Dark side of the Internet revolution

By J. Patrick Coolican

Wednesday, Aug. 9, 2006 | 7:36 a.m.

One candidate is a racist, another has a hard-partying daughter and a third is a gambling addict. So say anonymous bloggers about three Nevada political candidates.

The accusations offer a look at the rank armpit of politics on the Internet, a place where anyone can now set up a Web site under a pseudonym and fire away - hoping rumors will spread or get picked up by the mainstream press - like a technologically enabled whisper campaign.

"We're seeing it all over the country this election cycle," said Kari Chisholm of Mandate Media, an Internet strategy and consulting firm.

Although for now the technological whispers usually aren't reaching voters, they soon will, as the whisper becomes more like a roar. Unregulated money will pour into blogs and other Internet media during this campaign, but especially in 2008.

The trend can't be ignored. It portends a future in which campaign money of unknown origins pays for vicious online ad campaigns disguised as Internet media. Although progressive activists like to think the Internet is a new tool of grass-roots politics, the big money in politics has already started using blogs and other online media for what's derisively called "AstroTurf politics" - fake grass-roots politics backed with corporate money.

Unlike other campaign vehicles, such as mail pieces or TV ads, blogs aren't covered by campaign finance laws and regulations because they are considered media. Bloggers can spend what they want and get money from wherever they please without disclosing its origins. As more voters tune out TV and turn to the Internet for news, information and entertainment, these campaigns will become far more influential.

To be sure, the Internet represents the liberation of speech - the Web gives everyone a printing press. But here's how someone linked to a campaign can spread false rumors about a political candidate:

Go to blogger.com and set up a blog, which is an online diary. Use a pseudonym, and presto. Publish ludicrous accusations about a political opponent. Then send out an e-mail to thousands of people telling them about the blog. Hope the rumor spreads. Campaigns once tried to accomplish this with word-of-mouth marketing. The electronic kind is faster, more efficient, never diluted.

The next step is video and audio. The ease with which someone can make a short movie and upload it onto the Web makes it possible to launch an entire ad war against a candidate on the Web and do it anonymously.

The only recourse for a candidate who has been smeared is a libel lawsuit, although doing so would be difficult, and also unwise. It would draw attention to the charges during the campaign, and by the time the case made it to court, the election would be a distant memory.

Blogger is owned by Google. When asked about the potentially libelous accusations being made at Web sites hosted by Blogger, Courtney Hohne, a spokeswoman for Google, said, "We don't divulge personally identifying information about our users unless we believe we have a legal obligation to do so." (Information about political advertising on TV, by contrast, is public and available.)

Furthermore, the company is protected, she said, because "Blogger is a provider of content creation tools, not a mediator of that content. We allow our users to create blogs, but we don't make any claims about the content of those pages."

Google is indeed protected from libel lawsuits, said Sandra Baron of the Media Law Resource Center in New York. A section of the federal Communications Decency Act protects companies that are mere vehicles for someone else's content.

Whoever creates that content is not protected, however. "The individual who puts the information online is responsible for the content and is subject to libel and privacy laws," Baron said. To sue for libel, the defamed candidate would file a lawsuit against a "John Doe" and then have to subpoena Google for the information. For a political candidate, that could be a disaster, as it would give the charges free air time.

Carol Darr, director of George Washington University's Institute for Politics, Democracy and the Internet, said she has been warning of this future for a year, roughly since the Federal Election Commission gave blogs what's known as the media exemption. Under the exemption, a media entity, such as, say, a newspaper, can spend as much money as it wants advocating on behalf of a candidate or tearing down another. It needn't account for the spending or say where the money came from.

The FEC ruled the same is true for blogs and other Internet media.

Darr said she agreed with the ruling, but has been warning about its true implications: "I don't think the FEC could have done anything else. But know that when you do this, it's not cost-free, because this is unregulated, which means you can take any money without disclosing where it came from. You've gutted election law."

She pointed to an online video that's a parody of Al Gore's global warming documentary, "An Inconvenient Truth." Word flew around the Web that some smart, teenage Webhead had created the parody. Then the truth came out. It was produced by a Republican consulting firm with ties to ExxonMobil.

That's just a taste of the future, Darr said: "Next cycle, it will be a free-for-all. You'll see so much money, and you'll have no idea who's behind it."

Because the FEC has ruled the government has no role regulating this political speech, it will be up to the public, the press and the bloggers to step in and help ferret out truth from falsity. For instance, the nation's top newspapers developed standards to distinguish themselves from tabloid rags 100 years ago and went on to win reputations for trustworthiness. Now, some blogs will do the same.

John Samples, an analyst for the Libertarian Cato Institute, said all the hand-wringing is unwarranted and comes from people who only like the First Amendment when they agree with the person speaking: "It was an attempt to control a new technology that threatens incumbent officeholders."

He pointed to Tuesday's Connecticut primary, where Sen. Joe Lieberman faced a strong challenge from fellow Democrat Ned Lamont, whose insurgent campaign has been energized by bloggers.

"People always want to regulate speech when they don't like the content. But that's why we have the First Amendment."

That theoretical argument is little help to political candidates who have been defamed.

Chisholm, the consultant, said he would advise candidates to ignore the charges. Be sure to keep tabs on them, but ignore them, lest they get a public airing.

Still, that won't always work. Voters have been known to believe charges that the accused chooses to ignore. Advisers to Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., the Democrats' 2004 candidate for president, blame his defeat on the campaign's silence two years ago in the face of false charges that Kerry fabricated his military record.

"I can imagine all kinds of scenarios where this could be a problem. It could get very ugly, very fast," Chisholm said.