Public interest groups roast FCC smutless broadband plan

Nearly half a dozen advocacy groups from liberal to libertarian concur: they hate Federal Communications Commission Chairman Kevin Martin's proposal for a national broadband service with the porn filtered out. "Unconstitutional and unwise," their Friday filing calls the plan, which they charge amounts to a "government mandated 'blacklist' of websites." The filtering component would limit the system "so dramatically that the usefulness of the service would be radically reduced." Plus, if the agency actually approved the scheme, it would face a tsunami of lawsuits. So contend the Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT), People for the American Way, Adam Thierer of the Progress and Freedom Foundation, the Public Interest Spectrum Coalition, the American Booksellers Association, the Von Coalition, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and fifteen other groups. It was inevitable that this shoe would drop on a scheme that is already taking heavy incoming fire from the wireless industry for its alleged technical shortcomings.