Hey! Republicans did something right!

Ok, don’t let the title of this entry get you too upset. It’s half joking. But here’s the deal:

There was a provision attached to a lobbying reform bill recent that would require political bloggers who either comment on policy or are trying to start a grassroots movement to register/identify themselves with the government – if they had a readership of more than 500 (while the bill says “paid”, it fails to qualify “paid” as anything more than this description).

If there were any good intentions behind this provision they were greatly outweighed by the burden they would place on political bloggers. First, I don’t think any blogger out there even has a clue what their readership is. Getting an accurate count of such a number is technically unfeasible. The only way to get an estimate is to count IP’s of people who access your site, but even then one person could visit from multiple IP’s (Home, Work, their favorite WiFi hotspot…). And most bloggers, including political ones, blog for fun and to share their opinion. They don’t blog as a job, and they certainly aren’t going to take the time to count their readership and fill out government forms to register. And then there’s the issue of what makes you a political blogger? How many entries on political matters makes you a political blogger? Or does that have to be the soul purpose of your site?

The real problem here is the issue of technology and governments inability to grasp the ideas sprouting from it, and their attempts to find a way to control it. The Internet Revolution, as I like to call it, is slowly gaining steam, but the government has no idea how to react. They can’t control it like typical media, it doesn’t fit into the old paradigms. It’s a whole new paradigm, one only the younger generations can fully grasp. And one which has given more people the ability to exercise their freedom of speech, and many other freedoms, then any thing which has existed before.

I would suggest that this Internet Revolution has made the world has a whole a freer people. Attempts to stifle it will not be tolerated, and will easily be subverted – thank you anonymity!

We can rest easy, however, since the provision was removed from the bill, thanks to 48 Republicans and only 7 Democrats. The nay votes (those for keeping the provision) were all Democrats – interesting, and somewhat disappointing. Hopefully this isn’t a trend that we’ll see in other areas – that of Democrats voting for provisions/bills that would stifle our right to free speech. Hopefully.