#107: Digital Free Speech (w/ FEC Commissioner Lee Goodman)

Tech Policy Podcast

TechFreedom

Technology

4.8 • 45 Ratings

🗓️ 25 July 2016

⏱️ 43 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Political speech has flourished on the Internet, thanks in large part to the First Amendment and a lack of regulation from the Federal Elections Commission (FEC). But is the longstanding “Hands Off the Net” consensus in danger? Evan is joined by FEC Commissioner Lee Goodman to discuss how digital political speech is currently regulated and what threats exist for digital speech. A couple highlights: Goodman: “We can either recognize and embrace free speech on the internet and its wholly constructive democratic effects, or we can start regulating it, impeding it, and discouraging it, and causing everyone who wants to communicate on the internet to look over their shoulder and decide ‘am I going to be punished by my government for speaking freely on my home computer.’” Swarztrauber: “While the first amendment does protect all kinds of speech, I think there was a particular premium on political speech. That was the real goal.”

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the Tech Policy Podcast. I'm Evan Schwarger. On today's show, digital free speech,
0:14.6	in particular, online free speech that is about politics. This is a particularly good topic to be discussing now as the election
0:22.3	season ramps up. And what are the laws and regulations that govern online speech? Joining me to discuss
0:28.8	this is Commissioner Lee Goodman of the Federal Elections Commission. Commissioner, thank you so
0:33.7	much for joining the show. Thank you, Evan. Thank you for having me. So with the creation of the internet, of course, and Web 2.0 and user-generated content, it became really easy for people
0:42.8	to go on Twitter, go on Facebook, invent about politics. And it was an empowering thing. You didn't
0:47.6	really have to have millions of dollars to get your message out on television. You could just do it
0:52.1	from the comfort of your home, easily on your
0:54.8	cell phone. So, but it didn't necessarily have to be that easy. And in 2006, the Federal Election
1:03.2	Commission made a decision that was really important in this regard. Can you explain what the 2006
1:08.6	rule was and how critical that was to enabling political speech on the
1:13.0	internet?
1:13.2	Sure. Before I address the 2006 rule, I'd like to give you a little history.
1:18.7	Absolutely.
1:19.7	In the 1990s, as this new technology, this new medium of communication evolved called
1:24.9	the Internet, the Federal Election Commission found itself scratching its head,
1:29.3	like many other regulatory agencies.
1:31.3	The Internet so transformed communication,
1:34.3	association, and other realms of human endeavor
1:39.3	that many regulatory agencies found this new technology
1:43.3	stressed and strained their old regulatory
1:45.5	paradigms adapted for a fiscal world. So in 1998, the commission was confronted with an
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