Proposed Law No Threat To Political Bloggers

January 19, 2007 in Web Legal

Information Week reports that there is NO threat to political bloggers from the proposed Legislative Accountability and Transparency Act of 2007.

As Bill O’Reilly might say: Folks, that’s just spin. First off, as I mentioned, the bill itself contains no reference to blogs or bloggers. What it does cover are paid lobbying activities, which include “paid efforts to stimulate grassroots lobbying, but do not include grass roots lobbying,” according the text of the bill itself. It also indicates that the lobbyist must be receiving at least $25,000 per quarter from a client to fall under the “paid” definition.

So, sure. If a blogger is receiving what amounts to a six-figure annual salary from a client, say, Acme River Pollutants, Inc., to write blogs urging people to form a campaign to stop, say, a clean water act, then that blogger would have to register as a lobbyist or face the penalties set out in the bill.

Quite different from what GrassRoots Freedom was reporting;

the Senate will have criminalized the exercise of First Amendment rights. We’d be living under totalitarianism, not democracy.