Supreme Court Barely Prevents Censorship

iritant writes "CNN reports here that The Supremes have once again rejected congressional attempts to protect us from ourselves. Ruling in favor of Playboy, they agreed with the lower court who said that since there were less draconian ways to protect children, Congress could not limit hours or specify blocking methods of cable channels. This is clearly relevant to the Internet, as this decision may keep Congress from causing content providers much grief. The scary part is that it was only 5-4, with a peculiar split of Thomas in the majority and Scalia and Breyer in the minority. Scalia's opinion was particularly appalling, since he claimed that protection was allowed, not just for children, but for adults. The thought police are coming. Here is the decision. " It's actually quite an interesting decision. Congress was attempting to ban sexually-explicit cable channels during daytime hours, using the excuse that even though they were scrambled for non-subscribers, the scrambling wasn't 100% perfect and kiddies could still turn on the scrambled channels. It's not directly applicable to the internet, but it's related to many other free speech cases in its use of the least restrictive means test - although Congress might have an interest in coming between kids and porn, so too does Playboy have a right to speak, and since individual subscribers could, if they wished, contact the cable company and have the Playboy channel entirely blocked, that that would be a way of accomplishing the goal of keeping kids from porn without entirely banning the Playboy channel.

Comments

When will the U.S. realize...

[Sir_Winston]

that sex isn't bad? That seeing movies with "mainstream" sexuality, or even "softcore porn" which is tame and not fetishistic, doesn't even harm kids? In most other civilized, non-Islamic nations, parents don't try so hard to shield their youngsters from the realities of sexuality, and the kids in those countries grow up healthier with fewer hang-ups and dysfunctions. I'm not one of those Jocelyn Elders liberals who thinks masturbation should be taught to kindergarteners, but by the time kids are 8 they've already heard about sex from all their friends, and are usually filled up with misconceptions and errors about sex. Kids should hear the facts about sex from their parents before they hear misconceptions and tall-tales from classmates. And as for stuff like the Playboy channel--hell, in France they show hardcore pornography on basic cable and softcore porn on late-night broadcast TV, and yet the French seem healthier and happier than we poor Puritanical Americans. When will Americans grow up and join the rest of the world in acknowledging that sex is not "dirty" or too private to be discussed in public, or have softcore porn on cable? It makes me ill to see how much violence we allow in PG-rated movies, or kids' cartoons, compared to the backwards restrictions placed on the sexuality that can be depicted in an R-rated movie. When they butchered Kubrick's *Eyes Wide Shut* for having softcore scenes nowhere near as vivid as shown on Cinemax at 11 PM any night of the week, I realized how alarmingly backwards our country really is. I'm glad the Supreme Court ruled correctly on this one, but I fear for thye future. Don't think that a Democrat in the White House to fill future Supreme Court vacancies is the option, either; Democrats want censorship, too, just for different reasons. Remember that Tipper Gore is almost single-handedly responsible for the ratings system for music which prevents teenagers from buying CDs with even mildly explicit lyrics about sex. I'm increasingly believing that Noam Chomsky was right, and that the two=party system we have is really just two sides to one party with no real, different, truly libertarian options at all...