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FCC Pitches Free, Bowdlerized Wireless Internet Access
Aidtopia writes "FCC Chairman Kevin Martin is proposing auctioning off an unused part of the 25 MHz spectrum on the condition that the winner provide free wireless Internet access. The proposal sets coverage targets that ramp up to 95% of the population within 10 years. The catch: the provider must filter out obscene content." I wonder what definition of "obscene" the FCC would like to use.
Add anything that is not "politically correct", and it'll be filtered.
Thus, about 99% of all media.
Fuck that.
s/obscene/dissenting/g
I wonder if this is a less than subtle way of the FCC executing a power grab, first establish censoring on a free network, then start moving it to the current networks (although this would not be needed if the enough people use this as their "last mile", you just look at their traffic there).
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
I wonder what definition of "obscene" the FCC would like to use.
In the US, 'obscene' has a clear legal meaning: material that meets the three-pronged (I said 'prong,' huhuuhuh) test established in Miller v. California:
1. 'the average person, applying contemporary community standards' would find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest
2. the work depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by the applicable state law
3. the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.
Such material isn't protected speech. I think it should be, but there you go: it's hardly surprising that the FCC doesn't want it on a freely-accessible broadcast network. It's an infinitely more reasonable position for them to take than if they were demanding that providers filter "indecent" material, which is a) protected speech and b) has no strict legal definition.
High-temperature female displays well-hydrated feline! Amazing pseudoadults with brobdignagian dorsal features! Well-matched pairs engaging in close contact!
FCC Okays Nudity On TV If It's Alyson Hannigan
On the FCC front page, there is a link to all the members of the board, and their emails.
I say we email them.
Lets turn the ./ effect upon our government, and see if maybe, just maybe, we can convince them not to make the same dumb ass mistakes they make every 30 years trying to censor new formats.
I bet I can make a raunchy ASCII Art out of your 10 words. :)
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
This isn't the 25MHz spectrum, it's a 25MHz block of the 2.1GHz spectrum. Realizing that makes this story make a whole lot more sense. There's no possible way this would work in the HF range.
I agree with your concern. If we assume an S/N ratio of 20db (about 3 S units on my HF rig or noise at S6 and signal at S9 which I consider a good copy) then Shannon-Hartley's theorem says that they will get at best 333kbps. I used the example calculation #1 at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shannon%E2%80%93Hartley_theorem and just substituted 50kc for 4kc to get this.
Anyone disagree?
Prediction: The real iPhone killer is going to be sex robots from Japan. Think about it.
Just route all content through china.
TV and radio are actually held to a higher standard for most of the day: they can't broadcast "indecent" material from 6 AM to 10 PM. In practice, most broadcasters choose not to broadcast "indecent" material at all, possibly for fear of a public outcry or advertisers backing out. Obscenity was defined by the Supreme Court in Miller v. California, and is a very tough threshold to meet. Lots of laws prohibit obscene speech, and I'm fairly certain there's a law that prohibits obscene speech from being transmitted on a licensed channel. The FCC is merely upholding the law.
to place restrictions on private industry
I'd agree, but to be fair, the FCC is required to mandate "decency" standards on the public airwaves, so extending that mandate/philosophy to a proposed public wireless system sounds like a reasonable argument.
The difficulty is that the internet, at least for the forseeable future, isn't at all similar to broadcast television or radio.
"I wonder what definition of "obscene" the FCC would like to use."
Probably the one they already use to charge violators such as Howard Stern, as well as the violators' station of origin, up to US$250K per incident. I'm not sure where it is in their regs (which I do know are online) but I recall quite clearly the sign in the studio booth at WUVT that reminded me constantly of the sword hanging over me.
What's always bothered me about the regs is the relaxation of the rules after 10 PM. When I was broadcasting, I had simultaneous netcast. After 10 PM where the station is (Blacksburg VA, eastern time) is only after 7 PM on the Left Coast (ie. pacific time). After 10 PM where? Was I simultaneously legal in Virginia but breaking the law in California?
Apply that now to on-demand, statically stored material which may or may not be infringing depending on the material and time of request. It's always before 10 PM someplace, so the owner may be liable according to the location of the requester. You can bet this is the way things would fall, because the alternative is to say 'it's AFTER 10 PM someplace', making the regs moot and removing a potential source of enforcement as well as income.
Oh yeah, and the context of the offending material matters. You can play hip hop and rap on air after 10 PM local and get away with broadcasting 2 "motherfuckers" and 5 "niggers" per minute, but try to say one of either yourself and see what it costs you. In the case of the latter, that may include body parts depending on your own color. The context of your reception can also matter, hence a "researcher" is supposed to be able to access an "obscene" web site for academic purposes without fear of reprisal. Yeah, right.
Personally I prefer Larry Flint's editorialized definition of "obscene" which puts murder and such well before sex in terms of badness. If that were used, you'd never be able to access most commercial news outlets, or much common TV or theatrical material. So sad that killing is not just accepted but expected, and fucking is outlawed.
OOPS, I think I just made it impossible for you to access this in the archives should the regulation of the proposed bandwidth go through. We'll see.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
Here I believe obscene means having to pay for wireless spectrum that you're required to provide a free service on.
Of course the FCC is still scratching its head over why they couldn't get anybody to bid on spectrum that was dedicated for public safety use.
Anybody else think the FCC has lost the plot ?