The First Amendment protects our right to speak freely and to gather information. Without it, true democracy would be impossible. The Supreme Court strongly disfavors laws that impinge on First Amendment rights and has been particularly protective of speech on the Internet. The Court declared in ACLU v Reno that speech on the Internet should receive the full protection of the First Amendment.

As the last election amply demonstrated, the Internet has become America’s public square, a powerful forum where ordinary people spending small sums of money can express their political views, and be heard by millions of people. Unlike closely controlled forums like TV and radio, which are dominated by a few political speakers, no political speaker on the Internet can dominate the space or prevent others from being heard.

Campaign finance laws are aimed at diminishing the impact of big money contributions in elections and guarding against their corrupting influences. The Internet can’t stop wealthy interests from spending money, but it can help to diminish their influence, both by facilitating small contributions and by opening up avenues for information flow that are not dominated by big money. In the last election cycle, the Internet was responsible for an unprecedented increase in the number of small financial contributors to elections and an increase in the influence of ordinary voters.

In the past, the Federal Election Commission (‘FEC”) has written very broad rules to try to prevent wealthy interests from exerting a corrupting influence over the political process. Those rules have often been based on hypothetical or potential misconduct, not on clear evidence of a problem. We believe that this would be the wrong approach to campaign finance regulation of individuals’ political speech on the Internet, where broad prophylactic rules would hurt millions of ordinary Americans exercising their First Amendment rights to speak out on elections and political issues. This principle urges the FEC to change it approach to regulation on the Internet and only regulate individual speakers where there is a real record of abuse by big money interests.

Speaking out during an election is a constitutional right. The government needs to be very careful when it tries to regulate political speech. For that reason, even if the FEC finds clear evidence that wealthy interests are engaging in practices that corrupt the political process, we believe it must write rules that are very narrow and clear, so that it does not also regulate or chill the online speech of small independent political speakers.

We believe that there needs to be a “bright line” between the online political speech of big money interests, which may be subject to the campaign finance laws, and the online political speech of small and independent political speakers on the Internet which we believe should not be regulated. Individual Americans should be able to engage in election related political speech online and spend reasonable sums of their own money to support that speech, without having to disclose their identity, worrying about whether they are violating campaign finance laws, or having to hire a lawyer to advise them.

The Internet fosters communication, collaboration and community among people with common interests, many of whom never meet offline. In the last election, millions of people joined together to engage in election related activities on the Internet. We believe those people should be treated the same under the Campaign Finance laws as individual speakers acting alone. They should be able to engage in a substantial amount of collective political activity without being deemed a “political committee” under the campaign finance laws. Right now, the campaign finance laws treat people who join together to engage in election related activities as “political committees” with a number of reporting and disclosure requirements, if they spend or raise as little as $1000. That doesn’t make sense on the Internet.

The growth of online media has provided Americans with new sources of political information and alternative points of view. People are increasing turning to Internet sources of news and commentary, often from sources that only publish online (such as bloggers). The media exception to the federal campaign finance law allows the media to report and editorialize on federal elections without regard to the campaign finance rules. That exception needs to be clearly extended to Internet media and the criteria for qualification needs to be reexamined so that new forms of media on the Internet are covered.

While some bloggers should qualify for the media exemption, some probably will not meet the criteria. But almost all bloggers should be exempt from the campaign finance rules to the same extent as other online citizen advocates, even if they don’t qualify under the media exemption.

The campaign finance law prohibits corporations from endorsing or opposing federal candidates or making campaign contributions. But sometimes bloggers and other independent speakers on the Internet incorporate for a number of reasons such as protection from liability. We believe the adoption of the corporate form should not silence independent online political speakers.

The Internet is a dynamic and fluid medium. New technologies are constantly spawning new modes of speech on the Internet. We believe that it would be very damaging to the Internet if campaign finance laws were aimed at specific modes of speech like pod casting or blogging. Not only will the rules be quickly outdated, they may stifle innovation on the Internet.