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FCC Lays Down the Law On Decency
Sarcasmo writes: "The FCC has taken a break from it's normal routine of censorship and, uhhhh.......censorship, to remind everyone what it wants to protect us from. The full 28 page report will tell you what words are acceptable, and what words are naughty." A quick guide: Howard Stern - BAD, Monty Python - BAD, Schindler's List - GOOD.
Interesting Quote from the FCC webpage:
Obscene speech is not protected by the First Amendment and cannot be broadcast at any time.
Gee, I guess they are reading a different Bill of Rights than the one I learned all about in elementary school.
Anyone else find it odd and/or disturbing that the FCC finds it perfectly acceptable to show naked people on prime time TV, just so long as they're being brutally killed?
I guess context is everything.
Who cares if someone says "fuck" on TV? The important thing is, is there any nudity? I can go out on the street and hear 'fuck' all I want, but I can't go out on the street and see all the nudity I want.
I'm titillated AND pandered!
For example, just because I own a television, does that mean I have agreed to have my children potentially exposed to anything anybody might want to say?
Since when is television an inalienable right? You're right, it is like opt-out marketing. You opted in when you bought a TV.
You buy a television, knowing full well the kind of programming is on it, and then complain that some of the things are bad for your children, and therefore it should be censored from any home? Basically...
For example, just because I own a television, does that mean I have agreed to have my children potentially exposed to anything anybody might want to say?
Yes. You should assume that anything in your house will be opened up, prodded, played with, and possibly broken, whether you want it to be or not, including the television. Children are curious. They'll find that dirty magazine you have in your bureau. They'll turn on the cable you subscribed to (and you didn't bother with parental locks) and find nudity. They'll more than likely see violence. They could also see them in real life. The censorship way out of exposing your children to anything that could possibly be harmful is to lock them in a closet.
If you teach them properly, they will know how to judge those things you consider inappropriate, and file it away in the "bad" category. Sure, they may not always listen, they may try to test your limits; then you punish them and set the record straight. If you're not willing to do that, then you're not a parent, you just happen to be genetically related. There are plenty of people who *want* kids who are physically unable.
So, there are cheap child locks, DirecTV "family only" packages, numerous parental lock systems, watching only video tapes, or *gasp* not watching at all -- you can make your blinders as big as you want. Or you can have personal standards and know when to turn something off. Government censorship is by far the most expensive way out, in rights, in time, and in money.
WWJD? JWRTFM!!!
Boy, you certainly make parenting sound simple.
I didn't mean to. I meant to make it sound like the responsibility it is. =)
So your argument is that people who don't want to risk being exposed to the most vile atrocities at any time of the day or night shouldn't buy TVs?
No, I'm saying that you make it sound like the only 2 choices are to have no gun in the house, or to have one loaded, cocked, and taped to a chair pointing at your kid with a string going from your dog to the trigger. (Apologies to the Road Warrior.) There are ways to limit your children's TV choices without the government stepping in and saying "ass" is a bad word. Especially when, for the most part, "dirty" language is only dirty because we all say it is.
Precisely. So I don't leave armed hand grenades near my children. Do you think it's ok for broadcasters to make televisions equally dangerous, psychologically?
But that's entirely my point. If you've taught your children right and wrong, there's very little on TV that's (in my opinion) even close to "equally dangerous, psychologically" as a gun. You won't let a gun near your child, but you think TV is just as bad, and you *don't* limit their exposure?
Now, I probably come off more argumentative than I really should, but I'm playing a little bit of devil's advocate. Regardless, the majority of consumers want the trash we have on TV. That's why it's there -- they wouldn't do it if people didn't tune in. If, you're concerned about your children seeing it, it's your job as a parent to not let them see it, or to tell them why it's bad when they do.
Don't expect the government to make it magically OK, because there are way more content creators than there are government censors, something will always get through. It's up to you to teach your children to make the right choices. If they can, then it doesn't matter if something "slips through" because they'll be able to make the decision that it's worthless. And it's *not* up to anyone else to dictate what I can or can't see.
WWJD? JWRTFM!!!
You've got a... limited view of what being human is. That's fine, but it doesn't qualify you to make rules or even suggestions...
I don't see a legitimate rationale for not having sexual prurience on the air, unless it's part of a more general attempt to prohibit harmful behavior. As such, prohibiting depictions of violence would be _necessary_- and to my mind it would be perfectly legitimate to also prohibit depictions of cheating and stealing and conning and lying while you're at it.
If you're going to 'clean up' airwaves, do it for real or don't do it at all. If you're trying to purify society, do it for real or don't do it at all. It's positively insulting to be told that it's evil and corrupting to view two consenting people fucking each other, but it's peachy keen to watch them torturing each other to death or shooting each other in the head. That is _real_ moral corruption, and I personally don't feel I can stand for it.
The one bright spot is, with a bit of luck Britney Spears will be made illegal :D but damn, that's too high a price to pay, to give up:
Assuming the FCC is not simply joking... perhaps this is a sign of the approaching final death of broadcast radio? Not only are they playing only about 20 songs over and over and over, but they cannot be 'suggestive' and intentionally prurient through suggestiveness? But gangsta rap should be okay!
I guess the major thing is to make sure radio is not the ONLY way to disseminate information...
Does the FCC have jurisdiction over satellite radio? For example, would I be able to listen to a sexually explicit program during normal daytime hours (there is a sort of precedent, the Playboy Channel broadcasts 24/7 now).
It is *not* illegal in the US to promote racial hatred. What is illegal is to actively discriminate based on a variety of factors (including race) in certain situations (notably in the workplace, by the government, or by any business considered a public accomidation). Even the extremely weak argument for the selling of WW2 artifacts being illegal due to the former sort of law completely goes away if you only have the second.
While broadcast media is indeed transmitted without the receiver's consent, it most certainly is not decoded into something viewable or listenable without such consent. Who's holding a gun to your head and forcing you to listen to Howard Stern? It's every bit as voluntary as going to the FCC's web site and viewing the referenced document.
Yes, the goatse.cx image is unappealing. Yes, most people would rather not see it. So why would broadcasters choose to put such things on the air? They certainly don't want to lose viewers. On the other hand, the sort of things quoted in the FCC's document are things which, while some people find them to be offensive, have some sort of value to enough people that the stations are willing to broadcast it. I find it hard to believe that anything which has a wide enough appeal to be broadcast over the air would be so "psychologically damaging" as to warrant its forced removal by the government. Even in the case of goatse.cx, what real harm would it do other than possibly inducing nausea for a little while?
Besides, there are lots of other things that a parent might not want an impressionable child to hear. Fundamentalist religious groups don't want their children hearing anything than might make them question the religion. Some people might want their children to be "protected" from idiots promoting racism. Personally, I feel ill whenever the media glamorizes oppressive government actions such as the drug war, civil asset forfeiture, etc. Should all of this be banned as well? If you banned everything that someone found offensive, you'd soon end up with nothing *but* Sesame Street on the TV, and probably not even that.
What's up with the prudishness when I can watch films like Predator at 11am on a Sunday? Get with the program: Victorian attitudes went out 100 years ago! I guess violence is okay and sex isn't, eh?
Well, You can't sell a video in retail in the UK without the BBFC sticker. As I understand, it leads to a lot of censorship just so that the company can sell the video at a certain age rating in the UK, and some porn gets banned period.
In France, they seem to have a thing against sales against certain kinds of artifacts comming from post WWI to WWII Germany.
Heck, Germany as a whole seems pretty happy to try to forget its own past rather than stare it down and truly fix the problems that are still comming up as a result.
The former states of the USSR are in significant political and economic chaos.
Sooo, how long does the average Italian government hold power?
A lot of Asian countries have some more xenophobic tendencies and are at times more racist, and several are very conformist to the point of making outcasts a lot quicker than you see elsewhere.
Let's all face it, every country is different and has its own little quirks. America looks like it has the sum of all those quirks because it has decendants that come from those originating in just about every country on earth. Every group has its own ideas about what is good and what is bad, it's difficult to objectively put one culture above another because many people are blind to possible problems in their own culture.
It's interesting that you compare the FCC's indecency provisons to the MPAA's rating regime, as I was just reading an article in this morning's Washington Post which claimed that the ratings methodology was flawed-- concentrating on isolated utterances or imagery, rather than on a appreciation of the total context of the film.
I guess it may have affected me adversely, though: I hate Babylon 5 and like Voyager.
-30-
AC writes:
:)
"On American TV:
Nasty words = BAD
Sex = BAD
Explicit violence = GOOD"
First off, that must mean that loud sex is REALLY BAD
From this information, we can determine that the powers that be/the government do not want us to reproduce, or be noisy, but would rather have us kill/severely injure each other quietly.
I would like to propose the following hypothesis which these simple facts help validate:
The "powers that be" are trying to brainwash us to kill ourselves off so that they can usurp control of the planet for their own purposes. I would also like to propose that it is most likely an alien species from "the 5th dimension"... Did anybody see Stargate last week?
The truth is out there. The paranoia is what keeps me sane.
Can't do that--it's the government's job to protect our kids, right? Uh, I mean, right? Anyone? Anyone?
What is disturbing, however, is that these self-appointed guardians of public decency are under the impression that motherfucker is hyphenated. For at least thirty or forty years now, motherfucker has been a non-hyphenated compound word, and can, in fact, be found in most dictionaries these days. I wonder what company's spell-checker these FCC goons proofed their document with?
