Berkman fellows oppose censored "free" wireless

A group of fellows and faculty members with Harvard's Berkman Center have filed formal comments against the FCC's proposal for auctioning AWS-3 (Advanced Wireless Services) spectrum with the requirement that the winning bidder provide national free wireless Internet service with content filtering. The proposal provides for a single winner in the auction, which will have a nationwide monopoly on the 2155-2180 MHz band. The auction's winner is ultimately expected to be reachable by at least 95% of the United States' population.

The authors of the comment state that "to characterize the Internet as a system for controlled 'content' transmission is to undermine its salient characteristic as a participatory environment. The value of the Internet is created by the contributions of its participants." The comment notes a particularly nasty recommendation:

[Licensees must] use best efforts to employ filtering to protect children from exposure to inappropriate material as defined in paragraph (a)(1). Should any commercially-available network filters installed not be capable of reviewing certain types of communications, such as peer-to-peer file sharing, the licensee may use other means, such as limiting access to those types of communications as part of the AWS-3 free broadband service, to ensure that inappropriate content as defined in paragraph (a)(1) not be accessible as part of the service.

That's the Andrew Cuomo approach: Block whole protocols to "protect children." It's a safe guess that the monopolist won't offer a newsgroup server.

The Berkman group's opposition to censorship is laudable, but it doesn't go far enough. The whole proposal is scary; it creates a legal monopoly over an important chunk of the EM spectrum, guaranteeing that the monopolist will have a cozy relationship with the FCC. It will get favors from the federal government, and in return will do the government's bidding. Focusing just on the filtering misses a major point. The FCC proposal is deadly to the Internet.