FEC Internet Rulemaking to Skirt Extremes, Protect Speech, Online Watchers Say

Reynolds said he was “moderately optimistic” that the FEC inquiry, commenced following a court rebuke over the Commission’s total exemption of the Internet from campaign finance regulation (WID Sept 21/04 p1), would protect freedom of speech for political activists and regular citizens online. The comments the FEC received on the rulemaking overwhelmingly favored a light regulatory touch, and the Commission knows it can’t “sweep back the tide” that sees the Internet as a democratic tool, he said. Trippi was skeptical that even restrictive online campaign rules could stop online politicking: “The FEC’s never put any teeth in anything they've ever done.” The FEC rules won’t be “too draconian” for either reform advocates or campaign activists, Trippi said. But Reynolds predicted “hot and heavy” clashes between reformers and activists over Internet campaign rules for the foreseeable future.

Told by an audience member that the Internet-savvy Dean campaign was just “a trial run that [proved] you can raise money on the Internet,” Trippi said a grassroots outlier that was unpopular at the top of the party was progressively becoming more likely. Speaking of Sen. McCain’s (R-Ariz.) Presidential campaign, Trippi said “the Net and a lot of tools weren’t mature enough in 2000,” but they will be by 2008 to sustain a formidable campaign. “I don’t know what the hell’s going to happen… but somebody’s going to raise half a billion” dollars in contributions next cycle, fueled by small donations of the sort leveraged by the GOP offline for years and by Dean online in the last campaign. Five million individuals donating $100 each would meet that half-billion mark, he noted. Trippi later predicted for us the likely 2008 candidates that will best use the Internet to raise money and organize: On the Democratic side, Rep. Feingold (Wis.), former Va. Gov. Mark Warner and former Vice Presidential candidate John Edwards; on the GOP side, McCain.

Blogging is here to stay because it’s “fun,” Reynolds said, dismissing mainstream media predictions that non- professional online writers can go only so far without a viable economic model. Most bloggers won’t make money, “but that’s not a bug, that’s a feature… It doesn’t matter if it makes money. People are doing it because they like it.” This aversion to profiting off blogging is good for bloggers and media, since “the bulk of [blogging] will stay amateur” and retain the “authentic tinge” the blogosphere has developed in the past few years, he said. “We are hardwired to share our opinions,” which the Internet has made easier: “It’s not Bowling Alone at all,” Reynolds said, alluding to a sociology book on diminishing community since the 1950s. Telework and Internet-enabled self-employment offer tradeoffs, he admitted -- “You can look at it either as ‘Oh good, I get to work from home’ or ‘Oh no, my work is taking over my house'” -- but the choice means happier workers overall.

Large, centralized industries are slowly grappling with a new model that puts their customers in charge, Trippi said: “The real question for the big guys is… Do you want to be Goliath or do you want to be [David’s] slingshot?” Challenging the music industry, Apple became the slingshot by selling music tracks a la carte instead of through whole albums, he said. The same is happening in journalism: “Every single American is an expert in something,” which led to Dan Rather’s embarrassment in the hubbub over forged National Guard documents on President Bush, he said. In addition to Apple, IBM is at the forefront of empowering ordinary users with its encouragement to every IBM employee to start a blog: “There are big players out there looking at how to engage in this conversation,” Trippi said. He cited a Flash cartoon posted online that parodied the story of a woman who found a human finger in a Wendy’s meal, later found to be a fraud. That’s an opportunity for savvy companies: If Wendy’s can collect its customers’ e-mail addresses and send them a message to rebut the report with the facts, “I'm going to feel very compelled as a citizen… to make sure that I send that e-mail to all those [to whom] I forwarded” the Flash cartoon.

The cyber-triumphalism was marred by New America Foundation Senior Fellow Barry Lynn, who disagreed that power was becoming more decentralized, if not that individuals were becoming more empowered by new technologies. There’s a “very big difference between the digital world and the real world,” the latter still being dominated by “gigantic” companies that act as monopsonies, dictating market terms for all other competitors by virtue of their buying power, Lynn said. Reynolds challenged the view: “The model for the next 50 years is going to look more like eBay than Wal-Mart.” Lynn retorted that Wal-Mart won’t even let its providers sell their items independently online.

Asked why his blog, with daily visits in the half-million range, didn’t let readers comment on posts, Reynolds said he was “somewhat paranoid” because other bloggers have found posted comments attributed to the blogger. People have only a limited attention span and some verbose commenters will wear them out: “It’s hard to maintain comments that are civil and interesting,” he said.

- Greg Piper