| Great question. While access to the airwaves clearly bumps up against questions of First Amendment rights and protections thereof, the airwaves themselves are a finite national resource---at least the way the system was originally set up, two signals cannot share the same carrier frequency, so the FCC has the responsibility of allocating those resources. The allocation criteria include responsible use of the resources by those to whom they've been allotted for the public good, because those resources have been de facto denied to other private citizens. What that "for the public good" clause means, though, is forever under scrutiny and up for debate. For historical reasons, the FCC distinguishes obscene or profane material from the general category of material with a viewpoint. The FCC is constrained from sanctioning broadcasters for broadcasting a particular view, but does have general authority to sanction across the board for profanity broadcast within a certain time range (when children are assumed present) and from obscene material at all points in time. For more information: https://www.fcc.gov/consumers/guides/fcc-and-freedom-speech The Internet did not grow up in an ecosystem of similar government constraints because it is not a resource with the physical finiteness of communication spectrum---we can always attach more computers. Plus, if I understand the philosophy correctly, a fundamental difference was understood between broadcast material---what's your user can receive whether or not they wish to but just leaving their receiver tuned to the relevant station---and online material, which the user only receives if they make an explicit request for. All of that having been said, this is all muddy, and arguments can certainly be made that various aspects of it are incorrectly reasoned, outdated, or bad analogy. |