--
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
Your recommendation to "WATCH your kids" works great for kids with conscientious parents who have unlimited time and unlimited patience.
Raising children does not require unlimited time or patience. You are correct, however, that it requires conscientious parents who will:
A) instill a sense of values/limits in their children;
B) monitor their children to insure that they comply with the limits set before them, and;
C) correct/punish them when they do not, and reward/praise them when they do.
I submit that if there are parents who have neither the time nor the inclination to devote themselves to these (necessary, but not sufficient) requirements for raising children, then perhaps they ought not to be parents in the first place.
ABSURDITY, n.: A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one's own opinion.
You are refuting an argument I don't make, nor have I seen anyone in this discussion make. The context here is freedom of speech, not environmental pollution. And given how many restrictions to free speech are proposed in the name of "protecting the children", I believe that my statements are quite justified.
ABSURDITY, n.: A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one's own opinion.
And my point is that it's never solely "for the children" - instead, saying that we do it "for the children" is merely a rhetorical trick, a way of foreclosing any possible debate on the subject.
After all, who wants to be seen as anti-children? And that's what it's all about. You support (for example - I don't know if you actually do or not) filters in libraries - "it's for the children," you say. So, when I oppose filters, I must be, logically, anti-children. And if I'm anti-children, what other horrors do I indulge in? It is conviction by implication - I am anti-child, therefore I am (by implication) a monster, wandering the streets looking for children to molest and puppies to kick.
But this is not a rational defense of restrictions to speech. The whole point of saying "it's for the children" is to PREVENT rational discourse on the subject and thereby impose a political agenda, by appealing to emotion, that which cannot survive the light of probing examination.
ABSURDITY, n.: A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one's own opinion.
To expand a bit, I apply this to the context of free speech, but it's just as applicable to any other debate. It's not enough to say "End pollution - do it for the love of your children." That is simply a raw appeal to emotion that makes no pretense of defending the proposition that less pollution is better than more pollution. It may be the case that less is better than more WRT pollution, and that a legitimate case can be made in defense of that, but this is not the way to do it. This method of impugning the motives of those who disagree with you ("you" in the generic sense, not meant to refer to anyone specific) is known as "poisoning the well of discourse" for those playing at home, and no debate can proceed under these terms. Which, I imagine, is just fine with most of the people who make these sorts of statements.
ABSURDITY, n.: A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one's own opinion.
The problem with this is that the notional "right" that children have to be raised in an obscenity-free environment rather quickly devolves into becoming MY responsibility to raise someone else's children in an obscenity-free environment.
I know the notion of personal responsibility is somewhat passé these days, but I reiterate - if parents are unwilling to take responsibility for children that they (presumably voluntarily) produced, why should I? Believe me, my hands are full raising my own two children without taking on others that don't belong to me.
I don't ask that the government decide what my children should and shouldn't watch - I can and will do that myself. Many of the things I enjoy doing are completely unsuitable for my six-year-old son, but it would be throwing the baby out with the bath water to create a society where only those things suitable for a six-year-old were permissible.
We are, IMO, far too fixated on "the children" these days. Society and civilization exist for the benefit of all their members, not solely the next generation. We do children a disservice when we overprotect them - it renders them incapable of dealing with the wider world when they are released into it. We do children a disservice when we attempt to twist society to fit them, rather than gradually exposing them to, and preparing them to deal with the world as it exists, rather than as we think it ideally ought to be.
ABSURDITY, n.: A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one's own opinion.
--
Makes me wonder which radio show will be the first to read excerpts from the report, naturally all in the name of reporting the news.
Cheers,
Come off it and don't even try to pretend that Europe (or anywhere else in the Universe) is better about this. Anybody can come up with a story where freedoms are curtailed depending on which country you're talking about. Have fun writing a book about the royal family in the UK, or selling WWII collectibles on the Internet as long as France is connected to it, or good luck going to the store and picking up a copy of Mein Kampf when you're in Germany.
The only truly interesting thing about this article was the following phrase from the report: "God, my testicles are like down to the floor . . you could really have a party with these . . . Use them like Bocci balls."
And lest we forget, good ol' Slashdot itself has removed some posts here. Not to mention some users that it didn't particularly care for, eh?
Cheers,
Was this government document beamed into people's homes without their consent? If not, then the FCC's rules shouldn't apply to it.
---
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
I wonder when they're going to expand it to cover all 24 hours. In post-VCR age of Tivo, Replay, etc, timeshifting is so easy, that it doesn't really matter what time of day something is on anymore. For almost half the shows I watch, I don't even know off the top of my head when they're on.
---
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Shit, piss, fuck, cunt, cocksucker, motherfucker and tits.
It's okay to use the word fuck if you actually fucked up something in your broadcast, but not if you're talking about fucking, in a sexual sense? Oh, and if you're talking about someone who's a little shit, that's okay, because you're not talking about actually taking a dump. I love this puritanical nonsense.
Tristani's right though, "...this policy statement will likely become instead a "how-to" manual for those licensees who wish to tread the line drawn by our cases." In essense, in her dissent, she's saying that the FCC shouldn't have released the policy statement because doing so would have given broadcasters the information they need to know to keep themselves from getting into trouble. The FCC must not be making enough off money from fines if they want to keep policy too vague to understand.
I'm GLAD that the FCC finally released this policy statement. I've been waiting years to actually see what THEY view as indecent. It's funny, though, that even though some of it might be offensive to me, I can always just TURN OFF the radio or TV!
That's the beauty of freedom. Nobody's forcing me to listen to those offensive programs, and I have the freedom to stop listening. I make the decisions, not the goddamned FCC. 18 USC 1464 and the right-wing Supreme Court we have are jokes.
The poster below that says protecting children and society from so-called indecent and obscene speech like this weakens society is right. When government makes the decisions for us, our freedom is diminished. I hate to sound like the shrub, but that's not what America is all about.
--B
And given how many restrictions to free speech are proposed in the name of "protecting the children",
that's just the point. it's all said and done in the name of the children, but they're very selective of how they help the children. it's just more puritanical witchhunting. now spewing toxins into the atmosphere isn't generally a topic covered when churches decide what needs to be abolished as sinful, so that can continue.
just as long as the children don't see anyone naked.
#define F(x) int main(){printf(#x,10,#x);}
F(#define F(x) int main(){printf(#x,10,#x);}%cF(%s))
as i recall, if you just randomly stumble across something that you find horribly objectionable, then, legally, you've just fallen victim to a subtle form of assault. it's completely assinine, but that's the way it is. apparently the supreme court has decided that the freedom to not be offended is more valuable than the freedom of speech. so i couldn't put porn on a billboard, and i can't say "fuck" over broadcast channels, because *gasp* i might offend someone, and somehow that would violate their rights. but i'm pretty sure i'm allowed to stand in a public place and yell "fuck" at the top of my lungs. (hell, i did it the other day.) the whole system is just a big, puritanical mess.
#define F(x) int main(){printf(#x,10,#x);}
F(#define F(x) int main(){printf(#x,10,#x);}%cF(%s))
that's what i was getting at. they're selective "protection of the children" indicates that their agenda isn't really to protect the children, but more a direct manifestation of their own puritanical ideas, using the chidren only as an excuse.
(and for the record, i don't like the idea of filtering in libraries. not that it's bad in theory to limit people to sites related to academic pursuits, but in practice, it's impossible.)
#define F(x) int main(){printf(#x,10,#x);}
F(#define F(x) int main(){printf(#x,10,#x);}%cF(%s))
It's a matter of context. You can say "I pricked my finger", but you can't say "I fingered my prick."
-J
---Joe Merlino gnupg public key ID: 1E91EBAF
Well what bothers me is how those assholes got let off for posting names and addresses of abortion doctors and now Jim bell is sure to get the bone.
I wondering if Wired were intentionally sarcastic when they followed their description of FCC's painful stupidity with the following news:
=D
Second, many european countries *are* bettern than the US with regard to censorship. Especially if you consider this "indecency" nonsense. The "Parental advisory" and bleeping songs for radio or music videos seems especially stupid, as it sometimes reaches all the way over the atlantic. (ie a TV show host makes an apology for the record company apparently sending them the "US version" of a video with all the naughty words bleeped out and she says something like "so you'll have to sing the words yourself, they are fuck, weed, motheryfucker...")
If you can't say fuck, you can't say "Fuck the government." Fuck the government.
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
The first amendment says you have the right to say things, but you never have the right to make someone else listen. Applied properly, censorship could even amount to a protection of our right to choose what we listen to. AFAIK, the FCC rules only apply to public broadcasts; if you really want to hear some censored material, there are plenty of ways to do that.
Except even with a TV and a Radio you have the right not to listen. Just use the free device known as the On/Off switch. That's right just turn the damn thing off. If you can't even take the time to teach your kids right from wrong, good from bad, reality from make believe, having the FCC tell media companies what should or should not be on TV is the least of your consern. Because your childern aren't prepared at all for the real world where everything isn't nice, homoginized, and safe. Unlimited time and unlimited patiencs is not needed. This is just an excuse because someone is wrapped up in the wrong things. Taking away someone's rights just because you haven't done your job or because you just don't think it's the correct thing to say on TV is no excuse.
Ever wondered why material like this is always on and broadcasters keep wanting to show it? Because it sells and gets viewers. If it didn't sell at all it wouldn't be on TV at all. The best way you can stop this stuff is to just boycott those stations that brodcast this material.
