FCC Pulls Content Filtering From Free Broadband Proposal

FCC Chairman Kevin Martin has abandoned the contentious and censorial content filtering bits of the proposed free wireless broadband service that the FCC wants to build around the Advanced Wireless Services 3 band. While the FCC will auction off that band in 2009, the buyer will be required to develop a free wireless broadband service no slower than 768Kbps that covers half of the US in four years, and 95% within ten.

Speaking to Ars Technica about the (wise) decision not to censor the country's first free nationwide wireless internet access program, Martin seemed to reflect the frustration many of us feel at the slow and often cowardly pace of bureaucratic progress:

"I'm saying if this is a problem for people, let's take it away," Martin said. "A lot of public interest advocates have said they would support this, but we're concerned about the filter. Well, now there's an item in front of the Commissioners and it no longer has the filter. And I've already voted for it without the filter now. So it's already got one vote."

"Got anybody else?" I asked him.

"Not yet," Martin admitted with a chuckle. Then he expressed a bit of impatience with his four colleagues. "This is an item that has been pending at the Commission for several years, that the Commissioners were originally critical of not having moved forward faster," he said. "Other Commissioners said, 'We're overdue; we've got to do this.' But when an actual item is put forth where you have to make a hard decision, they say, 'Well, I'm not so sure what I want to do anymore'."

That's the first time in recent memory that I recall a bureaucrat attempting to speak transparently about his or her own red-tape process. It's a lovely sound that we'll probably not hear again for quite some time.

Martin drops porn filtering from FCC free wireless broadband plan [Ars Technica]