democracyforcalifornia.com

San Francisco May Regulate Blogging

This reads like an April Fool's joke.

Via Personal Democracy

Just when you thought the Federal Election Commission had it out for the blogosphere, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors took it up a notch and announced yesterday that it will soon vote on a city ordinance that would require local bloggers to register with the city Ethics Commission and report all blog-related costs that exceed $1,000 in the aggregate.

Blogs that mention candidates for local office that receive more than 500 hits will be forced to pay a registration fee and will be subject to website traffic audits, according to Chad Jacobs, a San Francisco City Attorney.

The entire Board is set to vote on the measure on April 5th, 2005.

These Supervisors are simply betraying their own ignorance if they think they can regulate free speech on the Net. How do they propose to enforce this ordinance? How would they police the blogosphere for local offenders? How would they even know the geographic location of the blogger if he's taken precautions to mask his personal info? I wouldn't bother to take this seriously. The best thing to do is ignore this stupidity and fearlessly blog on. We have bigger fish to fry.

Posted by Diana at April 5, 2005 09:59 AM