1. Cypherpunk on April 12, 2004 11:15 PM writes...

Two comments: first, power tends to be fungible: economic and political power are largely interchangeable. This is the root cause for why money makes a difference in politics (and also why politiciands tend to get rich). Attempts to limit the influence of money on politics work against this equation, but people are always going to look for ways around the barriers.

Second, I don't know exactly how you see broadcatcching as helping the situation. My guess is that you think it will be more democratic, with less concentration of power into a few influential parties. But this neglects the rule of Zipf's Law which says that the most influential broadcatch-content creator will be twice as influential as the next guy, and so on down the line. Just as the blogging world has its A list, the same will be true with broadcatch content.

Now mix in money - lots of it. Why would broadcatch content not be influenced and effectively controlled by the presence of money, just as all other media have been? Go back to the first point: power is fungible. Political power, economic power, and communications power as well, all are interchangeable. Once blogging and broadcatching become important and mature technologies, they too are likely to be dominated by the presence of money. I don't see any fundamental reason why these technologies will be immune to the rules that govern the influence of power in other parts of society.

2. Ernest Miller on April 13, 2004 08:01 PM writes...

Well, for one, broadcatching will be more difficult for corporations to control. Sure, you have A-list bloggers, but are they corporate controlled? Their opinions, commentary and links are far more interesting than most of the stuff coming out of mainstream media.

Is money important to blogs? Yes and no. Many blogs are more labors of love than anything else. Even though there is a power law distribution, it is still a far more democratic medium than many others.

Similarly, broadcatching will be a far more democratic medium than the status quo. I'll have more to say on this in another post.

3. Bill McGeveran on April 16, 2004 11:11 PM writes...

I wrote an article last year in the University of Pennsylvania Journal of Constitutional Law exploring the privacy concerns you point out. Here is the link: http://www.law.upenn.edu/journals/conlaw/issues/vol6/num1/mcgeveran.pdf

Essentially, I think the disclosure of small or medium-sized contributions -- up to a few hundred dollars, say -- does more harm than good. The Supreme Court identified three justifications for campaign finance disclosure in its Buckley v. Valeo decision (preventing corruption, providing information about candidates, and allowing enforcement of spending limits). None applies very well to modest individual contribtuions.

Some mandatory disclosure may be unconstitutional as well (although I wrote before the Supreme Court's McConnell decision upholding the McCain-Feingold Act and that changed the landscape a little).

Anyway, I find it strange how few people mention the concerns you identified -- particularly advocates of strong privacy protection in other arenas.