Pirate's Cove

The Democracy Project has the FYI on proposed rule-making from the FEC regarding the Internet and "public communication." (Hat tip to Prof. Reynolds) Looks like Cass might be right here and here. Ornery woman ;)

One point of note:

This comment is by Brent Tantillo, also of the Democracy Project. The main wrinkle in the proposed FEC rules, to my eye, is regarding the use of corporate facilities or property (such as computers) for blogging or other Internet activities that could constitute “public communication”. The proposed rule allows “stockholders and employees of the corporation…[to] make occasional, isolated, or incidental use of the facilities of a corporation for individual volunteer activities in connection with a Federal election and will be required to reimburse the corporation only to the extent that the overhead or operating costs of the corporation are increased.” So what happens if an employee engages in something more than incidental use of corporate facilities? Does this constitute a “public communication” under the proposed rules? Will the corporation be fined or subject to criminal penalties for nondisclosure of such activity? By only excluding Internet activities that occur in "public facilities", or in one’s residence, corporations may be subject to monitoring and banning any sort of blogging by employees on the premises. Considering that most blogs are read during the workday, this could be a particularly heinous limit on free speech.

I still would like there to be a rule about canvassing for contributions included in the language, specifically, those who have direct donation boxes to candidates, PAC, 527’s, and political parties to be included. This would wipe out half of the Left-o-sphere’s reason to blog :)