Is regulating the Net similar to regulating the telephone, radio or TV?
Not at all. The telephone and the broadcast media are all government-supervised monopolies, and Congress and the courts have recognized the government’s right to supervise content as a result. However, the right of government intervention to ban indecent language recognized for these other communications media, though cited as a precedent for the CDA, is actually far less than the profound censorship the CDA envisions. The government and the phone company itself can play no role in regulating the contents of private conversations. In fact, the phone company, as a common carrier, is legally required to carry any kind of private communications without making any distinctions. In the 1980’s, disturbed by the growth of adult 900-line services, Congress tried banning them; the Supreme Court held that indecent speech could not be banned from phone lines.
No. Government involvement in radio and television is based on the “scarcity” doctrine, which holds that government censorship of content is justified by the government’s role in assigning broadcast frequencies on a scarce spectrum. The Internet, on the other hand, is not a “scarce” resource as anyone can attach a computer to it without the government’s permission. Nor is it a government-licensed common carrier like a phone company. Moreover, the regulations that have been held constitutional for telephone, radio and TV merely seek to shift (“channel”) explicit speech to a time or place where children cannot access it, but not to ban such speech entirely.
Related Questions
- Besides mass media such as TV and radio, what other methods, such as auto-dialing and e-mail, could the Water Bureau have used to communicate their message to affected customers?
- Is regulating the Net similar to regulating the telephone, radio or TV?
- Can my videos be viewed at quality similar to a TV viewing?
