We think we hear James Madison approving from above! The author and promoter of the Bill of Rights must be looking down with pleasure at the Federal Communication Commission’s (FCC) decision upholding the First Amendment and free speech in its unanimous ruling that political communication on the Internet—including Web logs, setting up Web sites and e-mail—is not regulated by campaign finance laws.
And although the Commission also ruled that paid political advertisements placed on Web sites are covered by the 2002 campaign finance law—which includes restrictions on spending and contributions and bars corporations and unions from using their treasuries to purchase Web advertisements—Madison would be pleased that consistency is being applied. And well he should!
Of course Madison would question why there needs to be an FCC or campaign finance restrictions in the first place—but that’s probably beside the point.
The fact is that there is no reason to treat any political or campaign communication differently. In Madison’s time political communication and campaign methodology consisted of brochures and pamphlets, newspaper op-eds, speeches on the soap box in the town square and perhaps some door-to-door and one-on-one activities.
Fast forward to today, and while we still have newspapers, brochures and public speaking, we also have radio, television and mass distribution over the Internet supplementing—or in some cases replacing—traditional campaign methods.
The activity is the same, only the modalities have changed. For that matter, anyone voting for the first time in 2006 has grown up not knowing life without the Internet and its vast varieties of communications styles. To tell an 18-year-old today that the Internet is different in what content it delivers from television or newspapers would be like telling Gutenberg that the printing press deserved different treatment in its content than hand written manuscripts.
So here’s to the FCC for a vote of confidence in the continuity of communications—and to James Madison, who no doubt had the foresight to understand it.