FCC has/is overstepping thier bounds. They are too conserned about regulating what is on TV/Radio and not conserned enough about doing their real job, making sure the spectrum is used efficently and that telecom companies aren't screwing the little guy by intentionally delaying access to their networks and stalling on the deployment of new technologies like DSL and HDTV. What is broadcast should not be their consern. Let the free market decided what is and isn't on TV. Censorship is never the answer.
It's funny how two countries so close together can be so different. Up here nudity and the usage of fuck was common on the CBC with Kids In The Hall (now on HBO I gather, but CBC is a public broadcast station, government funded), gay characters aren't just a fad this last year (KITH again), and songs that make sense. That Shaggy one was just funny. Something about aprons?
Anyway, if we weren't so overloaded with American culture it would be a lot better, but we still get the pre-edited for export versions of things from the US, which sucks ass. But we still laugh at you. Puritans, what a wacky bunch.
DataSquid.net, a little about me.
Doesn't it strike you as midly ironic that most of these people who are against profanity and sexuality on the public airwaves are people you wouldn't want to fuck in the first place?
(With apologies to George Carlin)
- I don't need to go outside, my CRT tan'll do me just fine.
the full policy statement can be found at http://www.fcc.gov/eb/Orders/2001/fcc01090.html
Don't leave your mind so open that your brain falls out. Don't close it so much that you cut off the blood.
I am a backdoor man
I am a backdoor man
Well the men don't know
But the little girls understand
can't get any more direct than that
--- Don't ever trust a woman until she's dead- B.B. King
--
Patrick Doyle
Patrick Doyle
I mod down every jackass who puts his moderation policy in his sig. Oh, wait a sec....
Can't there be some compromise on this? Do we have to lean completely toward the rights of the broadcasters?
That is not the only alternative to a total lack of control. My point is that censorship is a spectrum, and neither extreme is very appealing.--
Patrick Doyle
Patrick Doyle
I mod down every jackass who puts his moderation policy in his sig. Oh, wait a sec....
--
Patrick Doyle
Patrick Doyle
I mod down every jackass who puts his moderation policy in his sig. Oh, wait a sec....
--
Patrick Doyle
Patrick Doyle
I mod down every jackass who puts his moderation policy in his sig. Oh, wait a sec....
Your recommendation to "WATCH your kids" works great for kids with conscientious parents who have unlimited time and unlimited patience. What about other kids who are not in this situation?
To me, it makes sense that there is material which we should not assume people want to be exposed to unless they make an explicit choice to do so. (goatsecx? rotten.com?) Allowing any and all material to be publicly broadcast where people might see it acidentally, or where unattended children might see it, seems to be going a little too far in the direction of free speech.
The first amendment says you have the right to say things, but you never have the right to make someone else listen. Applied properly, censorship could even amount to a protection of our right to choose what we listen to. AFAIK, the FCC rules only apply to public broadcasts; if you really want to hear some censored material, there are plenty of ways to do that.
Now, as for who should be in charge of the censorship, and what the rules should be, that's another ball game. The point is, I don't think there are any simple answers to this question.
--
Patrick Doyle
Patrick Doyle
I mod down every jackass who puts his moderation policy in his sig. Oh, wait a sec....
I didn't say the government should raise our kids. I just think the view that parents have the responsibility to shield their kids from an unlimited barrage of obscenities isn't fair to parents or to kids.
Look at it the other way: can you explain why I should be forced actively and explicitly, day in and day out, to keep all manner of filth out of my own home? It is much like opt-out marketing: why should I be forced to say "no" to everything anyone could possibly want to send my way? For example, just because I own a television, does that mean I have agreed to have my children potentially exposed to anything anybody might want to say? I don't think so. OTOH, if I order certain cable stations which are known to do this sort of thing, then that's up to me, and I'll take the responsibility of protecting my kids.
My point is that (a) you can still see whatever you want, no matter what the FCC does, and (b) the extreme solution of abandoning all controls is as harmful as any other extreme solution.
The issue is not that simple.
--
Patrick Doyle
Patrick Doyle
I mod down every jackass who puts his moderation policy in his sig. Oh, wait a sec....
So your argument is that people who don't want to risk being exposed to the most vile atrocities at any time of the day or night shouldn't buy TVs?
Can't I buy a TV so my kids can watch Sesame Street without devoting my life to making sure they don't switch the channel to some talk show host having a frank pictorial discussion of the goatsecx guy? I don't care how conscientiously you teach your four-year-old son; that's going to be disturbing.
And what exactly was the benefit of this again?
Precisely. So I don't leave armed hand grenades near my children. Do you think it's ok for broadcasters to make televisions equally dangerous, psychologically?
Remember, I'm only arguing against the absolute lack of control over the contents of the most readily available media. I'm only saying it's not such a simple subject that we can afford to go to that extreme.
I don't have the answers; I'm only challenging those who think the answer is to stop all censorship of all media.
--
Patrick Doyle
Patrick Doyle
I mod down every jackass who puts his moderation policy in his sig. Oh, wait a sec....
I have already addressed the "just turn the TV off" argument. I'm getting tired of arguing in circles.
Parents today have a tough job, and you seem to have no problem making it much tougher just to protect broadcasters' absolute right to free speech. Well, I don't buy it.
The broadcaster's right to swing his arm ends where parent's nose begins.
--
Patrick Doyle
Patrick Doyle
I mod down every jackass who puts his moderation policy in his sig. Oh, wait a sec....
But where does that leave the children in this situation? It's not their fault. It is that unreasonable to have some kind of limit on the obscenities that such a child could be exposed to accidentally?
--
Patrick Doyle
Patrick Doyle
I mod down every jackass who puts his moderation policy in his sig. Oh, wait a sec....
.. because said music is frequently chock full of sexual innuendo, couched in terms akin to the "candy bar" example.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
Yes it does. Birth control is just as available in the US as it is in the rest of the western world. But because of the verbotten nature of sexual discourse in the USA a lot teens grow up not really understanding how to have sex responcibly and safely. If the US as a whole simply accepted that sex was a normal, natural and healthy part of life then you can bet teen pregnencies would drop.
"Listen: We are here on Earth to fart around. Don't let anybody tell you any different!" - Kurt Vonnegut
When you think about it, it's all in how you say the word "fuck" and if the FCC was just hung up on a few words, you end up banning a statement like "Fuck the FCC" which is not offensive in and of itself while letting the milk duds skit go by.
I think they are doing a good job by the looks of the full report (meaning, if the will of the people of the United States is to keep sexually explicit material off the public airwaves, then this is a far better approach than just banning seven naughty words).
Hint: Don't get hung up on my post too much. I'm not expressing any opinion on whether or not the laws against indencent material are laudible. My opinion above is referencing the enforcement and interpretation of that law only.
Does anybody have a copy of the Ken Starr report, with all of the clean parts edited out?
The filter on my feed won't let the FCC directive through.
Would somebody please post the text to Slashdot?
Wait....
I can only speak for Sweden, but yes, there is routinely nudity and occasionally even sex on prime time TV.
Society shows no signs of falling apart for it.
I see all these Americans discussing this as if it were an obvious and necessary aspect of any civilized country, but perhaps the FCC has gotten some details wrong.
You should travel more! In most civilized countries, the treatment of sex and "indecency" in the media is way more relaxed, and they typically have none of the problems the americans think must ensue if these "necessary evil" regulations were not enforced with an iron fist.
Fun example: In the country where they try to hide sex from the kids as much as possible, teenage pregnancies are much higher than the rest of the rich world.
The real problem is the huge and very powerful fundamentalist christian lobby in the US.
Incidentally, these decisions are almost always made based on their pocket books, and they know full well that the average american watching tv at those times of the day, etc. will watch their station if it avoids depicting these things persons wish to avoid.
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
"the goal of the first ammendment" is being defined very broadly in your last statement. You basically state that its goal is to protect speech from anyone for any reason. You then point out that your view ignores the original writers' intentions; to protect us from regulations on speech at the government level. Deciding the reasoning behind such things is not simple and requires a bit more thought ...
... note: being a fairly open-minded Christian, I find it quite ignorant of the FCC to decide what is acceptable and what is not. I also find it ignorant of the average Slashdot user to believe (as has been stated in previous threads) that Christian values and views shouldn't be acceptable in classrooms or in the government because somehow that would be state-sponsored religion which is obviously much worse than the right to express one's beliefs whether one is a government employee or not (sarcasm).
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
Damn... (oops). That's the problem. Anyone know of a government agency that we can contact so that we can tattle on the FCC for their document?
"Following are examples of decisions where the explicit/graphic nature of the description of sexual/excretory organs or activities played a central role in the determination that the broadcast was indecent: 'God my testicles are like down to the floor...you could really have a party with these...Use them like Bocci balls.'; 'I mean to go around porking other girls with vibrating rubber products'..."
Not indecent - The text was used solely to illustrate examples of speech that the FCC feels are unacceptable. Blah blah... newspeak... blah blah duckspeak blah blah...
That document made me wanna vomit. It was just so clinical. If those songs/shows/etc offend people, maybe they should just turn them off. Hell (oops), I remember hearing about my Granpa getting all offended when the Beatles came on Ed Sullivan because they had long(?) hair. I mean my god. He'd die if he saw korn.
Come to think of it, the more and more I go on, I wonder what this reply has to do with your post. Oh well. Sorry.
Mike
--Ask a silly person, get a silly answer.
