I got an email alert from the Family Research Council recently, The FCC is working on free and family friendly broadband access across America. This is great! Many rural areas don't have access to dial-up much less broadband, and the cost of satellite would be ridiculous, not to mention a security risk, especially for farmers, ranchers and other rural businessmen and women.

Here's what could potentially be a fly in the ointment. This family friendly free broadband would not permit access to porn. (Hooray!) Some consider this a stifiling of free speech. i don't know how. Not everyone wants access to porn-much less FREE access to porn! I didn't and still don't understand how the desire to pretend to have access to women via video is free speech. But then I'm not a guy. (And while I'm on this particular topic I'd like to say that women don't like being rejected either. I recently heard that men turn to porn because they want to feel that women desire them. Ok, try TALKING to a woman that you find desirable!  You may not get to do the horizontal hula with her, but then you may get a chance to find a life partner! Women need to feel desireable too and to be treated as a target or a goal or a notch on a bedpost is not attractive to a woman.)

Now this wrangling over what constitutes free speech is going to hold up what could be potentially a good thing for millions of people! Why? Because we have, in this country some really strange ideas on what constitutes free speech! Somehow the idea that decency must also be part of the free speech equation got lost when we got behind our cathode ray/lcd/hdtv screens...) 

Maybe I've been watching too many episodes of "Law & Order: SVU" and that Dateline series "To catch a Predator." A lot of sick stuff is happening in the name of the right to free speech and self experession! (There's a false sense of intimacy created because we are behind those screens, by ourselves, behind the walls of our cubicles and homes.) 

And personally, I don't want my tax dollars supporting a habit that destroys families and condones the exploitation and abuse of women and children!

In a sense, free broadband would be great. I admit that some personal freedoms will be curtailed and it will be a lot easier for the government to track who's sending what. This may not be such a bad idea, when you take a look at how much spam is spewed across the 'net. How many scams have passed through our email boxes? "Dear sir/madam, you don't know me but you have been selected to act as beneficiary for some amazingly stupid too good  to be true amount of money!"...

Over the years I've been on the net I've seen some strange spam...   I've gotten death threats, offers for illicit meetings withh detailed price lists... invites to kiddie sites..(and I'm not talking kid safe or family friendly! I usually report that spam to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, and you should too!) I've even gotten spam for buying and selling personal information, personal love slaves, higly illegal drugs, and munitions! And did I mention the terrorists soliciting money? i usually report all the really crazy stuff to the proper authorities.

Ok, I got a little off topic. The point I'm dancing around is, if we do get this free broadband thing off the ground, then the greater good, that is family friendly, should be the first priority, And if you want porn, pay for it!