When In Doubt, Blame Porn?
My reporting on Tuesday's Senate Commerce Committee "Future of the Internet" hearing, which appeared in CongressDaily's PM edition (and Wednesday's AM) was absent one component that has been on my mind all afternoon. So, I thought I'd address it here: the Christian Coalition of America's testimony in favor of "network neutrality" legislation.
The religious group, which relies on Web communications to spread its gospel (and has been an active member of the Save the Internet coalition), could have made a convincing argument in favor of legislation that would bar broadband providers from blocking or filtering legal content that travels on their networks -- but pesky pornography got in the way.
In her testimony, coalition spokeswoman Michelle Combs railed against the adult entertainment industry, alleging that XXX has stayed quiet on net neutrality because "any unsavory producer of content should be worried that its content could be disadvantaged in a non-neutral network." Then she suggested the porn biz "knows that it will be able to pay premium prices to be on the fast lane with exceptional quality of service provided by the cable industry." Huh?
I'm not rushing to porn's defense here nor am I coming out on either side of the net neutrality debate, but I would imagine that some legitimate adult content producers are a wee bit worried about a climate, regardless of its probability, where content that is deemed "inappropriate" could be blocked by the pipeline provider at the flip of a switch.
I don’t know whether the porn lobby has weighed in on net neutrality but I'll be sure to ask. In the meantime, maybe Combs should fine-tune her talking points.
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