National broadband sounds like a great idea, but a recent FCC proposal looks a little less appealing.
The Federal Communications Commission is looking for a bidder to provide free broadband service in the 1.9 GHz-2.1 GHz bands, agency Chair Kevin Martin told reporters on Friday. …
There will be one more requirement for the service. A spokesperson for the Commission has told Ars that the FCC wants it to include “content filters.” For what? We asked. “To protect children,” came the reply.
As outrageous as this sounds, I can understand the FCC’s logic. If we’re to provide “the Internet” over the airwaves, then it suddenly becomes like radio and television–pervasive. That’s the argument that’s typically been used to keep smut and the 7 deadly words off of the airwaves.
Here’s the difference: television and radio are centralized distribution media. The impact of the speech regulations is rather small, since they only affect an increasingly dwindling number of speakers (that being, the broadcasters).
The Internet, on the other hand, is a largely decentralized medium of distribution. The number of speakers on the internet comes close to the number of users; thus the impact of filtering would be massive. Decentralized mediums of expression typically get more First Amendment protection, although I can’t think of a case that would be as pervasive (or more likely to over-censor) as what is proposed.
It’s amazing that, when the FCC gets serious about our infrastructure–giving a large number of Americans some substantial bandwidth–it comes with strings like this attached.