FCC Falsely Claims Community Broadband an 'Ominous Threat To First Amendment' (vice.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: The Trump FCC has declared towns and cities that vote to build their own broadband networks an "ominous threat to the First Amendment." The claims were made last week during a speech given at the telecom-funded Media Institute by FCC Commissioner Mike O'Rielly. In his speech, O'Rielly insinuated, without evidence, that community owned and operated broadband networks would naturally result in local governments aggressively limiting American free speech rights. "I would be remiss if my address omitted a discussion of a lesser-known, but particularly ominous, threat to the First Amendment in the age of the Internet: state-owned and operated broadband networks," claimed O'Rielly.

In his speech, O'Rielly highlighted efforts by the last FCC, led by former boss Tom Wheeler, to encourage such community-run broadband networks as a creative solution to private sector failure. O'Rielly subsequently tried to claim, without evidence, that encouraging such networks would somehow result in government attempts to censor public opinion. "Municipalities such as Chattanooga, Tennessee, and Wilson, North Carolina, have been notorious for their use of speech codes in the terms of service of state-owned networks, prohibiting users from transmitting content that falls into amorphous categories like 'hateful' or "threatening," O'Rielly claimed. The closest O'Rielly gets to supporting evidence appears to be a 2015 white paper written by Professor Enrique Armijo for the ISP-funded Free State Foundation. That paper similarly alleges that standard telecom sector language intended to police "threatening, abusive or hateful" language somehow implies community-run ISPs are more likely to curtail user speech. But municipal broadband experts say the argument has no basis in fact.

Comments

I think they might be right

[AndyKron]

NoogaNet seems to fit description nicely. 2. There is no guarantee of privacy associated with any User's use of the Service. 3. Your wireless-enabled device used to access the Internet will be logged and associated with your browsing. 7. The City reserves the right to impose time, place or manner restrictions on the viewing of certain materials accessed through the Service. 8. The City may suspend or terminate your use of the Service if it reasonably believes that you are in violation of any provision of this Policy. 9. Persons who use the Service for abusive, malicious or illegal activity are subject to prosecution.

A ghost of a point, but not intentional.

[SuricouRaven]

It's hyperbole, but it's not completely ungrounded. The internet, as we all know, has a *lot* of porn on it. There are also a lot of people who would like to see porn banned. It gets a lot easier for them to get their way when the government is involved in operating an internet service, for much the same reason that the FCC is able to regulate indecency transmitted on government-allocated radio frequencies. The argument that "we don't want our tax money to pay for other people to watch smut" is going to be a pretty powerful one, and anti-porn activists generally do not consider themselves as violating the first amendment because they do not recognize pornography as a form of speech. Similar concerns can be raised about government being pressured to block copyright infringement.

But bizarrely, the federal government is currently dominated by a faction which supports banning the porn! There's a weird double standard going on here that shows the writer of this speech does not care at all about everything outlined in the above paragraph. The strongest argument that could be made in relation to the point raised is the possibility of anti-pornography efforts, but the FCC can't even acknowledge that possibility because they are allied to the people who are pushing it. Instead he is using the current bogeyman of liberal censorship of 'threatening' behavior - which every conservative is supposed to fear right now, though any attempt by a municipal provider to do that would likely be smacked down in the courts. It's quite the fear on the right though - you need only skim a few suitably skewed news sites to find them full of stories about how prominent right-wing activists have been 'censored' on social media and punished for their political views. Strangely though, very few of these stories actually repeat the contents of the banned posts, and the victims invariably turn out to be raging homophobes or conspiracy theorists. Usually both.

I can't even interpret this at near-midnight. It's too deep in political dog-whistles and codephrases. None of it makes any sense, and I don't think it's supposed to. It works because most of the country loves the first amendment in the abstract sense, but is also very eager to disregard it when they have an agenda to advance - usually while accusing everyone else of doing the same.

If the FCC really cared about preserving freedom of speech on the internet, they'd be doing everything they can to promote the use of universal encryption at every level. But they aren't doing to do that. It would get in the way of things like keeping television free of dirty words and making sure the government can issue warrants worth the effort.

This posts is bleh and rambling... I shouldn't write these while barely awake. Screw it, too tired to care. Night.