Posted on 10/09/2009 11:51:14 AM PDT by FromLori
The rules are arcane, but their essence is simple. If a regular person says something online that an FTC official finds fishy, the agency can investigate. To do that, the rules say, feds will have to check out individuals' finances, examine what they've received in the mail and review what they've posted on the Internet for evidence of corporate taint.
Obvious civil liberties concerns aside, the FTC leadership must be delusional. Even Google tracks only a small fraction of the torrent of new posts, comments, videos, podcasts and other online chatter added to the Internet every day. Now a bunch of Washington bureaucrats think they are going to become the police in a neighborhood so big no one can measure it. Perhaps the company that did the last complete inventory of sand on public beaches will be available to help.
Which brings up that irritating relic of 1791: the First Amendment. How is the FTC going to define the difference between unregulated journalists at real media companies and the bloggers who need federal supervision? Journalists get fired and start blogs. Bloggers get hired by media companies. Bloggers join together and start their own media companies. Bloggers appear on TV and write for the dead-tree editions of newspapers. Media companies buy blogs. Media companies launch blogs. Such a vast gray area is an opportunity for plenty of mischief.
Indeed, it is exactly on this gray area that the FTC says it will focus. The more commercial, popular, long-standing and successful a blogger or tweeter is, the more likely he will fall under the new rules.
If the four FTC commissioners who voted for this fiasco had any sense, they would skip the inevitable lawsuits and go back to their real jobs.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...
The Obama White House has been paying Democrats to post blog comments to defend this administration. The article was on FR this week.
“Do as I say, not as I do.”
book mark
They are not stupid. They know they can't police the net. It is the threat they are after.
"..RULE 9: "The threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself." Imagination and ego can dream up many more consequences than any activist. (Perception is reality. Large organizations always prepare a worst-case scenario, something that may be furthest from the activists' minds. The upshot is that the organization will expend enormous time and energy, creating in its own collective mind the direst of conclusions. The possibilities can easily poison the mind and result in demoralization.).."
A complaint is put in against move-on.org and a complaint against FR. Which one will be investigated?
hmmmmmm.
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