now, my background:  

I've watched computers turn the world upside-down longer than nearly anyone, written countless programs, played with hypertext before the web existed, played with the first pre-release versions of the first web browser, wrote my first webpages the same day I discovered it, and made a nice living from doing these things.  I currently am a consulting expert in internet security, where I advise banks and Fortune-500 firms and others on all the complexities of using the internet. In short, I'm a certified expert both in the human aspects and the  technical aspects of internet communication.

And despite seeing a promising amount of commentary decrying the possible harm here, I'm concerned.

I'm concerned that the FEC might mistakenly create rules thatrestrict my personal activity as they go about determining how to handle 'blogging' or other online activity.  

Politically, I donated more than $40 to a politician for the first time in the 2004 presidential primary.  Since then, with my wife losing her fulltime job, we can't afford to donate like that again soon.

On the other hand, I've been arguing politics with adults since I was 12.  I've pursuaded a few people, I'm sure.  And I've been quick to write letters-to-the-editor or attend gatherings in support of candidates I like.  None of this cost me anything, and in many respects it is the same thing I do now, that you're considering regulating:

I help someone run a political blog.  I'm the technical expert, and occasionally, I write a few paragraphs on some issue that concerns me.  We have 5 volunteer writers and a readership of roughly a dozen or two per day.  Only a few people per day are newcomers visiting the site for a first (and usually last) time.  

Regulating blogs impacts that sort of use.  Treating it as needing financial regulations could shut us down completely.   That would be ironic, because I could as easily create emails of each new story  posted and send it to a subscriber list of emails.  To me, and any other network expert, it would be absurd to think of blogging as being substantially different from email lists or friends-lists or faxes used for spreading jokes and pictures  and stories.

I read many blogs.  From them, I follow links to reuters, and cbs and nbc and fox and several major newspapers... wherever an interesting story leads, I follow.  Blogs literally are how I find and read my news, although I still subscribe to the local paper, since that is not a resource that has been matched by anything online.  Yet.

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While many people seem to share my view, I've seen considerable short-sighted writing by people that believe themselves to be expert on news.  These people always seem blind to the way that newspaper publishers used to openly advocate for candidates.  Historically, publisher activism or advocacy parallels the internet today: anyone can use a blog or email or a website or photos or Flash animation or digitized movies to present their case to a wide audience.  The difference is that now, we're all able to do so.  An unfettered internet levels the playing field.

Citizens will be best served if nothing is done to impact this.  Rather than fearing blogs or regulating the internet, recognize that the internet is a grand equalizer:

A marginalized, underfunded candidate with a message that resonates can compete more fairly via the internet than via mainstream media.

Yeah, the founding fathers would have loved the internet.

Please, avoid fiddling with the one mechanism that stands a chance of revitalizing and equalizing the american political proocess.

Thanks for your consideration,

(d2 at 43rdstateblues)