Even Canada is far better than the U.S. The first network (atleast in North America) to air the word Fuck, was the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, a government funded station. Another example. CTV, another national network, has aired uncut episodes of the Soprano as well as female nudity. Also, last night I tuned into VTV (vancouver television) to see the uncut showing of Nell. The point? America is pretty bad when it comes to censorship, especially since not all shows are treated equally
------------------------------------
Did you see that thing, "Hardcore" on Channel 4 last night? What the hell was that all about?
Since when does the British government meddle in the operations of the football league in the UK?
Maybe they shouldn't have had children in the first place. It's not the role of government to raise your kids, there are much better wastes for my tax dollars out there.
--
OliverWillis.Com
OliverWillis.Com
An Operative with an Agenda
No one is stopping you from going to the porn store and buying some serious hardcore porn. The FCC is trying to keep that kind of stuff off, say, ABC during after school hours when (like it or not) lots of kids watch TV unattended. Parents like that kind of stuff.
Is the purpose of the convoluted language lawyers use not to be as specific as possible?
It's something I don't really get about certain views. It's like a lot of people think they will be infected by the "wrong" views. True story:
I'm at the Berkeley College Republicans' semi-annual riot with a bunch of other libertarians. This time, it's someone speaking against reparations for slavery. One of the groups protesting is the Sparticist league (we're all holding signs that say stuff like "free speech for everyone" and such). One of them is holding a sign that says something like gun control helps "the man" keep black poor. My friend Anthony goes up to talk to him to tell him he agrees with the sign, but someone steps in his way and blocks him. "He doesn't want to talk to you" the guy says. "I wanted to tell him I agree" "He doesn't want to hear what you have to say."
Yeah, I think these are the same types of people who were standing around with "support free speech" signs while burning the republicans literature at their last big riot (on Mumia Abu Jamal).
I think some religious fanatics have similar paranoia about being tainted.
Children should not be let out to run around the big bad world unescorted. You don't like the radio, or TV, or the internet, don't buy a TV, a radio, or a computer. Don't let your children play with kids whose parents have them. I'm very sorry, but if you want to raise sheltered children, that's your responsibility, not mine. And don't give me that bullshit about you can't watch them all the time. If you aren't wasting money on TV, radio, computers, books, movies, and so on, you got the money to have one parent stay home. You want to pretend the world has the same values you do, you have to go to some trouble.
If it's too much trouble, well, that's just tough shit. It's not my responsibility to listen to bad jokes and circuitous discussions of sex because *you're* a prude. My favorite advice column is Dan Savage. Imagine if someone were to read this over the radio:
Point 6 of the report: the courts have approved regulation of broadcast indecency to further the compelling government interests in supporting parental supervision of children, and more generally its concern for children's well being.
Now someone please show me the line in the constitution that says "congress shall have the power to take any actions necessary and proper to providing for children's well being"? Or am I right and all these fucking traitors should be taken out and shot for violating their oaths of office?
Why is it that the FCC thinks sex and shitting are potential areas of speech which may be indecent? Maybe I find the idea of governments blatantly ignoring the law indecent, but don't have a problem with people humorous songs about politicians having sex with 15 year olds (see page 8 of the report). Maybe I think graphic descriptions of war are unsuitable for children, but these standards don't even touch on that. Sorry, not covered, by the underwear, not covered by our taboos.
You gotta love the language of the report too: "our enforcement requires" instead of "we decided". In fact, it's never "we", but rather "the commission". Or maybe "the Commision."
Little shit fascists like you should be sent over to China for a while, where they just go ahead and shoot people for saying stuff they don't like (but not before matching them up with people waiting for the organs!).
Why does it matter? The kids will eventually see the stuff, one way or the other. It does not hurt them, much less matter.
Hearing the word "fuck" does nothing to harm a child. Neither does seeing naked men having gay orgies.
The real problem here is that people refuse to give up on the worthless moral standards imposed by their religions. This leads to shame when discussing such topics, especially when discussing them with children. When the FCC censors television, it is only because Americans are too stupid to think for themselves.
I suspect that most slashdot readers are generally against censorship. However, informed arguments are much more effective than uninformed flamings. If you care about censorship, go and read the thoughts of one organization whose job it is to implement censorship before posting all the "censorship sucks" replies. (The full policy statement is linked to from the second page above, or you can jump straight to the pdf file using this link.)
The FCC explains why they're in the business of censorship (ans: because there's a federal law that the FCC is not in control of, and Congress instructs FCC to enforce this law), gives examples of the court cases involving the FCC's censorship, and summarizes how the FCC decides if broadcast material violates the federal law.
In a bonus section at the end, two FCC commissioners explain why they support issuing this new policy statement, and a third commissioner explains why she thinks the statement should not be issued.
It's definitely worth reading, if you care about censorship.
(As an example of what's in the document; do you know exactly what the definition of "obscene" is? The definition used by the FCC is that material must satisfy all three of the following:
- an average person, applying contemporary community standards, must find that the material, as a whole, appeals
to the prurient interest;
- the material must depict or describe, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct
specifically defined by applicable law; and
- the material, taken as a whole, must lack serious literary, artistic,
political, or scientific value.
)It doesn't tell me what words are not allowed at all, in fact, it offers almost no concrete guidance on what is and is not allowed. Is it just me or do sequences like:
"It is not sufficient, for example, to know that explicit sexual terms or descriptions were used, just as it is not sufficient to know that no such terms were used."
Is it just me, or is there very little informational content here at all? So what is sufficient? As near as I can tell, all this offers is vague generalities, so what was the point of publishing it at all. Surely the true mark of free speech is that everything is tolerated, at least as speech. Perhaps you might restrict what minors can see, to the extent you don't consider them to truly be "people" yet. But other than that, surely anything goes if you truly have free speech. Crimes involved in generating the speech might be sanctioned (e.g. paedophilia), but the speech itself should not be restricted.
When these become the law (it will), then people will start using words not in the list but suggest the meanings anyway. It's where all euphemisms come from - censorship.
When they become common enough they aren't euphemisms anymore, and the law will be revised to include them. Then a bunch of new euphemisms will pop up.
What a cycle. I'm expecting the size of slang dictionaries to double or triple in a few years.
It's time we stood up and disallowed this sort of thing. ABRIDGE CENSORSHIP!
"What we have here, is a failure to communicate." - Cool Hand Luke
Interesting that the UK moderation board are getting less and less strict
No kidding. Watch Channel 4 on Saturday night/Sunday morning (the 4 Later segment).
Karaoke fishtank
Pets
Vids
They are all swear-fests (funny though).
We all know that crap is king
Give us dirty laundry!
If you could add these to your list of 'Red Light' words as I find them obscene, lewd, also vulgar. It And But Can't A Cell Phone Cow If you could please start fineing people masive amounts of money for using these naughty words, or possible ban them from the English language, I would be very happy.
Arguably, the censorship (or in this case, FCC's guideline for decency in broadcasting) seem like the lesser of two evil only in the sense that they are going after the broadcasters - we have the wonderful thing we called the Internet now that prevents us from being censored, so your average citizens aren't affected.
The camera thing is already there and is affecting the average citizen. Of course, it should be noted that only criminals who commit crimes in public places need to worry.
Isn't technology great? Too bad they don't yet have technology that will prevent you from commiting crimes instead of punishing you afterwards for commiting crimes. Perhaps embedded chips that shocks you when you are about to commit a crime, even if it is as low tech as people watching cameras and manually press a button to shock criminals in the middle of committing a crime (as opposed to a chip that can sense your brain wave patterns and knows you are thinking evil thoughts and zap you accordingly).
Perhaps a different technology will come along, say artificial genetic selection - the DNA would be modified such that all people with violent and criminal dispositions will be prevented from being born, so that all through the world, there would be a flock of docile, obedient, and possibly intelligence reduced people, except for a handful of wealthy powerful people that pay to enhance their own abilities. These people would control the world through the money and the power that they wield as a minority elite (oh, wait...).
:-)
Rich
shit, piss, fuck, cunt, cocksucker, motherfucker, and tits are the infamous "7 Dirty Words" you can't say on broadcast media.
Karma: Bored. (Thinking about resurrecting the "Anyone else is an imposter" joke.)
What WOULD be funny (and very likely!) is if that document or the entire FCC.gov domain was blocked by library filtering software!
Karma: Bored. (Thinking about resurrecting the "Anyone else is an imposter" joke.)
Just a random guess, but given that your post got a timestamp of 4:30 as well, maybe they're on Central Time.
The only "intuitive" interface is the nipple. After that, it's all learned.
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
Okay, so either they run on EST, or CDT. Since the two are the same, it really doesn't matter, does it? :)
The only "intuitive" interface is the nipple. After that, it's all learned.
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
It's a summary of case law, not a regulation. It's meant to expand on the Pacifica standard.
Personally, this is the problem I have with people talking law on Slashdot; the programmers and engineers seem to think law is formulaic, that there's a bright-line test for everything. Language and actions are not so precise.
Like how is "Well, it was a nice big fart. I'm feeling very gaseous at this point." worse than "Dick suggests maybe getting a mega-Dick to help out, but you know, you remember the time the King ate mega-Dick under the table...?"
Context, as the FCC rightly points out. In the light of a larger quote, it was obvious that the perceived sexual references in the latter required a guttermind on the part of the listener. (Hint: "eating someone under the table" can simply mean consuming more than him.)
Well, you'll be happy to know that the Court has set out a more structured test for obscenity. (Miller, I think, though that's off the top of my head.) It's been around quite a while.
