[spangry]

'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)]

[ExpendableGuy]

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.

[hga]

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