
Perhaps the government would like to provide free internet access so its online services could be used, poorer people can have a way of accessing job-sites and sending emails.
I know the content filters are pretty rubbish, but if I were a US taxpayer, the free delivery of porn would not be high on my list of things I would want to pay for. It doesn't have to be perfect, should err on the side of permissiveness and shouldn't be sold/bought on the basis of censorship. I'd block torrent traffic too, not because of the possible legal status of the content, but because there is no real need for it. I'd also put in some decent anti-spam system, which might be a bit of a novelty for the US.
It isn't necessarily censorship (though it may be dressed that way to get red-state approval), it might just be keeping unnecessary traffic off what is likely to be a poorly resourced network infrastructure.
Paris, poorly resourced she aint.