From: utzoo!decvax!harpo!utah-cs!haas Newsgroups: net.misc Title: Cable TV and the First Amendment Article-I.D.: utah-cs.1015 Posted: Mon Sep 27 18:34:49 1982 Received: Thu Sep 30 09:20:01 1982 It's true that cable TV seems to be treated as a natural monopoly in most markets, although I'm not sure that it should be. However, so what? The Post Office is about as natural a monopoly, but nevertheless each individual is able to control what the Post Office brings into his/her home. If I want to read Playboy and my neighbor doesn't or vice versa, each of us can have what s/he wants. One reason I raised this issue here is because it seems to me it would be possible to build the same privacy protections into the technology. For example, by choosing to subscribe to a certain established magazine or not I can pretty well predict what range of things I'm going to get - eg. I can subscribe to Scientific American with little fear that the next issue will contain a centerfold of a naked female, and I can subscribe to Playboy with little fear that it *WON'T*. So, why not build the cable TV technology with different enciphered channels with cipher assigned according to content - cipher A for G movies, cipher B for PG movies,...,cipher D for X movies. Then you would have your house drop wired by the cable company to bring in only those ratings that you want, just as you subscribe to magazines that contain only that type of material you want. It seems to me that this would answer any legitimate complaints about what the children would see. Incidentally, the Salt Lake valley is already served by a "cableless" TV network called Channel One, which broadcasts a microwave signal to the whole valley (yea, even unto Bluffdale, heaven forfend!). You are supposed to rent a microwave receiver/converter to pick up the signal - however some of the more enterprising and/or dishonest folks around have, of course, flanged up the appropriate hardware and are now watching for free. Channel One isn't enciphered yet, but supposedly it will be in the near future (or they'll lose their market!) -- Walt Haas