{"id":4847,"date":"2010-08-05T12:52:12","date_gmt":"2010-08-05T16:52:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=4847"},"modified":"2010-08-05T12:52:27","modified_gmt":"2010-08-05T16:52:27","slug":"us-government-still-finding-this-free-speech-thing-annoying","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2010\/08\/05\/us-government-still-finding-this-free-speech-thing-annoying\/","title":{"rendered":"US governments still finding this &#8220;free speech&#8221; thing annoying"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>If you support the notion of free speech, it is most important to support it during elections . . . but not everyone <a href=\"http:\/\/makenolaw.org\/blog\/5-politicalspeech\/55-the-regulators-impulse\" target=\"_blank\">feels this way<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>The Associated Press reports  that California\u2019s Fair Political Practices Commission (FPPC) is considering \u201chow to regulate new forms of political activity such as appeals on a voter\u2019s Facebook page or in a text message.<\/p>\n<p>Not <em>whether <\/em>to regulate these new forms of political speech, but <em>how<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>The recommendations apparently include \u201crequiring tweets and texts to link to a website that includes . . . full disclosures, although some people feel the disclosure should be in the text itself no matter how brief . . . .\u201d<\/p>\n<p>To paraphrase Chief Justice John Roberts, this is why we don\u2019t leave our free speech rights in the hands of FPPC bureaucrats.  To bureaucrats like those at the FPPC, the Federal Election Commission or their analogues, there seems to be no need to show any evidence that Twitter, Facebook or text messages actually pose any threat to the public.  It is enough that they these new forms of low-cost media aren\u2019t currently regulated, but could be.  Their primary concern, apparently, is that the regulation of political speech be as comprehensive as possible.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Free speech <em>can<\/em> be a messy thing &mdash; but censorship is worse.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>If you support the notion of free speech, it is most important to support it during elections . . . but not everyone feels this way: The Associated Press reports that California\u2019s Fair Political Practices Commission (FPPC) is considering \u201chow to regulate new forms of political activity such as appeals on a voter\u2019s Facebook page [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,10,28,53,13],"tags":[109,86,188,186,322,310],"class_list":["post-4847","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bureaucracy","category-liberty","category-media","category-politics","category-usa","tag-computers","tag-criticism","tag-electionwatch","tag-freedomofspeech","tag-nannystate","tag-twitter"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-1gb","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4847","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4847"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4847\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4853,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4847\/revisions\/4853"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4847"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4847"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4847"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}