Talk:Smith–Mundt Act

message: I get a strange kind of spams almost daily about Chinese dissident news, using proxies and English study, which I absolutely had never asked for, and most U.S. citizens can not even recognize. Many spams are encourageing feedback to email address on voanews.com, voa.gov and rfa.org to "improve their service". The spams does not have a pattern of their subjects or addresses.--Skyfiler 17:44, 3 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Could someone write about the motivation of this law? Why were its supporters interested in preventing the broadcast of such information in the US? Because the views of the Voice of American or Radio Free Europe were so controversial that they would offend people in the US? I don't think so. Because the views were so poorly supported that broadcasting them in the US would make clear VOA or RFE were sham operations? Doesn't sound right. Because the Communist Party was so strong domestically that it would have staged mass demonstrations against this kind of broadcast? Of course not. Because private businesses didn't want to face any competition from government-supported media? Maybe. But I have no idea. Since the Freedom of Information Act didn't exist when Smith-Mundt was passed (~25 year gap), the motivation wasn't to forestall any FOIA requests to get files from VOA or RFE. In short, I'm totally puzzzled and hope someone better informed will add this to this stub. Interlingua 13:18, 3 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I would like to second this request, if anyone knows anything more.  It does seem quite odd.  To my knowledge, VOA content was never particularly controversial nor "so poorly supported...", etc.  I think that the "competition with domestic media" explanation is probably the most likely, although then why was the ability to examine broadcasts limited only to researchers and so on?  Also, are VOA broadcasts copyright?  Being works of the US Government I would think not, but suppose today someone decided to record them and rebroadcast them domestically in the US, perhaps via the Internet?  Would that violate this law?  Gee, that seems impossible, due to 1st Amendment implications, even if the government forbids itself from disseminating this stuff domestically... Anyway, this is a fascinating topic.--69.22.75.205 13:53, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Congress was concerned about domestic propaganda being used as disinformation upon the American public, so they banned it. Even though the VOA's content is uncontroversial and could be useful to Americans, it is seen as preferable to make all domestic propaganda illegal. 98.246.191.164 (talk) 14:49, 13 July 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: Is VOA and Radio Free Asia permitted to spam?

message: Wasn't this act also the basis of the Fulbright Program?  Badagnani 10:30, 27 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Also [[Fulbright Program]]

message: It seems this act has been "updated" as of May 2012
To amend the United States Information and Educational Exchange Act of 1948 to authorize the domestic dissemination of information and material about the United States intended primarily for foreign audiences, and for other purposes.
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c112:H.R.5736:  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 184.153.187.119 (talk) 00:55, 2 February 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: It did get amended in the NDAA of 2013. http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/112/hr4310/text -- BlindWanderer (talk) 00:41, 29 April 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  H.R.5736 -- Smith-Mundt Modernization Act of 2012  

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*Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20080902051304/http://mountainrunner.us/2008/07/rethinking_smithmundt_a_look_b.html to http://mountainrunner.us/2008/07/rethinking_smithmundt_a_look_b.html
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20060620103923/http://www.fulbright.org.cy/fulworld.htm to http://www.fulbright.org.cy/fulworld.htm
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*Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20090619072148/http://mountainrunner.us/2009/05/zorinsky.html to http://mountainrunner.us/2009/05/zorinsky.html
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*Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20101126151947/http://mountainrunner.us/files/s-m/Smith-Mundt_Symposium_Final_Report.pdf to http://mountainrunner.us/files/s-m/Smith-Mundt_Symposium_Final_Report.pdf
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20041020094350/http://www.voanews.com/english/about/OnlinePressKit.cfm to http://www.voanews.com/english/about/OnlinePressKit.cfm
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20050221171345/http://www.rcfp.org/news/1998/0223c.html to http://www.rcfp.org/news/1998/0223c.html
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thread_title:  External links modified