Bent over blogs
The FEC yesterday exempted almost all political activity on the Internet from regulation except paid ads. This decision makes blogs a significant political force in the 2008 general election.
It's cute that the FEC thought that they could regulate it anyway. They can certainly do what they want to candidates or even politicians in general, but what about pseudonyms in pseudoplaces out there in the Metaverse? Where are the servers? What's their real identity? What's the jurisdiction? As we found out with domain names, it's difficult to take legal action when you don't know the place or the person.
Given yesterday's ruling, bloggers are positioned to become the new voice of politics. They should be a very loud voice in the 2008 primaries, where grassroot efforts become especially critical. It's even more significant because the conventional media has taken to reporting blogs as news. I guess that they've exhausted the permutations of interviewing each other. This factor is the "blogger megaphone."
What's ironic, is that this means that geeks can influence politics. Why do I say this? Because all bloggers are geeks. They might be computer weenies or media groupies or political junkies, but they're still geeks. They learned to be literate while their classmates were giving wedgies and lighting their own emissions. It's great that geeks will have political influence. Their time has come. Just as long as it's not nerds. Nerrrds!
Posted on March 28, 2006
