Last summer MoveOn's Eli Pariser decided to have a little fun with web video, and with the help of Brave New Films got some folks together to post "Stop the Falsiness," in part to poke fun at themselves and to also take advantage of Pariser's being on the Colbert Report to advance their campaign against right-wing news programs. Their video went up on YouTube, and in the first week alone got more than 40,000 views.

ZDNet is running an interesting piece on the lack of technology platforms in the Democrats' 100 hours legislative agenda. While the Dems are focused on raising the minimum wage, pushing stem-cell research, and squaring off with President Bush about his proposed troop "surge," there is little in the way of proposed tech legislation.

But tech issues have long been part of the Democrats' "innovation agenda," and according to the article several tech-minded pieces of bipartisan legislation will be introduced this year, some praiseworthy and some misguided. Some tidbits:

- Although the Deleting Online Predators Act (DOPA) died in the Senate last year, Alaska Republican Ted "Series of Tubes" Stevens has repackaged the proposed legislation using identical language and attached it to a bill (PDF) that would require all sexually explicit sites to be labeled as such.

It's time to stand up and be counted, because the corporations who still think of the internet as an "information highway" want the power to set up toll booths and private speedways for their own content or that of high-paying customers, to the detriment of all of us. As Vint Cerf pointed out in a letter to Congressmen Joe Barton and John Dingell, whose Energy and Commerce Committee is pushing legislation drafted by the telcos that would wreak havoc:

The Internet was designed with no gatekeepers over new content or services. The Internet is based on a layered, end-to-end model that allows people at each level of the network to innovate free of any central control. By placing intelligence at the edges rather than control in the middle of the network, the Internet has created a platform for innovation....Telephone companies cannot tell consumers who they can call; network operators should not dictate what people can do online.

Unfortunately, thanks to their money and lobbying muscle, the telcos could push their plans thru Congress unless everyone who depends on its open and neutral structure speaks up.

The question of how to apply offline laws to the Internet has always been a topic of great debate. The discussion of whether to treat bloggers as journalists and protect them with shield laws took up much of last year. Controversy over the application of federal campaign finance laws to blogs sparked significant exchanges.

A new lawsuit may bring discrimination laws and the Internet together. At issue is whether Craigslist should be held responsible for housing posts that violate anti-discrimination laws. The site's housing ads are posted by users, and may not rise to the attention of editors unless their content is reported.

When Microsoft was being subjected to antitrust scrutiny by the US Department of Justice, the companies deep, accumulated e-mail archives proved to be an achilles heel, yielding one incriminating message after another, despite protests by Microsoft lawyers that the email messages were being taken out of context, or represented jokes, or constituted off-hand comments and not policy statements.

Now, with the Abramoff plea-bargain striking fear into congressfolks and staffers on the Hill (and perhaps some of their equivalents in the executive branch as well), Jack Abramoff's legendary fondness for putting all of his thoughts into the form of uncensored e-mail messages may prove to take down some of his former allies.

The House reform proposal to extend the exemption of Internet communications from those pesky campaign finance laws got the cold shoulder from Democrats Wednesday, according to an 11/2 CNET story. More than three-quarters of congressional Dems opposed the Online Freedom of Speech Act which needed a 2/3 majority to pass in order to accelerate the process. Final tally: 225 to 182. However, the bill could be up for vote again under normal procedures requiring a majority only.

Left-leaning groups, The Campaign Legal Center, Common Cause, Democracy 21, Public Citizen and US PIRG sent a letter of gratitude to House Dems, particularly Representatives Christopher Shays (R-CT) and Marty Meehan (D-MA) for "leading the House battle for campaign finance laws that protect citizens against corruption in government."

PersonalDemocracy blog regular and RedState pundit, Mike Krempasky, will speak before Congress today in support of the Online Freedom of Speech Act. An Online Media Daily story reports that he'll testify before the U.S. Congress Committee on House Administration.

On RedState.org, Krempasky has published his planned speech. Here are a few excerpts:

"[The Internet] has created exactly the sort of political 'utopia' that the so-called ‘campaign reformers’ ought to be praising. It’s an environment in which Big Money has no significant advantage over small speakers – a level playing field on which creativity and passion trump volume and muscle. But instead, thanks to the consequences of a lawsuit and the vagaries of the FEC rule-making process, this thriving and popular medium faces the prospect of destruction.

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The European Parliament dissed software patents yesterday, voting against creating a single way of patenting software across the EU. Instead, according to a Seattle Times story, the lawmakers decided that patent protection should be determined on a nation-by-nation basis.

It was a landslide victory (648-14) for open source supporters who claim that patents stifle innovation and drown out the little guy. Tech firms like Nokia and Siemens AG that lobbied for the legislation said it would have given them incentives to invest in research and development.

One wonders whether open source advocates get any more benefit from the perpetuation of the EU's thick bureaucratic patent law stew than they would from having clear, concise laws that would apply to all software patented in all EU countries.

Any thoughts?

As for the success of the EU project in general, this is yet another pro-nationalist, anti-union defeat that only continues to divide the beleaguered institution's member states.

How many dollars dance on the head of a link? Unavoidably, such questions continue to arise as the FEC considers its rules regulating political activity over the Internet. I seems to me, though, that these kinds of questions need not cloud the horizon if the Commission embraces the notion that press is what people “do,” not what some people “are.”

The rulemaking has been devoted to determining what internet activities are “public communications” that require disclaimers and other regulations, whether the press exemption applies to internet journalism, and whether campaign volunteers and independent citizens can use their computers free from restricting.

But, the core truth here is that campaign finance is about valuation. The rub is that value may not be what you would think.

Typically, when a contribution of services - also called an in-kind contribution- is made, the Commission looks at the usual or normal charge that the contributed goods or services would fetch in the market. That only makes sense. If a campaign supporter provides free printing, then the value of that contribution is what he would have charged, not what the ink and paper cost to him.

Reactions of an informed viewer to the morning sessions of the Federal Elections Commisison hearing on Internet Communication. This FAQ is presented in summary form. It took much longer for these actual conversations to occur. It was, after all, a lazy summer morning in Washington, D.C.

Question: Does anyone want to subject bloggers to campaign finance regulations?

Answer: Not that they want to talk about on the record.

Q: So what's the best way to protect bloggers from campaign finance regulations?

A: Well, it's not through a media exemption, either case-by-case or blanket exemption.

Q:. What's wrong with case-by-case exemptions?

A: See the entries here on PDF of everyone else named Mike, and Chris Nolan.

Q: Okay. What about a blanket exemption?