Federal Election Commissioner Bradley Smith tells CNET that bloggers and news organizations could soon risk the wrath of the federal government if they improperly link to a campaign's Web site. Even forwarding a political candidate's press release to a mailing list, depending on the details, could be punished by fines, he said.
"The real question is: Would a link to a candidate's page be a problem? If someone sets up a home page and links to their favorite politician, is that a contribution? This is a big deal, if someone has already contributed the legal maximum, or if they're at the disclosure threshold and additional expenditures have to be disclosed under federal law.
Certainly a lot of bloggers are very much out front. Do we give bloggers the press exemption? If we don't give bloggers the press exemption, we have the question of, do we extend this to online-only journals like CNET?"
Lawmakers are going to get involved in these and other blogging legal questions quickly. I just hope the Feds do so before the states start setting precedents like they did with spam. Thankfully the Can-SPAM act was signed last year, ending the confusion - thought it did little to stop spam.
