NRA complaint takes down Surge's 38,000 websites

Re:NRA complaint takes down Surge's 38,000 websites by alexbock on Thursday June 30, 2016 @12:53PM (#12009872)

The states I've checked all have a law against misrepresenting the origin of a political advertisement that advocates (even indirectly) for/against a candidate or party, and sometimes ballot measures are included too. Some of them are more strict than others, this is from Texas for example:

    A person commits an offense if, with intent to
    injure a candidate or influence the result of an
    election, the person enters into a contract or
    other agreement to print, publish, or broadcast
    political advertising that purports to emanate
    from a source other than its true source.

It's hard to say this is a traditional political advertisement. Whether you could convince a judge that an ad purporting to be from the NRA (and presumably making Republicans look bad) is intended to influence an election is questionable. If they had included mention of Hillary or Trump in the video this would be pretty clear cut, but as is it's harder because the link between supporting or attacking candidates through political entities they do or don't support without actually mentioning them by name is a case law issue.

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Re:NRA complaint takes down Surge's 38,000 websites by spangry on Thursday June 30, 2016 @02:40PM (#12010737)

'It's hard to say this is a traditional political advertisement. Whether you could convince a judge that an ad purporting to be from the NRA (and presumably making Republicans look bad) is intended to influence an election is questionable.'

This seems to be the key issue. It seems unlikely that a prosecutor could achieve a conviction under these laws, given the specific meaning of some of the terms used (as defined in §251.001). I haven't seen the video, but it sounds like it was a general parody of the NRA?

At any rate, a prosecutor would have to prove that:

1. The creator of the video has specific intent to harm a particular candidate, or otherwise influence the election result.

2. The latter part of #1 (influence result) seems to be made irrelevant by the definition of 'political advertisement': "...means a communication supporting or opposing a candidate for nomination or election to a public office or office of a political party, a political party, a public officer" [§251.001 (16)]

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Re:NRA complaint takes down Surge's 38,000 websites by ExpendableGuy on Thursday June 30, 2016 @06:12PM (#12012241)

This issue is murky for two reasons:

1. The Yes Men is assumedly not paying to promote this video (so it's not "an ad"), 2. The message is not electioneering.

We're used to seeing, "paid for by" and "I approved this..." messaging in electioneering ads that are regulated by the FEC. The NRA, a 501(c)(4), has to play by different rules to keep its status.

IANAL, but I'd assume that the NRA would need to argue that the video puts their 501(c)(4) status at risk to warrant legal action outside of just playing the copyright/damages card.

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Re:NRA complaint takes down Surge's 38,000 websites by hga on Thursday June 30, 2016 @07:50PM (#12012810)

The NRA, as a 501(c)(4), is most certainly able to do electioneering, although there are of course constraints (I think it's limited to members?).

But it also has a PAC, the Political Victory Fund, which is quite able to do the usual stuff, here's their first TV ad for this election they just cut, I've set the time to the last 5 seconds where they claim it per the law: https://youtu.be/SIl20jItjHY?t=25

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