Supreme Court to Hear FCC Indecency Case 453
MachineShedFred writes "The Supreme Court of the United States has announced that it will be hearing the FCC's appeal to the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals' decision that the FCC has changed its policy on fleeting expletives without adequate explanation. It's now on the FCC to explain to the Supreme Court why its policy has changed. This is also the first time the Supreme Court has heard a major 'broadcast indecency' case in 30 years."
Re:Where does it stop? (Score:5, Informative)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7301244.stm [bbc.co.uk]
This bbc story about it mentions this information.
Re:Fucking FCC (Score:5, Informative)
The FCC is destructive (Score:5, Informative)
I'm a DJ for a very large college radio station (broadcasting all over the Boston metropolitan area in the middle of FM dial) and the most disconcerting facet of the post-wardrobe malfunction FCC crackdowns is the fact that even a single incident would result in my station being shut down. We got one complaint a few years ago (in the more tolerant era), so now, if we were to become a repeat offender, the fine--several hundred thousand dollars--would completely bankrupt the station. SInce we're independently funded through ad revenue, there's no way we could pay, and we'd be off the air--just if somebody complained to the FCC because a late-night DJ slipped up and said "Fuck" on air, even when we're actually allowed to play music containing the same word.
To me, at least, it seems incredibly obvious that the punishments are beyond the limits of sanity. The FCC is trying to look out for the standards of our community? Yes, my station plays underground rock and hip-hop at night (I DJ for those programs), but during the day, it's exclusively jazz and classical. If, at 3am, a hip-hop DJ curses, leading to a complaint and the end of the station, who really loses? I suspect that the thousands of classical and jazz listeners would be more on the losing end than the asshole who called in the complaint or any of the other people who happened to hear the word "Fuck" in the middle of the night.
The FCC is just one manifestation of how colossally fucked up governmental regulation is becoming. I'm all for the government trying to help out the people, but not when there's clearly no understanding of how the real world actually operates.
Re:In other news (Score:5, Informative)
There are very few things that are irreparably damaging, and they all require a lot more exposure than "incidental". Catching a half-second shot of a breast is not going to turn a child into a serial killer or even make them mildly anti-social. At BEST, it'll generate some giggles on the school yard the following morning and be forgotten moments later. While home from school, I was one of the "fortunate" few who caught the Bud Dwyer [wikipedia.org] incident, live on the air. It was freaky, but didn't even bring about a nightmare.
But, beyond that, in Europe, one can expect to find hard core pornography on broadcast television, and yet it's only the US where you find the highest incidence of serial killers and sociopaths. I would attribute that to the ridiculous, puritanical, half-assed armchair psychology from people like you who believe such stupid statements like the one italicized above.
Ban it! (Score:2, Informative)
Re:In other news (Score:5, Informative)
It wasn't profanity that prompted us to do this. It was the violent promos for the local and national news. But we didn't need the government to solve that for us.
Re:In other news (Score:5, Informative)
So, in fact, I would be shocked and outraged if a public park did not allow a rapper to curse and swear at a public playground. Regardless of how I might feel about the rapper, his rights -- and by extension, everyone's rights -- are paramount. As for a supposed right to not be offended in a public place, there's just no such animal.
Please read the Court's opinion and educate yourself.