Eshoo eschews easy sleaze

..damn, I've been waiting years for the chance to make up a headline like that...

In a relatively obscure push to create a nationwide free wireless Internet access network, Anna Eshoo (Rep) is asking for one of the radio spectrum bands to be sold off but with the proviso that whoever runs this free "Family Friendly" service must block all pornography and adult content. I doubt it'll go anywhere as the cost of the D-block is so high, without pornodollars nobody can afford it. It does however raise an interesting question - is this just protecting the vulnerable from being lured into vice, depravity and an addiction to spending welfare checks on midget porn, or a restriction of free speech? Is it fair that you could get Google for free in a parking lot of your choice, but you'd have to buy airtime to see BlueBlood?

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Hi Mindgames! Nice to see you :)

I sort of respect the money-where-the-mouth-is concept of giving something away for free if it will be used for something you feel good about.

Obviously, I don't agree with the value system or the general nonsense of child-proofing the world. People are adults for far more of their lives than they are children and the needs of people over the age of six need to be served too.

I found out in San Francisco last week that apparently some services which claim to be family friendly appear to block anything with the word "gothic" in it.

I kind of think search engines are not family friendly, nor should they be, and I find it creepy that society in general seems to be okay with letting Google determine agreed-upon reality.

Amelia G, thats a very good point, Very good.
The thing I super super like about this site is that we're not afraid to question *the man* in search for what is truth, and real...

I think it's a fine line between sanitizing and whitewashing. It sounds fair enough to remove the llama porn from a feed into a school, but surely for John Doe on the street, be he 8 or 80, it's down to him or his parents to put a firewall on his browser if scary things are to be blocked. Then we have the question of who decides what to block, and how public the rules are.

If we all got to see which keywords are snagged, uberpornsters and elite webmistresses will just walk round them. If the list is secret, who'll guarantee it doesn't contain blocks on religion, politics and so forth...

As I said, I don't see any of the carriers leaping at this poisoned apple, but it seems to be a marker for the general attitude of online legislation these days.. you can have 'web lite' on your tax dollar, but only our web lite. I think the Chinese tried that.

oh, it'll happen, just not quite yet

why would anyone use the internet without porn? isn't that the only reason people use it at all?