[EL] YouTube, Beware: Election-spending regulator sets sights on political Internet videos

[Adam Bonin]

Ravel’s statement is here: http://eqs.fec.gov/eqsdocsMUR/14044363872.pdf

The GOP Commissioners’ statement is here: http://eqs.fec.gov/eqsdocsMUR/14044363864.pdf 

 

I am a charter member of the Hands off the Internet brigade … but this is not an issue which was addressed back then, because during the commenting period in spring of 2005, the state of technology was such that no one IIRC discussed the possibility that you could place video online on someone else’s site for mass distribution for free.  YouTube didn’t take off until later that year and into 2006.

 

That said, the “YouTube loophole” is hardly a new issue – see, e.g., http://www.salon.com/2007/03/27/youtube_3/  -- and legislative fixes have been proposed for just as long.  http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d110:h.r.00894: 

 

Adam C. Bonin
The Law Office of Adam C. Bonin
1900 Market Street, 4th Floor
Philadelphia, PA 19103
(215) 864-8002 (w)
(215) 701-2321 (f)
(267) 242-5014 (c)

adam at boninlaw.com

http://www.boninlaw.com <http://www.boninlaw.com/> 

 

From: law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu [mailto:law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu] On Behalf Of Robbin Stewart
Sent: Friday, October 24, 2014 11:41 PM
To: Election Law
Subject: [EL] YouTube, Beware: Election-spending regulator sets sights on political Internet videos

 

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/10/24/youtube-beware-election-spending-regulator-sets-sights-on-political-internet/

 

http://ballots.blogspot.com/2014/10/httpwww_24.html

 

The infallible Fox News reports that FEC Vice-Chair Ann Ravel is calling for investigation of youtube videos without disclaimers. Tactically I may be making a mistake posting this on a Friday night, but I just caught the article.

 

To me this ties in with her recent request for comments on the disclosure/disclaimer issues. I thought we settled this ten years ago with the "hands off the internet" campaign, but even I will admit that there are some adjustments to be made in light of CU, superpacs, etc. 

 

I encourage members of this list who do submit comments to copy them to the list for discussion purposes.

I think both the pro and con factions are well represented here. Perhaps someone could draft a proposed joint statement that some of us would want to sign on to.

 

- Robbin Stewart.

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://webshare.law.ucla.edu/Listservs/law-election/attachments/20141025/cd087ebc/attachment.html>