What a ban on online … um, er… adult content can teach us about Internet law

When New York City first started replacing its public pay phones with free Internet kiosks, it probably didn't expect homeless people to start watching porn on them. So the company behind the Internet service, LinkNYC, has now 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 curated version of the Internet for the kiosk's millions of potential users.

Why is that interesting? Well, a panel of judges ruled that curated Internet services are exempt from the government's rules on net neutrality — a set of regulations aimed at ensuring that no Internet service provider can block or slow down the websites you want to reach. Those very rules were upheld in a 2-to-1 vote last week at the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit. The decision marked a major victory for regulators and a defeat for the ISPs that had sued to have the rules overturned. The broadband companies claimed the regulations were illegal and unconstitutional; the court ultimately disagreed, siding with the government. Although the Federal Communications Commission prevailed over the ISPs, it now falls to the agency to implement its regulations. And, partly because of the judges' comments on curated Internet services, this may be a messy process. 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.