If only 9% of TV comes over the airwaves any more, why are you even concerned about it? The government has just as much authority to regulate the airwaves as they always have, no matter how many people use them, but that authority, it would seem, is quickly becoming irrelevant.
Because their control limits the content of the 91% of households in America, to protect the 9%. That’s why.
I have hundreds of cable channels available. Four or five of them are the ones where content can be controlled by Congress. And even with those, the networks that run them can have cable-only programming that would not be under Congress’ control. For example, they could bleep things out only over the air, and leave them in on cable, if they wanted to do so.
So - why should I care?
Do you care if the FCC decided broadband internet (to smartphones, iPads and laptops) could not serve profanity, pornography or any other content from websites they decided was indecent?
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Any “broadband internet” is subscription only. There is no free “broadband internet” open to all - so it’s not the same thing. If there was such an animal, it would be within FCC’s power to regulate it, though it would be stupid to do so, because:
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FCC can try. There are a few dozen ways around any such censorship.
It is absoloutely the same thing; the question of subscription versus free has no bearing on the government’s power to censor content on public airwaves. Either the airwaves are a public resource that the government must protect, or they are not.
The question of subscription vs. free has everything to do with whether you can receive content only if you subscribe to it or everyone (including little kids) can do so. There is precedent to FCC not censoring content over public airwaves if it was subscription-based.
And yes, FCC can in fact regulate public internet, or, as I said, it can try (and fail).
This is a very good point.
If the airwaves are a quasi-public good, and are therefore subject to governmental oversight and censure, then why not the broadband wireless signals.
I suppose it is because the FCC wasn’t specifically setup to regulate all of the EM spectrum? It does say ‘radio’ which is a limited part of the spectrum.
This is a question I haven’t pondered before.
I can go to any McDonald’s with my laptop computer and download porn.
It is up to the establishment to regulate content and many do.
Certainly, public establishments like libraries do restrict content as well.
But, is it legal for the FCC to restrict free Internet access at private establishments?
Huh? Why are you even asking that? The answer is of course not and how is that relevant?
On edit: I see .you misunderstood his argument. He was talking about wireless Internet over the public airwaves. Not wifi.
It is. “Radio” doesn’t just apply to broadcast radio. The FCC regulates the entire EM spectrum, including broadband wireless.
A couple of questions that I’ve had kicking through my head for awhile that seem at least tangentially relevant to this debate:
- Why is there any free speech right over the airwaves at all?
The government has a vastly different set of powers to decide what to do with property it maintains and owns in its governmental capacity than it does in its capacity of regulating what citizens can do with their property.
The public airwaves are regulated by the government as owner, for all practical purposes. ISTM that it should be able to place whatever limits it wants on the use of those airwaves, in the same way that it can limit the use of public lands. That military base over there is public property, owned by the government for the benefit of us all, but the government can and does restrict our access to varying degrees, sometimes quite considerably. Why are the airwaves any different?
- Why do we have broadcast TV at all, anymore? Radio spectrum really IS a scarce asset, with lots of potential uses (e.g. wireless broadband) that would seem much more fitting for our time than preserving a massively spectrum-hogging service (which over-the-air TV is) that few use anymore. (And I say this as one of those few. I have no cable, no satellite.)
Pretty much any urban area of any size has been 100% wired for cable for decades now. You could simply set aside a certain number of channels for free-to-all ‘broadcast’ channels, that nobody would have to pay to access, just hook up your TV to the cable outlet, and you get 'em for free. You might have to preserve broadcast TV to cover areas away from cities and counties that aren’t wired for cable, but you could do that with a much smaller slice of the broadcast spectrum, since not that many TV stations want to broadcast out there anyway. And maybe that could be handled by dedicating a slice of the satellite broadcast spectrum to free, unscrambled TV also.
Like I say, there are plenty of other potential uses for that spectrum. Wireless broadband, an additional metric ton of cell phone frequencies, enabling another few national providers, or quintupling the number of over-the-air broadcast radio stations, or who knows what. But broadcast TV seems like something we could easily do without in order to make these things happen.
Well, SCOTUS does have to consider content when considering constitutionality. The content restrictions have to pass constitutional muster. To take an obvious extreme, an FCC regulation barring positive commentary on the GOP from the airwaves would not be constitutional.
I don’t know the consitutional test that would be applied to the issue of profanity on public airwaves (and I’m not going to look it up, I don’t care enough), but certainly the governmental interest in having profanity-free channels on the public airwaves is relevant - though not necessarily dispositive - to the question of whether FCC restrictions on profanity on broadcast networks are constitutional.
Sua