Who's talking about software? That's generally out of the FCC's jurisdiction.
Depends on what language you're referring to, but not necessarily. Sometimes language is convoluted to precisely specify. Sometimes it's to be as general and inclusive as possible. Sometimes it's to reconcile two precedents that aren't very compatible. Sometimes it's simply meant to confuse.
Laws are not programs nor mathematical theorems. Perhaps I should make that my sig.
I love how they completely slaughtered the lyrics to "Sit on my face" by monty python. A quick google search for +"monty python" +"sit on my face" +"lyrics" reveals the TRUE lyrics. I love the fact that they're going to criticize lyrics that they don't even know the right lyrics to. That amazes me. Who put these numbnuts in control of our air-waves again?
Destrago Z. Scudiero -Noize Incorporated -Void42
"In the country where they have the absolute right to bear arms, teenage pregnancies are much higher than the rest of the rich world."
"In the country where they consume the most pizza, teenage pregnancies are much higher than the rest of the rich world.
"In the country where they play the most GameBoys, teenage pregnancies are much higher than the rest of the rich world."
Sorry -- correlation does not prove causation. "A and B" is not the same as "A therefore B". Punch "post hoc propter hoc" into your nearest search engine if you still think this guy's example says anything.
As, apparently, is the notion of community responsibility.
We do children a disservice when we overprotect them - it renders them incapable of dealing with the wider world when they are released into it
So perhaps Sesame Street should start introducing our three-year-olds to the joys of Debbie Does Dallas? In fact, everyone agrees that censorship is necessary at times, we just don't always agree on the details.
We are, IMO, far too fixated on "the children" these days. Society and civilization exist for the benefit of all their members, not solely the next generation.
You're attempting to paint a false dichotomy -- either us or them -- when in fact the issue is hardly black and white. In any disparate society -- such as the US -- there must be compromise on all sides. Men learn to share power with women; smokers accept restrictions to make life more pleasurable for non-smokers; the US welfare system takes money away from some in order to benefit of others; and adults must forego certain things for the benefit of children. A "free society" does not mean my neighbors have the right to have sex in their front yard when my kids are walking to school. And should they try, I will request the police "censor" them appropriately. A "free society" does not mean you have the right to burn crosses on the front yard of the African-American family down the street (but shouldn't we be preparing our kids to deal with a world full of racism?)
And a"free society" society does not mean I have no responsibility to those around me -- be they children or adults. A "free society" consists of equal parts of freedom and responsibility. We cannot hide our responsibilities behind the veil of "freedom of expression".
> Read the Jim Bell article next to this...
> it was much more interesting, anyway.
That seemed to be about publishing the name of a juror.
A few roadblocks should be placed in front of criminals to stop them from intimidating jurors.
I see juror number 5's children go to school at...
- James - [IMAGE]
The radio and tv programs need to send out a mailing or email that contains the indecent and obscene material. Then during the show they can say see 1 or 2 or 3 where the dirty word or joke is located.
Some of the sitcoms on tv would be saying see 1, 2 and up to 88 through the whole show.
- James - [IMAGE]
That so-called "FCC policy statement" is nothing but a set of examples that they considered unacceptable. How is one supposed to extrapolate from there? Where is the thin line drawn over which broadcasters should not pass?
How do I report /. to the FCC - what, they're not broadcast?
Here I am trying to read the salatious comments to a semi-obscene FCC document while I'm involutarially forced to view a /. ad attracting me to
http://images.slashdot.org/cgi-bin/adlog.pl?commen ts,smnr0012en
that seductively displays:
"Develope and affair with your ..."
(replacement image)
Hand
(pause) held
Is nothing sacred!
Yes, this is definitely not the normal view... But I read the statement, and it included some of the funniest things I've heard in a while.
One of the more interesting things that is brought up in the dissenting and concurring opinions (I guess reading that far is only done in pre-law classes now-a-days)... Gloria Tristani wants more enforcement of the laws while other commissioners want less broadcasting restrictions...
Harold W. Furchtgott-Roth says: "In my judgment, as alternative sources of programming and distribution increase, broadcast content restrictions must be eliminated." His views say pretty much that the courts would knock down the FCC's regulation of speech and the FCC should take a path similar to this. "Technology, especially digital communications, has advanced to the point where broadcast deregulation is not only warranted, but long overdue. In my view, the bases for challenging broadcast indecency has been well laid, and the issue is ripe for court review."
Let's all hope that in the future years Harold W. Furchtgott-Roth's ideas become the main view and if not a nice Supreme Court case to say that the FCC can't do what it does pops up.
You can never have enough Bush and Gore
Everybody denies I am a genius--but nobody ever called me one!
Well, all I'm saying is that complaining about it on slashdot isn't going to accomplish anything. If there really is a demand, start your own station, using satellite transmissions, or the internet. You'll make a bundle, and you can even use the money to lobby congress to change the law, if you want.
Personally, I don't give a shit. My TV viewing consists of about an hour or two a week. The word "fuck" isn't going to redeem the cesspool of content which is currently being shown.
ok then your [sic] infringing on my copyright! Could you as [sic] me next time before STEALING my comments for your own?
Ever wondered why material like this is always on and broadcasters keep wanting to show it? Because it sells and gets viewers. If it didn't sell at all it wouldn't be on TV at all. The best way you can stop this stuff is to just boycott those stations that brodcast this material.
Good argument, but lets look at the other end of it. The airwaves are a public property. They have to be regulated. The government must be involved in this. By using this public property, you are forced to follow the government's rules, which as long as they are applied consistently so as to avoid censorship, seems like a reasonable requirement to me.
But on to your argument: the best way to stop this censorship is to refuse to watch or listen to programs which cater to it. Watch cable. Watch PBS (they broadcast "fuck" regularly). The fact of the matter is that most people in the US want censorship, so if you plan to live here, you should get used to that fact. The free market already does decide what is and isn't on TV. Most people just happen to choose commercial filled, fake laugh track, censored nonsense.
ok then your [sic] infringing on my copyright! Could you as [sic] me next time before STEALING my comments for your own?
This isn't Hitler-run Germany. But if it is, feel free to leave and go to another country. No one is denying free speech. They are merely regulating a limited quantity common good (airwaves). The alternative is to sell the airwaves to the highest bidder. Personally I'd rather have an elected congress as "dictator" than Steve Case and AOL. You can say "fuck" all you want, you just can't take up valuable airwaves from people with speech which is more in demand by the public. No one's forcing you to watch the crap. No one's stopping you from starting your own television station, on cable or on the internet. This isn't totalitarianism, it's the majority just not liking the same content as you.
ok then your [sic] infringing on my copyright! Could you as [sic] me next time before STEALING my comments for your own?
Paragraph 3 states that obscene speech is never allowed, and the footnote on page 2 gives a three-part test, and part 2 requires "depict or describe ... sexual conduct specifically defined by applicable law".
Paragraph 7 limits the scope of indecent material (which is only banned from 6 AM to 10 PM) to only "describe or depict sexual or excretory organs or activities".
Ok, admittedly from the examples this thing is targeted at radio broadcast, but having just read through it, I can't see any reason why it doesn't apply equally to television (and several of the case law citations are regarding television standards).
PJRC: Electronic Projects, 8051 Microcontroller Tools
"The following is a news broadcast. On April 6, the FCC has released a statement on what is too indecent for broadcasting. We present for your listening pleasure and edification some segments of this publicly-available government publication:
"Following are examples of decisions where the explicit/graphic nature of the description of sexual/excretory organs or activities played a central role in the determination that the broadcast was indecent: 'God my testicles are like down to the floor...you could really have a party with these...Use them like Bocci balls.'; 'I mean to go around porking other girls with vibrating rubber products'..."
Hm. Now a government document wouldn't possibly be indecent would it?...
(oh, and if this DOES happen, you heard it here first! =})
// zyqqh
Let's write a sitcom based on the life of a harried FCC employee who quits his job and moves to the countryside to be a farmer. His name will be "Harry Dick." He'll affectionately call his cat "pussy." And his Shih-Tzu will be a bitch. His wife, uhh, we'll just call her "Deloris."
Response: I'll give you beneifit of the doubt and assume that you were unaware that "filth" gets broadcast on TV when you bought your TV set. Well then... you are free to sell your TV or get a parental lock. (I won't even ask if you pay for cable TV filth.)
You asked: just because I own a television, does that mean I have agreed to have my children potentially exposed to anything anybody might want to say?
Response: Yes, it means you paid for and brought a potentially harmful influence into the house. You are trying to absolve yourself of the inherent responsibility that comes with TV ownership and of raising children. That's sad.
When I have children (about two years from now) I'll have my own solution... a TV set used to display child video tapes and watch adult news reports (locked down at all other times). If I'm still addicted to "my favorite shows" maybe I'll use a digital video recorder to record whatever and watch after the kids are asleep. God forbid I should spend 5-8 p.m. every evening doing non-TV activities with my family.
Response: Too darn bad. It's not the government's responsibility to raise children. The same logic that believes censoring TV makes sense directly applies to censoring the Internet.
Growing up, half my friends had parents who used child locks on their TVs (via cable box). That was fifteen years ago. Today a parent doesn't have to exert much effort to be responsible.
Why doesn't the FCC teach parenting classes instead? It makes as much sense as their current course of action.
Let's just stick with George Carlin's 7 dirty words. I'm tired of "I cannot define pornography but I know it when I see it" from the Supreme Court's decision.
