Welcome to the Tech Policy Podcast. I'm Evan Schwargerber. On today's show, following up on our discussion about digital free speech with FEC Commissioner Lee Goodman, you may recall that on episode 107, a recent episode, we did a deep dive into regulating online speech, the history of regulation

or lack thereof, how we got to the point where political debate really thrives on the

internet. I don't think anyone doubts that there's a plethora of opinions out there in arguments

and people are getting at it. And that's what you want in a democracy. But is this consensus

about a light touch approach

to regulating online speech fraying? Is it gone completely? And what are the implications for things like

recording a political discussion, putting it online? What about live webcasts of political

discussions? Are these going to be roped into legacy regulations that we

traditionally associate with things like television ads? Well, joining me to discuss this again is

FEC Commissioner Lee Goodman. Commissioner, thanks for joining the show again.

Thank you, Evan. So to recap what we talked about on the show before, for the longest time,

it was a, the FEC, unlike some other regulators,

is a six commissioner body, three from each of the two major parties. And for a long time,

we had six commissioners agreeing that digital free speech would not be regulated in the same way

as direct mail campaigns and television ads and things like that.

But that consensus seems to be gone. And the reason that you're back on the show is that since our last episode, there were two cases where we saw this big divide between Republicans and Democrats.

And even though a three, three vote is essentially status quo, what kind of uncertainty does that

cause? So what happened since you, since you were just here? I mean, what's going on?

Well, since I was last year, the Federal Election Commission has disclosed two matters. Well,

one was an enforcement matter. and the other one was actually

conducted in public because it was an advisory opinion request, and those are conducted in

public meeting. But in both cases, the Commission divided its votes three to three on

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