A ruling in the US has confirmed political bloggers are not necessarily political campaign bodies but rather "a media entity exempt from federal campaign finance regulations" according to the Federal Election Commission.
"The FEC said the Web site [Daily Kos], operated by blogger Markos Moulitsas Zuniga, cannot be regulated as a political committee and can freely post blog entries that support candidates.
Conservative blogger John C.A. Bambenek had argued in a complaint last month that the site should comply with campaign finance laws because such entries amounted to "a gift of free advertising and candidate media services."
This is still a pretty undefined – and unchallenged (to my knowledge) – legal area in the UK.
The US is far ahead in political campaigning via blogs and a 2005 study, Political Parties, the Internet and the 2005 General Election: from Web Presence to E-Campaigning, by Loughborough University’s James Stanyer showed that the use and impact of blogs at the last UK general election (2005) was minimal.
Come the next election we will be much further down the line and so I look forward to watching similar legal arguments playing out as political blogging gets serious.
[Via Allen jenkins]
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