Do not attempt to adjust your Internet

It’s been a wild week here in Cringeville. My blog posts on YouTube v. Viacom and the FCC’s proposal for a pørn-free wireless Internet have inspired raging debates about copyrights and corporate rights, free speech and free sex. Here are some of the highlights.

First, longtime Cringe fan L. B. disputes my notion that most “pretty much all men” have surfed adult sites. He adds

And despite what you say about the First Amendment, our Constitution protects speech (which generally enlightens humans), not pørnography (which debases them).   We could argue all day long about what constitutes pørnography (and even “pørnographic speech)”, but the Supreme Court, even in its present liberal iteration, has generally ruled against pørnography, so you won’t find much comfort there either.

(OK, show of hands: how many folks agree the Supremes are in a “present liberal iteration”? Maybe he’s confusing them with the Motown group.)

It’s true that when they created the First Amendment, Jefferson, Madison, Franklin et al probably did not have Girls Gone Wild in mind (well, maybe Franklin did). What they had in mind was protecting unpopular speech: the right to say things even a majority of the people (or one leader with a vindictive streak) did not much like. The problem is that old slippery slope, or what I like to call the Lays Potato Chip syndrome — you can’t censor just one. Once you start shutting down Web sites, it’s hard to stop. It’s no secret governments that impose the strictest limits on adult content also typically do the most to squelch political dissent.

A fair number of Cringesters noted that FCC oversight works fine for network TV, so why not the Net? All I can say is…. have you watched much network TV? Do you really want the Internet to look and act like that?

Meanwhile, over in the non-adult section of Web video, we’ve got a heated discussion over what studios and conglomerates should and shouldn’t have the right to do with the content they’re desperate to monetize in every possible way.  Poster Redgum summarizes the conflict eloquently:

Copyrights like private ownership rights should be protected by law. This is where it gets sticky though — do you completely shut down what is otherwise a fertile ground for creativity in the name of protecting existing copyrights, or do you find a better way to enforce existing laws? Personally, I think that if we continue to ban, prohibit, and shut down such avenues of access, we lose far more than what we perceive we are losing.

The common thread between these two topics is control. We’re all used to a freewheeling, unregulated, Hell-bent-for-whatever Internet. Now that the Net is growing up, we’re caught in the middle of a power struggle between corporate titans, government bureaucrats, and Just Plain Folks over who gets to call the shots in the 21st century economy. You can probably guess who I’m rooting for in this fight.

Finally, a word about the so-called phonecablopoly, from someone on the inside. Frequent Cringe correspondent B. D., who works for a wireless carrier/ISP that shall go unnamed (but rhymes with “horizon”) says I’m being too hard on Ma Bell’s kids. He’s actually drowning in a sea of broadband choices:

At my house I can count (wired) TXU Electric, AT&T, and Charter Cable… plus (wireless) AT&T, T-Mobile, Verizon, Sprint, and several other smaller wireless carriers whose names escape me. Then there’s over-the-air digital TV broadcast plus Dish Network and DirectTV, plus another wireless Digital TV carrier whose name also escapes me… The day the electric company brings their Internet service online through the electrical power cable, we’ll have yet another choice though I for one have no intention of plugging up a modem directly to 120 VAC to get Internet (!). How many other choices DO we need in one place?!

(B. D. wants to make it clear he’s speaking entirely for himself and not for his company, lest he be hauled off to the corporate dungeon and whipped with RJ11 cables.)

We control the horizontal, we control the vertical. And by “we,” I’m not talking about you or me, Kemosabe. 

Have we reached the Outer Limits? Would you prefer a regulated Internet, free from its sin-sodden side? Post your thoughts below, email me at cringe (at) infoworld (dot) com, or take the BuzzDash Quiz here.