Is this 2005 or 1984?

What is this world, or in my case, San Francisco coming to?

I just saw this posting warning that bloggers in San Francisco will soon have to pay a fee if they are paid to promote a candidate.

I read through the proposed ordinance and found it to be very simplistic in nature and completely unenforceable.

Gaijinbiker has a very nice analysis of it here.

Here's what I think. This legislation is trying to make blogs as the same thing as direct mail, tv commercials, etc. Even "if" somebody's blog has 500 hits (very easy to find), those 500 hits have to be from "potential" SF voters! Something that is impossible to do. That would mean the reader of the blog would have to identify themselves before reading the blog AND the reader would have to reside in SF and is eligible to vote.

Just going with that idea, logging in to read a blog is silly. Requiring identification and eligibility of citizenship (since only citizens can vote) and residency (since this only applies to SF voters) is so beyond me.

What scares me, since I don't think this ordinance is going to make it through, is that, if it does somehow make it through and becomes law. It can be used later on as a basis of a more restrictive piece of shit.

Blogging has always been free, how hard would it take for Big Brother (or in the case of Supervisor Sophie Maxwell, Big Sister) to legislate that all bloggers must register as "journalists" and pay a registration "fee" in order to blog about things that happen in SF?

AiYahh