DanH
Cav Pilot's Reference Page
Cav Pilot's Reference Page
UNIX - Not just for Vestal Virgins anymore
You must, of * neccessity *, expose them to the bad.
KFG
The FCC is totally ignorant on this. It is like police giving kids matches and then fining them for arson when they burn something down.
The FCC is fining all the big money people for a reason. The radio personalities get their listeners by being lewd and pushing the envelope. Why do they want to get all the listeners? It's big money for the corporations who own the stations.
If radio and TV were truly a public service like they should be this would not even be much of a problem. As it is, by allowing corporations to rake in profits from the stations they own, the FCC is in fact causing the problem it is fining.
Everytime you look at porn a devil gets their horns.
When I was 10 years old I knew curses, not from radio or television but from friends and real life.
I personally find vulgarities to be ignorant and useless, yet there is freedom of speech and I don't like the fact that the FCC gets to decide what I get to hear or see on the television.
I am very glad Australia hasn't got to this point yet. Not so long ago I can remember Billy Connolly being on TV at 8:30 with no censorship...
Occasionally the government TV station also shows Monty Python uncut... Even South Park usually gets a free run with language.
There is one thing that bugs me. In mainly music videos the blurring of the picture to cover up a gun or knife. What is this going to achieve? kids see guns in cartoons fer chrissakes...
--- Can i borrow your Clue-Stick(tm)? I need to go beat a few people with it...
________
Does anyone actually have a Java program designed to control air traffic, or for the operation of a nuclear facility?
CCTV
--
Soma: because a gramme is better than a damn.
Kids have been shooting kids and people have been blowing up buildings for hundreds of years.
Don't think that this is something new.
In fact, IIRC in the early/middle 19th century a school teacher in newengland bombed the school he taught at and killed several dozen of his own students.
I don't think that was MTV's fault.
--
Soma: because a gramme is better than a damn.
Read the Jim Bell article next to this...it was much more interesting, anyway.
What I don't understand is how the swine in the federal govt can find any kind of excuse at all for someone advocating the assasination of unethical government employees, as well as giving information on how to do it.
After all, Americans don't have a right to kill unethical government officers...they have a duty to do so. Anyone that doesn't have a religious objection to killing should do it, it is part of being a good citizen.
Hopefully I didn't put any [] around my words.
Yeah but we have political correctness, gone mad. In todays Sunday Times, football clubs will be awarded/deducted points depending on how many tickets they sell to ethnics, they want to stop the amount of tickets given out to whites. This is fucking outrageous!!! Fuck Tony Blair and his fucking PC government!
Way to go FCC! Fight the system! Tell us exactly what to search for on the net. Thanks!
(hmmmm, maybe the brief was written by a closet slashdotter.)
Many libraries don't filter because of kids. I was actually reading the selection policy for the public library that I go to yesterday, and the explicitly say that the chance of a young'un being exposed was not grounds for deselecting a work. Now, of course they're not going to be carrying hardcore porn or anything, but still, I thought it was kinda cool.
surfing the web while unclothed is a capital crime ...
Can you explain why I should be forced to watch (ie, I want to watch TV and it's the only thing available) programming that has been censored for other people? I'm 21 years old; I'm not mortally offended when I see tits on TV or watch the Howard Stern show. Why should what you don't want your kids to watch influence what I can see?
It is much like opt-out marketing
Perhaps, but with the slight difference that with government censorship, there's no corresponding opt-in for those channels. Not having censorship gives you more options (ie, you can watch it or not) than giving the FCC free reign over the airwaves (ie, you cannot watch it).
Now you say "Well I can just get some of the premium channels". Fantastic. I have to pay out extra money just to keep government influence out of a few channels.
--
Dyolf Knip
That'd be nice, but it's more likely that the FCC'll just use these nice vague laws to go after anyone they don't like. That's the nasty side of selectively applied legality. Witness the Scientologists demanding /. remove that post when the exact same stuff was available in a million other places. Witness the Schwartz case just recently seen here; they have a law that saws that any unintended use of a computer is illegal, yet it's only been used 3 times in a decade.
Imagine that Congress passes a law that allows feds to arrest anyone for, I dunno, jaywalking and hold them indefinitely. It's a safe bet that they'd never actually use it, but someone comes along that they don't like; whammo! they're found guilty of jaywalking. And it'd even be legal, since what person always crosses the streeet at intersections? Vague laws give governments the freedom to do interpret them however they want and thus do whatever they want.
--
Dyolf Knip
Holy schlamoley...big politics happening in the offices of the FCC. Here's the last paragraph of Tristani's statement (emphasis added):
Good to know there are still a few people kicking about D.C. that actually give a rat's ass about what's going on around them, rather than simply following the party line.
"Sweet creeping zombie Jesus!"
"Sweet creeping zombie Jesus!"
-The Professor, Futurama
I can't think of anything which does less at the moment, but if anyone else can please do say. When you look at that document with its 28 pages hundreds of references and citations and absolute bullshit reasoning for what is and isn't offensive to everyone you have to wonder how many people and have toiled for how long over this? And what does it do? Nothing it has a negative effect, it is the opposite of creation. How can so many resources be poured into such a useless unnecessary operation? Imagine there was no censorship, what would you do when you heard somthing that offended you on the radio! ...wait a second...you could...turn it off! Oh but of course you would be irreperably damaged because you heard a naughty word, real good upstanding citizens dont have thoughts or conversations like that.
// It had been Fat's delusion for years that he could help people. --Philip K. Dick, Valis
So, what's your point? Did you read the FCC report? Do you think I'm a blue nose? I'm not. The Bonny Black Hare is a far, far cry from what is on the airwaves. I am not against ribaldry, it has it's place, even in public if done tastefully. I don't think that public displays of graphic sexual acts is conducive to a healthy society. I have a very deep understanding of what a human being is, and I understand sex for the sake of sex. But I don't think it should be to the exclusion of all else.
Ya know, in America we are caught in this condition imposed on us by the Puritan ethics that founded this country. The suppression of all suggestion of sex has made it all the more alluring because - as Howard Stern says - "Oooohhh, it's TABOO!" and that makes it all the more titillating. There are those who would overthrow the yoke of sexual repression violently, with graphical depictions, in a 'come and stop me, I dare you' manner. How bold and refreshing! It had it's day, believe me, but I believe that cause has been co-opted by shock jocks and such. These people no longer have any cause greater than the greed for money, and so the message got lost. All they Really do is provoke the Moral Right into greater opposition and fear, further polarizing the debate and giving them more zeal and ammunition for their cause. I wouldn't mind the occasional bare breast on TV, as it is often done in Europe. No big deal. But what is the deal with this graphic depiction of oral, anal, and animal sex? I know it gets ratings.
What qualifies me to make suggestions is the fact that I live in this place just like you. I don't want a place where all suggestions are discounted just because someone doesn't want to hear them. I attempted to show a rationale for not having that stuff on the air. You can disagree with my reasoning, but ad hominem attacks fail to sway me in any case.
SDMI: Finally! Music that won't rip or burn! Brought to you by the fine folks at RIAA.
I agree, Chris, there are other arenas to clean up: violence, corruption, drug glorification (or for that matter the condemnation and character assassination of an entire class of people who use drugs responsibly), etc etc etc, but I wasn't particularly talking about that. You say that for us to vilify shock jocks for the sex talk is disingenuous because we allow graphic depictions of violence on the airwaves. I'm sorry, but I don't 'see' much violence on radio. Anyway, let me hammer home the point I was making once more:
Raise children to understand that there is a Right and a Wrong wrspt relationships and that sex is ideally part of a relationship, teach them about sex, and then allow that in this society they will learn all the imporatant techniques of fellatio and cunningulus (hey, there are fine fine books and web pages that are really informative!), but put things in order. I can't really listen to KCAL FM with my kids in the car anymore.
Don't take yer son to the whorehouse to celebrate his 18th birthday. That's all I'm sayin here. A little common sense.
SDMI: Finally! Music that won't rip or burn! Brought to you by the fine folks at RIAA.
Oh, you got me wrong! AC's posting ideas is fine.
I agree that there seems to be a market for the "Jerry Springer/Howard Stern/that sponge guy (wow!)" type stuff out there. It is the government's job to Reasonably protect the interests of all people, don't you agree? I would think we just disagree on what is reasonable, where we as a society draw the line. I draw the line on graphical depictions of sex and other excretory acts. I also draw the line on hanging the 10 Cmdts in the halls of the schools.
I have no religion. Gave that up years ago. What I think I already said is that I arrived at these ideas all on my own, starting with a few basic Truths (Axioms, but you can disagree with them): 1) there is a God (I had a Near Death Experience that toatlly convinced me of that); 2) trillions (+/-) of people have held these beliefs for thousands of years. When I asked the question "why do these ideas seem universal to humankind?", I arrived at the answer "because they work". The reasons why they seem to work are partly outlined in my above testament.
Do you really think that anarchy represents a Free Society? I'm afraid a whole truckload of civil rights would be violated in a society that calls itself free because it has no rules about such matters.
Your last sentence is all true (well, except for the sexual assault part), but what does that have to do with pornography on the airwaves?
SDMI: Finally! Music that won't rip or burn! Brought to you by the fine folks at RIAA.
