'In 2010, the landmark case filed by Citizens United changed the rules regarding corporate campaign expenditures. This ruling made it legal for corporations and unions to spend from their general treasuries to finance independent expenditures. Direct corporate and union contributions to federal campaigns, however are still prohibited.'
'The 2010 election marked the rise of a new political committee, dubbed "super PACs," and officially known as "independent-expenditure only committees," which can raise unlimited sums from corporations, unions and other groups, as well as individuals. [...] Super PACs are not allowed to coordinate directly with candidates or political parties since they are "independent".'
Giving ad time or ad space directly to candidates, as Joel proposes, would violate that rule--even if it was done by a Super PAC.
However nothing would stop a Super PAC, or even the tech companies themselves, from creating their own ads supporting candidates, and running them on their own sites. (as long as they are not coordinated with the campaign)
Pretty sure I covered that point.
> Giving ad time or ad space directly to candidates, as Joel proposes
He didn't actually say that. He said giving ad space to a 'political campaign'. Spolsky also, and quite rightly I think, steers clear of the idea of tech companies directly spruiking friendly candidates. But you could have a PAC whose sole function was to allocate ad inventory evenly between a disparate field of candidates, for example. Google could even run it algorithmically off their own system.
There are lots of ways to do it and, as demonstrated, no real regulatory barriers. The only thing missing is political commitment on the part of internet companies. I agree with Spolsky that there is huge untapped power in this idea. I'm just not sure that it would be beneficial to society over the long term to have it unleashed.
From the second sentence, it seemed to me that he was talking about companies directly giving advertising inventory directly to candidates. But now reading it again, it is a bit ambiguous.
The PAC intermediary you describe would work legally, but it wouldn't be able to allocate much ad inventory to each candidate, since the most a PAC can give to each candidate is $5,000 aggregate per election cycle.
If you created a PAC, then you could solicit donations from individuals and spend it on whatever candidates you, the PAC director, chose. But, PAC contributions and distributions are also pretty strictly limited: $5,000 per person, and $5,000 per candidate, respectively.
Political parties can spend a lot more money, but only on candidates who are members of the same party. So for instance if you started the Internet Party, you couldn't give much money to a politician who is a declared Democrat or Republican.