An article in The Wall Street Journal discussing the business upside of internet pornography. Cable television is seeing their, shall we say, prurient interest being eaten by free availability of pornography on adult websites. Not exactly one of the coming attractions that we think of as a tool for inciting interest in broadband.

With the exception of potential new privacy protection measures from the federal government on the horizon, consumers may feel even more comfortable visiting these sites. Not only will consumers get a rise out of this, but investor expectations and valuations of online porn entertainment ventures may get a lift as well.

The Wall Street Journal yesterday reported that French president Nicolas Sarkozy wants to get the most out of the Internet as an engine for economic growth while regulating it to protect consumer privacy and the copyrights of content producers. Meanwhile, President Obama has just landed in Ireland and I expect the president to echo Mr. Sarkozy’s sentiments.

While there is nothing wrong with disclosure statements regarding what may be done with a consumer’s personally identifiable information that is submitted to a website nor enforcing the copyrights of artists, scholars, and other content providers, neither Europe or the United States should promote regulations that reach to internal management decisions of broadband access companies.

A couple days ago I had a flashback to the 1970s. It happens more and more as one approaches eligibility age for AARP benefits. Anyway, as I started buckling up, I thought about the freedom I enjoyed as a child from not having to buckle up. Freedom. Back then it was an integral part of the driving experience.

On the information superhighway we also have to buckle up. To avoid a negative experience while surfing the Web, we are encouraged to change our passwords, update our firewalls, and only go to websites we trust. These precautions make sense. But the question is, should these precautions include a driver’s license for the Internet?

That appears to be what the Obama administration is proposing. According to a blog post published in The New York Times, the administration is currently drafting a proposal that allows consumers to voluntarily sign up for a national electronic identification card. This one piece of ID will allow you to sign in to a multitude of websites. The alleged rationale behind the voluntary requirement is that a national ID will help the U.S. crack down on fraud and identity theft.

I don’t know. I can buy in to putting on my seat belt to reduce my chances of physical injury. I can’t buy into a driver’s license keeping me safe on the road. Driver’s licenses are issued in order to regulate who gets access to the road. I am also concerned that what is voluntary today becomes mandatory for accessing an increasing number of websites, particularly government websites like those of the Internal Revenue Services or your local tax collector.

When you add a national Internet ID to the Federal Communications Commission’s recent rules on managing access to the Internet, it does not add up to freedom.

Within the past five years there was talk, especially out of the U.S. Senate commerce committee, about promoting ala carte cable programming. This is where consumers could pick and choose their own bundle of shows.

Kind of like the old Burger King commercials where the cute actresses would sing, “Have it your way, have it your way.” It may have been in response to McDonald’s “two all-beef patties, special sauce, cheese, lettuce, pickles, on a sesame seed bun.” (Don’t ask me how I remember that.)

Bottom line, the argument was that consumers should be given more choice. The counter to that from the cable industry was that it was cost prohibitive to provide consumers with a la carte and that the sum of the pieces would be more expensive than the whole for consumers.

Well, it looks like Internet technology is providing us with a way to get a la carte programming. By purchasing televisions with applications from Yahoo! and Google, we can surf the Web for programming.

Unfortunately, some content providers aren’t ready to provide access to their content by televisions embedded with Internet apps. They don’t want to upset the current business model. Biz speak for they haven’t figured out how to get paid for the content that would bypass traditional cable and go directly to my web television.

Fair enough. Hopefully they can figure out something soon.

Critics of the proposed Comcast and NBC Universal joint venture have been making the argument that such an arrangement, between a large distributor of video programming and other content and a large content provider, would dampen our ability to fully participate in our great democracy.

I agree that the public should remain suspect of the media and its influence on our ability to keep government accountable. The traditional and major news sources also spend too much time being duplicative. ABC gives me the same old information that CBS gives me. I mean, how many times do I have to hear that the captain of the Enterprise got busted or that John Boehner is a cry baby. The information they provide does not appear very diverse.

And yes, there are a small number of large news organizations that appear to have a lock on the voices being heard on the airwaves. The alphabet soup includes CNN, MSNBC, FOX, CNBC, and Bloomberg.

But even with an apparent dearth of news outlets, am I ready to throw in the towel on democracy? Of course not.

There is no lack of information. There is a dearth of citizen accountability for going after information. We choose and find excuses for being spoon-fed. If we can’t get the news and a Katie Couric smile in 24 minutes, we move on to Facebook and end up spending more than 24 minutes on-line. Between the libraries of our state universities and our public libraries, we have access to lots of information about how our government runs.

With the information that we glean from alternative sources, we can resort to the tried and true methods of message transmission, letter writing, phone calls, and personal visits, to influence the policy decisions of our representatives. The hang-up that critics like Free Press have is really not with democracy. It’s with the use of one medium, namely the Internet, by content providers.

The Internet is sexy, and gets sexier with every new app, blog, and social media network that gets its hooks into it. It’s the fear of “gatekeepers” like Comcast relegating these content providers to the back of the bus and forcing them to pay to play that has critics scared. They could care less about our ability to impact our representative government as long as the pipes on the Internet are clear enough to allow them to send out their messages.

In an information society with access to probably too much information, the real threat to democracy is not whether Comcast will allow me to go to Color of Change’s website. It’s whether Americans will take the time to pursue good information, no matter the source of the content or distribution, and use it.