Has anyone heard about the new Govt. related blogging thing? It says in an article that there is a bill where bloggers will have to report to Congress what they put on their blogs/sites. Also it says if they say anything critisizing the Govt. that they could face a year of jail time.

Anyone heard about this or know anything about this ? :headscrat

Reference:
http://infowars.net/articles/january2007/1...gers_Prison.htm

Well so much for freedom of speech.( if its true )

Can you link to a copy of the actual bill so we can read the wording ourselves, instead of taking their word for it? I don't know where to find it.

From what I can tell it comes from here (section 220) and is misquoting the section, it only applies to people who are paid lobbyists (earning more than 25,000 a year for it).

Anyways the section got removed from the bill.

I think if one is concerned about such issues you could be doing yourself a disservice with false alarms, as is often the case with the hysterical articles at Info Wars and Prison Planet.

`(17) GRASSROOTS LOBBYING- The term `grassroots lobbying' means the voluntary efforts of members of the general public to communicate their own views on an issue to Federal officials or to encourage other members of the general public to do the same.

Not sure how that lil' snippet relates

`© REGISTRANT- For purposes of this paragraph, a person or entity is a member of a registrant if the person or entity--`(i) pays dues or makes a contribution of more than a nominal amount to the entity;`(ii) makes a contribution of more than a nominal amount of time to the entity;(iii) is entitled to participate in the governance of the entity;`(iv) is 1 of a limited number of honorary or life members of the entity; or`(v) is an employee, officer, director or member of the entity.

Aren't reigistered users of messageboards, such as this one "members of the entity?"

The whole thing is a bit questionable and open - as terms in recent bills usually are

Also, it would be nice to have some sort of linkage to confirm the removal that was posted about earlier

That statement (17) is to define true 'Grassroots lobbying' in order to define paid lobbying made to look like grassroots lobbying.

(1) in paragraph (7), by adding at the end of the following: `Lobbying activities include paid efforts to stimulate grassroots lobbying, but do not include grassroots lobbying.'; and

(18) PAID EFFORTS TO STIMULATE GRASSROOTS LOBBYING-

`(A) IN GENERAL- The term `paid efforts to stimulate grassroots lobbying' means any paid attempt in support of lobbying contacts on behalf of a client to influence the general public or segments thereof to contact one or more covered legislative or executive branch officials (or Congress as a whole) to urge such officials (or Congress) to take specific action with respect to a matter described in section 3(8)(A), except that such term does not include any communications by an entity directed to its members, employees, officers, or shareholders.

Josef says: "Blog badly and you end up in the gulags!"