Ban on porn sites in NYC’s internet kiosks

All porn content in New York City’s free Internet kiosks has been blocked, after the service provider LinkNYC installed a software filter to prevent people from accessing adult material from each of the 180 Web-enabled kiosks scattered around Manhattan and the Bronx.

LinkNYC's decision effectively creates a category of service providers—curated version—who according to a federal court verdict last week—are exempt from the government's rules on net neutrality. Net neutrality is a set of regulations aimed at ensuring that no Internet Service Provider (ISP) can block or slow down the websites you want to reach.

This makes the implementation of net neutrality guidelines a bit tricky for the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). It raises tough, murky questions about how the federal government should think about such filtered broadband services as the FCC tries to enforce its rules for an open Internet.

The government's ban on carriers blocking or throttling websites applies to broadband Internet access service (BIAS), but only as defined by the FCC. An ISP whose service does not fit this definition is exempt from the regulations, meaning it can block content without legal repercussions. Now here comes the tricky part. While FCC defines what a broadband Internet access service constitutes, it doesn’t touch upon what doesn’t imply a broadband service. Is an entity still a BIAS provider if it only offers a curated Internet experience? According to the court judgment, they are not, so exempted from net neutrality guidelines. In short, they can block whatever content they want.

If an Internet provider were to deliberately "exercise editorial discretion — for instance, by picking a limited set of websites to carry and offering that service as a curated internet experience," then it would not meet the FCC's definition of a BIAS, the court said, because the service wouldn't be offering "substantially all" websites to consumers, just a limited subset of them.

Some say that this exemption for filtered Internet service is used as a loophole for major Internet providers, such as Verizon and AT&T, to try to evade the rules. However, rules give FCC the power to go after misbehaving companies that provide the "functional equivalent" of broadband Internet access service, even if it isn't strictly BIAS. For another, the regulations contain specific language allowing the FCC to investigate perceived cases of deliberate rule evasion.