FEC regulation of the internet: Keeping big money out of politics?

Tech Central Station has an interview with Brad Smith today, and an interesting point comes out of it:

We are starting to turn the purpose of regulation on its head. Elihu Root argued that we had to prevent the great accumulations of wealth from taking over politics. That's the direction we are heading now. When we think about who is going to be exempt under the press exemption, I think almost everybody would agree that the big corporations are going to be exempt under press exemption. That is to say that the Washington Post website, well, that's probably exempt. What about Slate, which at one time was owned by Microsoft? Well that's going to be exempt. Why? Because Slate kind of looks and it feels like a newspaper. It comes off the web rather than delivered by paper to my door, but it just has that look and feel and has that kind of sense to it. And then people are going to say, what about maybe a blog such as that run by Glenn Reynolds of InstaPundit or something like that? Well maybe that gets the exemption. But after that it's less clear.

So, if we are to believe that the purpose of McCain and Feingold's campaign finance reform is to keep big money from controlling politics, how do we square this with McCain's statement that

"Â…there is no reason to believe that moneyed interests will not attempt to use the Internet to influence politics and policies as they attempt to do with other modes of communication. Indeed there is every reason to expect that they will."

The answer is you can't. As campaign finance reform becomes more and more pervasive, it becomes clearer and clearer what it is going to accomplish. It is going to become an incumbent preservation initiative. Incumbents have ample opportunity to cozy up to the "legitimate" big money sources out their like the Washington Post or the New York Times. But let's say the Badger Blog Alliance decides to take advertising, much like the Post or the Times does, and the BBA comes out editorially against Russ Feingold's re-election in 6 years. The BBA, which is populated with decidedly un-monied individuals, stands to have it's voice clamped down on, while the Post, the Times, the Wisconsin State Journal, the Capital Times, and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel can stump away for him.

Campaign finance reform was a bad idea to begin with, but too many voters never came to realize this because "exempt" media favored it all the way. As the courts allow this bill to reach further and further into American life, the "exempt" media is oddly silent on this, leaving those of us who find our voices on the internet to sound the bell to the relatively small number of people who regularly read blogs. Because blogs still don't reach the large percentage of the population that the "exempt" media does, much of the population still remains ignorant to the threat. And since the regulation of blogs is good for the "exempt" media after alll, why wouldn't they want to strangle their competition for eyes and ad dollars?), don't expect them to take a stance against this anytime soon.

If you are concerned about politics being controlled by a relative few number of people, you really should be opposed to anything and everything about campaign finance reform, and you should be not only writing your representatives, you should be telling anyone and everyone who will listen about what it is accomplishing: The restriction of otherwise free speech.