Will Political Blogs Be Subject to Campaign Finance Rules?

Looks like the Federal Election Commission is looking into regulating blogs, according to this BusinessWeek Online story. Snippet:

Amid the explosion of political activity on the Internet, a federal court has instructed the six-member Federal Election Commission to draw up regulations that would extend the nation's campaign finance and spending limits to the Web.

Right now, Internet communication is exempt from the legislation. But with $14 million spent on Internet ads and other online marketing during the 2004 campaign, you can bet the FEC is going to want to get all over the blogosphere.

With 43% of the "Top 400" blogs tracked by the recent comSCORE research report being classified as political in topic, it doesn't take much to see the implications of this. How will the FEC define a political blog? How will it be enforced?

I think we can all agree that this will be coming down the pike, sooner or later. And the debate won't be pretty. First Amendment debates never are (nor should they be).

-aB