Congress Shall Make No Law … But Regulators Act Anyway

Lovers of free speech should feel their stomachs turn when they look at the actions of the Federal Trade Commission and Federal Communications Commission these days.

Not that they took a sharp turn with the Obama administration, or with the chairmanships of Jon Leibowitz or Jules Genachowski. These are run-of-the-mill bureaucracies, constantly reaching for new powers, nevermind even constitutional limits on the federal government's authority.

Item 1: Blogger, You’re an Advertiser Now

Via the L.A. Times blog, the FTC issued a guidance document yesterday requiring bloggers who write testimonials about products to disclose large gifts or payments, or they will run afoul of the FTC's regulations on advertising.

Is that the right thing to do? Yep. Is that an appropriate thing to require in federal law? Absolutely not.

The FTC is putting itself in the business of guaranteeing the veracity of speech and the honesty and straightforwardness of bloggers. “No” means no law abridging the freedom of speech or of the press.

The "protection" in this regulatory scheme encourages consumers to be supine and irresponsible. State law should deal with frauds as they occur. There should be no law barring or limiting paid endorsements — certainly not a federal law.

Item 2: An Establishment of the Press?

Via the Examiner, it probably didn’t occur to the framers of the constitution to bar the government from establishing its own press, so they didn’t do that in the First Amendment. But we’re heading down that road, and the FTC wants to take us there.

In early December, it will hold a “workshop” called ”From Town Criers to Bloggers: How Will Journalism Survive the Internet Age?”

Here’s an idea for a “workshop”: Taking the Budget of the Federal Trade Commission and Giving it Back to Taxpayers.

Item 3: Just a Modest Takeover of the Communications Infrastructure

As discussed here several times before, FCC Chairman Genachowski has proposed to regulate the terms on which Internet service providers supply broadband services to the public. It’s pretty much the same thing as regulating how printing presses work, or the delivery decisions of newspapers.

The federal government is specifically disabled from regulating speech and the press in the constitution. But in various ways the regulators at the FCC and FTC have talked themselves into the role of censor.

Enough of this unconstitutional consumer coddling. It’s time to shut these agencies down and restore the funds that support them to American taxpayers. Now that would be a consumer protection!

An early version of this post collapsed the FTC and FCC together. Author Jim Harper swears he knows the difference and claims he was briefly blinded with rage at unconstitutional government. Jim thanks the Cato@Liberty reader who slapped him around, getting him focused once again on *happily* railing against unconstitutional government.