Municipal involvement in a network such as Utopia also raises the question of how much influence city governments will have over the programming on their system — programming Utopia’s Black acknowledges likely will include pornography.

“It is a content issue that our service providers will have to deal with and offer in a competitive way,” he said. “We are not concerned with what specific programming they want to offer. Our job is to provide a fiber-optic network.”

Murray Mayor Daniel Snarr conceded there may be some taxpayer fallout when residents discover they are being asked to guarantee the payments for a system that carries pornography.

“Some people may be upset but most are wise enough to know that with the wonderful things the Internet provides, there comes content that make some squeamish. But I’m not anticipating too many problems. We have a sewer system full of crap and nobody seems to mind paying for it.”

The unprecedented access to the incredible amount of information available on the Internet means that some people will access information and images that others find offensive. Obviously this is a problem with the government provision all types of infrastructure, especially the road system. But the Internet seems a much more fertile ground for things like pornography. For example, check out the Lycos 50 (the Lycos 50 is a weekly listing of the top 50 search on the search engine Lycos). Four of the top ten searches of the year are likely people searching for a little skin—(2) Britney Spears, (4) Paris Hilton, (9) Pamela Anderson and (10) Brooke Burke.

Mothers and fathers can install programs that limit their children’s ability to access offensive materials. Will citizens clamor for the same type of control over their fellow citizen’s Internet surfing habits (or which video they watch on video on demand) ? If everyone pays for the system, then doesn’t everyone have some right to decide what information gets transmitted on the system?

Thanks to Jeremy for the link.