Gary, As I point out in my response to "that other guy", the issues have little to do with free speech. They have to do with who, in what capacity, is placing the most extreme burden on the internet; and who, in what capacity, is paying for it. The facts of the matter are that right now the average taxpayer is subsidizing the porno fiend. I say "subsidizing" even though porno surfing provides no benefit to society, so actually the situation is much worse than that.
Secondly, new technologies are always "out in the wild" as they first emerge. They are little understood, and not widely implemented, and so by and large the government neither has the ability nor the motivation to intervene and make sure that the technology is beneficial to society. The internet is past this stage.
I never stated that active regulation should be taken against porno-surfing; rather, I advocated that government economic intervention (into an area in which they are already heavily intervened) is necessary to produce a societally beneficial construct (for many reasons, not just porno, but let's not wander).
Free societies are not as free as libertarians would have you believe. In every nook and cranny of the world, economics are used by governments to de-facto "nudge" people in a direction which is most beneficial to themselves and others. De-jure, America can not be "against porno" because we believe in free speech, but de-facto indeed it can and IS. Currently in NYC the government is making it prohibitively expensive to operate porno-palaces in that infamous downtown section which has been decimated due to drugs, streetwalking, crime, all attracted by the porno shops. Boston is attempting to do the same in "Hell's Kitchen".
I personally believe that the "big noise" made about porno and free speech by many of the "cyberpunks" is a direct result of them living in a fantasy electronic world with little experience or understanding of the horrible consequences in real life of certain paradigms. The are not police officers; they are not judges; they are not public defenders; they are not psychologists; their experience with the real world is grossly limited and on a juvenile level for the most part. |