...okay, guys, I know I am asking for it. But here is what I just posted in 'that other place'... You'll notice that I pose no solutions, but I do believe that I have a valid rationale for keeping this sort of tripe away from the children. I skimmed through most of the other posts and didn't see anything along these lines, so here it is. I will respond to one post that seemed to say that parents need to be more responsible in raising their kids in this environment: parents cannot raise their children effectively in the current environment. There's just too many influences, and IMHO, too many Evil influences. Read on to get a feel for my viewpoint, and then feel free to respond! These are my thoughts after long deliberation, so please do me a favor and give me due consideration. Don't dis me. And try not to flame me as an AC; you're abusing the system and I won't respond. *sigh* that said, here goes:
.45 caliber pistol is posed oh-so-close to a pair of ruby-red lips), they opened up a door to something that ultimately had to lead (like the frog in the pan of water on the stove, slowly until it's boiling) to what we have today. And you know what? It shocks you, it turns your head, and it even stimulates you (that is, until you are numb). But it is guaranteed to Never fulfill you. In fact, it is guaranteed to frustrate you and provoke your anxiety.
:)
After reading the passages in the FCC document (highly entertaining!), can anyone really defend their airing on the public airwaves? Those of us who are old enough to appreciate the content can obtain it readily from other sources, and I maintain that it is in the best interests of our society that we protect the children (do it for the little children!!! Of course, who else do we do these things for?) from being exposed to this information. Ironically, the same moralists are the ones who applauded the release of the Starr Report in our local newspaper. The Ends do not justify the Means, but apparently they do for Them.
Now as to my reasoning as to why this information is harmful. I am against most of the methods employed by the Christian Right, as I believe they
are neither Christian nor Right, but I had to figure out for myself what constituted the reasoning behind the Laws of God, if only to figure out my own morality. What I came up with is this: the brand of Love that is portrayed to children between mutually consenting adults is important to their understanding of what is Right and Wrong. I think that a perfectly idealized love* is almost non-sexual in nature. In this idealized Love of, say a Man for a Woman, he cherishes her and holds her more important than his own life. In any case, the object of his love is her soul, her essence. This sort of Love is self-renewing and always fulfilling. It is the sort of love that grows with time in a deeper intimacy and abiding trust. The heart and the soul of the lover become filled with Joy and Life takes on a meaning that transcends the ordinary day-to-day events.
In contrast, the sort of attraction a Man has for a Woman as portrayed by these shock jocks totally denies the soul of the person, and objectifies
her as mere flesh. The problem here is that the object of desire is the flesh itself, which has no soul, so there is nothing further to do once the
object has been er, conquered. This leads to immense dissatisfaction in the psyche, as one realizes that what one thinks he has been searching for is found, and then it's done. It then becomes like a drug, it's all about one's own sexual needs, not about any joining of souls, and the problem becomes one of maintaining the excitement and the impetus for continuing pursuit of this inner drive. The only way to maintain That kind of high, is, like a drug, to increase the dosage - you must next have two partners, or use vibrators, whips, chains, multiple partners. You cheat, you tomcat around, you pay money for it. It is very much like the current climate in radio. Once advertisers learned that titillation turns heads (walk through any video store and count the number of times a big ol'
But that of course is the nature of evil, to consume your soul. You learn that the hard way at your own peril.
So we as a society should continue to punish those who, in their own misguided notion of fun and need to create an allegience among our youth, would teach them to be titillated by such porn. Because there is a much more important way to Love. Because our Children need to learn that first. This will save them when they are exposed to the various genitalia flouted at them over the course of their lives.
Yes. Do it... for the children.
(*- By the way. In a perfectly idealized love? The sex is Great!)
SDMI: Finally! Music that won't rip or burn! Brought to you by the fine folks at RIAA.
-surfing the web naked
- telling your PC to "go fuck itself" when netscape crashes for the 12th time today
- and related to that, calling netscape 'nutscrape'
- first-posting naked.
-- look, cheese ahoy!
As the piece on the FCC shows, government censorship is at worse high comedy. So please give us a break with these false alarms.
-- look, cheese ahoy!
so we can't say those things on tv or radio, and yet the government can put them up on a public webpage that doesn't require age authentication?
explain this censorship thing to me again, i must be missing something...
---
Hollywood, Television, has become the dream machine. We need to take that back; each of us is a Dream Machine
... First Dubya, now this.
Now before anyone starts a rant about Britain's security cameras, I'd just like to say this -
I *like* security cameras. Where I live, there's a lot of petty crime (vandalism and such), which disappears (oh ok, moves somewhere else) when you put cameras up. I want *more* security cameras.
There again, I tend to avoid doing illegal things in public. If I want to break the law, I do it quietly at home...
Number of times the word children written in this document: 18
Could I find a list of words I cannot say. I mean the thing is I might not know all of them.
I mean it is the last few months that I learned dick, pussy and cunt are swear words.
I have never heard the word cunt in my life.
I used to say pussy in elementary school
"You're a pussy"
"No I am not, you're a pussy"
"You don't even know what that word means"
"Yes I do"
"Well what does it mean?"
"I know what it means, you don't know what it means"
"I do too"
"do not"
Of course I know what the word means now. Really I do.
Dick? People are named Dick there is a movie named Dick. We had a Dick for president. The current vice-president is a Dick. This is a censored word?
heh sounds like Clockwork Orange meets Star Trek, with a little Tipper Gore added in for spice.
eudas
Blessed is he who expects the worst, for he shall not be disappointed.
Fortunately, we don't have anything like that in the UK. I mean, take a look at what's on Channel 5 tonight... Erm, yeah, breaks every rule there.
Interesting that the UK moderation board are getting less and less strict.
I wonder what company's spell-checker these goons proofed their document with?
Why, good ole Webster's 1909 Collegiate edition, good sir!
Indubidably old chap!
~- Llah -~
>We shouldnt conform to the lowest common denominator. There are channels on TV and on the Radio that are geared to the conservative folks that might be offended by some music, commentary etc. There are also TV stations that do the same. I say if you are offended by MTV, DONT watch it.
Many children are not capable of making that judgement. Also, being offended by something controversial is different than witnessing something indecent. Regardless, MTV is NOT a broadcast station. It doesn't play by the same rules. My point is that in *broadcast*, there have to be limits. To add to my arguemnt, there have been many incidents where MTV has cencored parts of or even refused to play certain videos because their content is indecent.
> Your comment about the 8 year old girl is out of context. We are talking about media to person broadcasting. You are talking about person to person. There is nothing to prevent anyone from going up to a child and saying that. With the media we have to power to selectivley block what we watch.
First of all, radio is prone to be out of context since people change stations by the minute. Consider a person who hearing the joke in question: (which is listed as indecent in the FCC document as indecent) "What's the best part of screwing an eight-year-old? Hearing the pelvis crack." First, if you are any where near the age of eight, I don't know what you'd think. Second, if I were the parent of a young child, I'd be outraged. Third, if you're some messed up teenager you might actually wonder about it.
But really the reactions are irrelevant, but I think that most people would consider that joke disgusting and indecent. (I know that indecency is arbitrary, but it is ultimately the public who decides it.)
Would you agree that it would be inappropriate for anyone to tell this joke to a young child? How big the difference between telling it in person and telling it on the air.
The purpose of "broadcast" is that is available to everyone, not only to those who are able to stomach the crap that someone may dish out.
And don't give me any crap about "parents need to monitor" their kids, etc, etc. Any kid can walk into WalMart and buy a portable FM radio for $5-10.
I have to agree with you there. It's a shame there can be no perfect system.
"The 'news announcer's use of single expletive' does not 'warrant further Commision consideration in light of the isolated and accidental nature of the broadcast.'"
This makes sense, and to DISALLOW most of the other things listed is completely accetpable.
Why? Because anyone can turn on a radio. Broadcasters have to cater to the lowest common denominator (perhaps not the lowest, but reasonably low).
To cry "cencorship" in this situation is the same as crying "cencorship" when a movie is given an R-rating. How many would feel that it is acceptable to walk up to an eight-year-old girl and say, "You know, the best part about screwing you would be hearing your pelvis crack." (this is an example from the document put into perspective)
Since the listener base of radio is unrestricted, the content must be.
I do agree that society lacks a medium comperable to radio that can broadcast adult-intended content. Society might see this soon with the increasing popularity of internet radio (when our cars get hooked up, I am guessing it will explode). For now, deal with it.
You're all crying censorship because you can't say "fuck" on the radio, but having a rule that says you can't say "fuck" is a hell of a lot better than a rule that says "You can't say anything that offends this government organization."
I think PBS is allowed to show anything they want to. I've seen nudity on PBS on numerous occasions.
--
Daniel J. Kelly
And watch society decline. Yup, it is that simple and we are seeing it now. Without the prudish opressions of shame and community expectations we start to see what we see today: Kids shooting kids and feeling justified they did so, young men blowing up federal buildings with daycares inside and feeling justified they did so, MTV bands blowing chunks from their arsses on the audience and feeling good about it.
Heck the MTV thing even sounds funny to me. This is plain sick. The medicine is enforcement of limits.
The FCC is one of USA's minimal limiting agents. And perhaps that is as far as government should be expected to reach. However, if USA attempts any less censorship control, we can expect less self control from future generations. (Yes, I think there is a link.)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~~ the real world is much simpler ~~
--- -- - -
Give me LIBERTY, or give me a check.
This really puzzles me...
In Schindler's List, you have brains blown out, people shot and piled up in stacks and burnt...in short extreme violence. The only thing people discuss about the movie is a ten second scene with a little nudity? When the rest of the film revolves around killing?
