Get ready for the (pørn) free Internet

It seems obvious now that Google is not going to save us from the rapacious clutches of the Phonecablopoly. After securing a safe haven for its Android operating system, the goo-goo-Googlers bowed out of the FCC’s wireless spectrum auction, leaving big chunks of the analog TV band to Ma Bell’s bastard offspring, Verizon and AT&T.

Suddenly, like a knight in shining white satin, the FCC is threatening to swoop in and carry the day. It has floated a plan where the winner of the public auction for the 2155 MHz band would be required to provide free, wireless Net access over part of that spectrum.

This is not unprecedented. That’s the model used to develop television, to cite one obvious example. Similar proposals for free wireless Net access have been floated in the past and rejected. But none of them came directly from the FCC.

Naturally, there’s a catch, and it’s a doozy. This free wireless Internet would come without obscene or adult content. Carriers would be required to deliver the data bits without the naughty bits.

Yes, the Internet without pørn. Kind of like bagels without cream cheese or Siegfried without Roy.

Me, I’m perfectly sanguine with the idea of a mobile Internet free from adult content (I also only read Playboy for the articles.) If I want to see somebody making the beast with two backs — or several beasts of different species — I know where to go.

But I’m in the minority. The percentage of men who range the Net for pørn is about the same as men who lie about the size of their fiscal endowments — pretty much all of them. Surveys typically note that one third to two thirds of all male Net surfers (and a smaller but significant percentage of women) have visited adult Web sites, but those are just the folks honest enough to admit it.

Ridding the Net of naughtiness is fraught with difficulty. There are really only two ways to do it, and they both suck. One is by using filtering software. While these apps have gotten more sophisticated over the years, they face an insurmountable problem: defining what is and isn’t obscene. So they miss a lot of stuff some people would find offensive, while blocking other stuff that doesn’t really deserve it.

The second solution is actually worse. That’s where people decide what subset of Net content goes up on the wireless band. And while humans can make more nuanced decisions than software, they quickly turn political. Who makes those decisions and what is their agenda? If you can block adult content, then surely you should block sites promoting hate speech and terrorism. And from there, well, the party’s just getting good. Once you start censoring content, where do you stop? There are plenty of folks out there who’d be happy to rewrite our Constitution, starting with the First Amendment. They’re not the ones I want delivering the Internet.