Blog regulation under McCain-Feingold

There has been a recent blogalanche about the FEC's threat to regulate blogs and other informal Internet sites, which was triggered by this CNET article by Declan McCullough. Michelle Malkin has a good round-up in two parts: one and two. The basic idea is that linking to a campaign web site might be constituted as a political donation and monetized under McCain-Feingold, and therefore those who had already donated the personal maximum allowable might be under threat of persecution.

On the other side of things, I look at a discussion in the Old Dominion Blog Alliance about why they blog. One Man's Trash celebrates the growing influence of blogs, potentially decisive in South Dakota and on an ascendancy in Virginia. He notes that the Kilgore campaign tracks the ODBA. Valley Republican sums it up as, "As John put it so eqloquently [sic] in the Augusta Free Press, we want to play a role in this election." as he links to an article in the Augusta Free Press by John Behan, author of Commonwealth Conservative. Behan writes:


I have a great deal of respect for the members of the ODBA, but while I do believe that blogging is worthwhile I think that this kind of activity is directly what the FEC is contemplating when it detemines whether McCain-Feingold requires it to regulate blogging. I don't believe the prospect of regulation should inhibit their activities; it is a worthwhile service to the commonwealth, and I salute them for their service to the body politic. But they should keep in mind that they may be on the bleeding edge of a battle between individual online journalism and myopic federal regulation of speech.

Update: Malkin has another article, this time on a case between Apple and three bloggers, which is apropos inasmuch as it references H.R. 581, a bill that would among other things define those who are eligible for the journalistic exception very tightly (see Section 7.1).