I'm not against Schindler's list, it's an important movie and as stated previously, brings up important historical issues. But, if I were to disallow small children to watch it (they can always watch it when they grow older and understand more of the historical context around the movie), it would certainly not be censored for the reason of those few moments of nudity...you would cut the nudity scene and let them see all those brains blown out?
PS. By "you" I probably mean the FCC, as I'm not offended at all by the posts I'm replying too...
My favorite line out of the document, referring to the above:
"Notwithstanding the use of candy bar names to symbolize sexual activities, the titillating and pandering nature of the song makes any thought of candy bars peripheral at best".
In the premiere of "That's my Bush," I noticed a very intentional attempt by the writers to get FCC attention. Bush says, "I'm such a pussy!" This line really stuck out in the context of the scene. It seems to me that the creators of the show are trying to start a debate on censorship (this is one of the FCC's dirty words - see the Howard Stern movie). If the real Bush were to come down on this show, it would be an extremely interesting situation. I bet that the show will continue to use blatent FCC violations until a formal fine is issued. Then the accusations will role out about how Bush is censoring the show to protect his reputation. The real funny thing is that the show didn't even lampoon Bush's actions as it did politics in general and even more so the hackneyed efforts of sitcoms.
It's important because the government dosen't want you hearing anything that the FCC dosen't like to hear.
This sig intentionally left blank.
To those people who say "we need to protect our kids", I say from what? I don't understand how watching the most natural act possible, sex, could be harmful to anybody.
If it's government-controlled access to all technology one wants to read about, i'd suggest the Man-Kzin wars. ARM withholds technology from the public, to the point of jeopardizing humaninity's survival.
And what if Bill Gates was a Slaver?
What is the point of govt trying to censor things? Decent and Indecent is not something that I want decided for me by a bunch of burocrats that dont have a clue about me. I am intelligent to decide what I want to watch and what I dont.
I will concede the point that filtering in Public Libraries becuase of kids, etc. I know that people will bitch and whine and complain until that happens.
I say let the individual decide what they want to see and what they dont. Individual freedoms are what make this country great. I know people will say we need to protect our kids, etc, why dont you WATCH your kids and PAY ATTENTION to them and then maybe you wont have to install that piece of software that your kid can crack anyway.
Arathres
I love my iBook. I use it to run Linux!
stainless steel
Why not ask for an accepted FCC-Monitor chip that takes in a signal warning of possibly offensive material? It would be like the V-Chip, but for most airwave-transmitted media. If someone really wanted to institute a nice-teletubby-content-only filter, then they could do it on their own time. Filters suck, but filters can be disabled or customized.
This allows parents, teachers, school boards (yikes!) to make the critical decisions. More power to the people in making the final say about content.
Each broadcaster would have to take care to note which material contained expletives/lewd sexual content, satisfying the FCC's wish to control racier content, while allowing adults to choose a screening system appropriate to their comforts and their parenting style. These screening systems are silly, but still better than restrictions on what may be aired. The document has an arguable case for improving, enlightening...whatever-ing the airwave content for more intelligent broadcasts, but I prefer this come of free will.
Of course there will be the argument from many that any filtering system is just another step toward the "slippery slope" (or other overused term of the year) of anti-freespeech, but let's be honest with ourselves, U.S. citizens. Most of the American content out there sucks; it IS patently offensive to many poeple and it gets its ratings because there is still something of a charm about racier content when there is such strong moral damnation of such content.
Mom says to teenager, "don't have sex."
Teen to mom: "Okay, mom."
The teen runs to the drug store to get anti-pregnancy device and has sex.
People in the U.S. (maybe worldwide--I cannot say as I am not a world traveler) gravitate toward what they are told to avoid.
Broadcasts are the same. So long it seems as there is resistance against racier content, the stronger the lure of the content. By closing more lines to racier content, but not completely thwarting any non-wholesome broadcasts and thus allowing the interest in racier content to live, the FCC panelists seem to have defeated themselves.
After years of this technology entering broadcast receiving devices, content filtering technology could become pervasive, but only at the leisure of consumers who wanted it.
Alternatively, more stations could adopt the policy of forewarning about possibly indecent material. But, I hardly see good in this since such forewarned material is still deemed indecent by the FCC panel. I think the FCC rulings are akin to telling people they can tell broadcasters what can be aired--but only if the government has the final say.
Let the markets rule.
I have a final plan: the FCC could send a pamphlet to every U.S. mailbox with instructions on how to use his or her volume dials and power buttons.
So, assuming all these censorware companies use their own software (why wouldn't they if it's so great :P), how are they going to find out what to censor and what not to censor? They can't upload the FCC webpage anymore because it's filled with all those naughty words. Duh. I can only conclude that these companies sell crap that they themselves would never use. Nice companies.
Best. Comment. Ever. Enjoy!
But...
Maybe that's a good thing -- the more vague and open to "interpretation" (read: selective enforcement) the rules are, the less likely the regulations (and the underlying laws?) are to stand up to judicial scrutiny. If the regulations have the potential for arbitrary and over-broad application, I'd at least hope that the courts would strike them down. They've done that before (read the intro to the regulations, for starters).
On a related note, I thought the comments from one of the board members (I don't remember his name, I think it was P.25 or so) in the appendix were interesting. Essentially, he was arguing that in the new environment where broadcast media (in the usual sense, not including the internet) are starting to take a back seat to opt-in media like videos, the already-weak constitutionality of the regulations will vanish. Worth reading and thinking about...
Indecent/Decent/Indecent/Decent...
that was clear as mud.
RA7
-
"Consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds" - RWE
"God, my testicles are like down to the floor...you could really have a party with these. Use them like Bocci balls."
I love the bit about how Monty Python's Sit on My Face song 'was found to be actionably indecent despite [the] English accent...' There go hopes of a posh accent turning around the HOward Stern show...
I believe televison is allowed to say and do certain things after 9 or 10 *I think*..I can't be 100% sure. But why haven't we seen these certain things? Because the networks don't want to carry things too far...we are eventually headed for European standards in TV. But don't look for ABC becoming like Cinemax in 2010...
Also, the FCC has in place a rule which stations have to pay for each swear like "asshole" that a station uses. Its not offically a fine, but it is as such.
Slashdot Hypocrisy at work?
If you look at some of the fines levied against some parties (mainly Howard Stern), you would know the FCC is mainly targeting companies that can dish out money for the hefty fines.
Last I saw NYPD Blue upped their show to include the word asshole, yet they don't get fined, but should Howard say it, the fines would roll in.
Thats the problem with American media (television, radio), they're (the FCC) so strung out on typical bullshit, freedom of speech is equivalent to "Freedom to Pay for your Speech Should it Offend Us". At least Euro television doesn't have anal intentions of fining anyone that uses a word, no matter if people like it or not.
Ghost in the Shell (updated crypto/stegano series)
360 degrees of Karma
I'm not sure what you mean by Schindler's List = GOOD. When it aired on NBC uncut, it had a lot of material that was only not censored because of the historical importance of the film. For example, Goeth curses left and right, even though the FCC statement promises to uphold the Supreme Court decision that obscene language can not be broadcasted at any time. I'd rather label the move as an "exception."
:)
On the other hand, it's kind of funny to see something as uptight as the FCC release an official document with phrases like "now that she sucked my d*** and Tony fsck you in the a**".
On the third hand, one wonders why I censor myself on this public forum while quoting the FCC
--------------------------------
I find gun violence, shootings, and murder a lot more "indecent" than even graphic depictions of sex. Maybe we need to change our community standards.
yes, i know they're just used as examples, but i have a hard time taking ANY document seriously that mentions being sodomized by Lambchop or using testicles as Bocci balls. Can you imagine the person who actually had to write these examples down in this paper? What was he thinking? Was he enjoying it? I bet he was at least smiling at the sheer idiocy. :)
To smash a single atom, all mankind was intent / Now any day the atom may return the compliment
Well, these FCC people have quite a naughty site themselves!
:)
Just type "fuck" into their site search engine (http://www.fcc.gov/search/wordsearch.html) and look at all the smut you get:
100% da981187.txt (summary)
100% da961858.txt (summary)
98% da002724.txt (summary)
98% da002724.txt (summary)
98% da010537.txt (summary)
98% da010537.txt (summary)
96% fcc98179.txt (summary)
94% da010111.txt (summary)
94% da010111.txt (summary)
94% da990511.txt (summary)
94% da982140.txt (summary)
92% fcc01090.txt (summary)
92% fcc01090.txt (summary)
88% da981566.txt (summary)
68% TV Ratings Proceeding E-Mail Comments(summary)
64% 5006314422.txt (summary)
30% 47cfr73.pdf (summary)
26% 20bip_5a.pdf (summary)
14% c-bip5b.pdf (summary)
And you should see some of this stuff! Try searching for "vibrator". What these guys lack is a sense of irony.
Invisible Agent
Invisible Agent
This post is a mirror; when a monkey stares in, no hacker gazes out.
I'm holding out for the knock-off version of the movie to come out. 'Swindler's List', directed by Steven Spielbergo, the cheap Mexican equivalent.
Aside from the comments about Free Speech and Censorship and such, doesn't it seem like some of the "Indecent" examples are worse than "Not Indecent?"
Like how is "Well, it was a nice big fart. I'm feeling very gaseous at this point." worse than "Dick suggests maybe getting a mega-Dick to help out, but you know, you remember the time the King ate mega-Dick under the table...?"
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"Five is right out."