Primerica Shot at Landrum on Youtube

"David Landrum on Lifestyles of the Rich and the Shameless" is a video on Youtube taking a shot at Landrum. The description says: "David Landrum's multi-level millions have bought houses, expensive cars, jewelry, and now, he wants to buy a congressional seat. It will be the icing on his cake."



A post of David Landrum's Primerica pitch video on Youtube was taken down. A visit to that location now says, "This video is no longer available due to a copyright claim by Primerica Financial Services, Inc."

An email conversation on this matter with a politico with knowledge of election law matters explains the FEC has said this type of activity is protected political speech. He shared these two articles with me.

Salon.com: "Attention all hired political hucksters and hatchet men, dirty tricksters and campaign saboteurs. The Federal Election Commission has a message for you: Go forth online. Do your dirty works. Opportunity awaits. Under a little-noticed rulemaking last year, the FEC opened a loophole in the law for just the sort of videos that de Vellis created. 'Posting a video on a Web site does not result in a 'public communication' unless it is placed on another person's website for a fee,' the FEC declared in its final rules last April. That leaves presidential campaigns, party committees, political nonprofits and individuals all free to pay employees or consultants to create so-called viral videos for them. If the videos are shown as a television commercial or paid Web ad, the authors must disclose their identity, with a 'stand by your ad' statement like, 'I'm George Bush and I approve this message.' But in free postings on YouTube and other file-sharing Web sites, the FEC allows candidates and other political interests to operate without any disclosure.

Wired.com: "The Federal Election Commission decided Monday that the nation's new campaign finance law will not apply to most political activity on the internet. In a 6-0 vote, the commission decided to regulate only paid political ads placed on another person's website. The decision means that bloggers and online publications will not be covered by provisions of the new election law. Internet bloggers and individuals will therefore be able to use the internet to attack or support federal candidates without running afoul of campaign spending and contribution limits. But FEC Chairman Michael E. Toner said the new rules give a 'categorical and unqualified' exemption for all individual and group political activity on the internet, except for paid advertising.' 'The law was never intended to regulate private citizen communication on the internet,' said Commission Vice Chairman Robert D. Lenhard. 'I believe that we have achieved that goal today.' Commissioners said the new rule also specifically changes several other FEC regulations to make it clear that internet activity, such as blogging, e-mail communications and online publications, is not covered by the campaign law. For example, the rule says individuals can use union or corporate computers or other electronic devices for political activity, as long they do it on their own time and are not coerced to engage in such activity by the union or corporation. Bloggers would be entitled to the same exemption from the campaign finance law that newspapers and other traditional forms of media receive."