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FCC to Require Broadcasters to Keep Tapes of Shows
The Importance of writes "Under current FCC rules, in order to make an indecency complaint about a broadcast you have to provide "a significant excerpt from the program or a full or partial tape or transcript of the program." However, broadcasters aren't required to keep a tape of their broadcasts so, rarely, an indecency complaint gets dismissed for lack of evidence. But that is going to change. The FCC has issued a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking [PDF] [TXT] that will require broadcasters to maintain recordings of their broadcasts for 60-90 days. The FCC is also considering reducing what you must claim in order to enter a complaint, thus opening the floodgates for indecency complaints by groups like the Parents Television Council, which is already keeping the FCC censors busy. Doesn't the government have better things to do?"
Working for a radio station in Austria, we have about the same rules here (90 days, real airplay), and we saw it as quite a pain originally. We kept the records on mp3s wich got deleted after the "holdtime".
One day we got sued from a company that a moderator had said "offensive things" about them and at court the mp3s were the key to show that this wasnt true. Since then we see this also as a mechanism to be able to show what really got broadcast in situations like this.
I find it difficult to believ that broadcasters aren't already required to keep records permenently for historical purposes.
Just think of the millions of hours of TV that no one will be able to research. Admittedly most of it isn't of the highest quality, but still, some historian might well be interested in the future.
The cost is nowadays minimal anyway. DivX, 400GB HDDs and backup tapes have made it simple to record everything that gets broadcast. Perhaps an archive of broadcasts should be recorded from all stations. I hardly think this affects anyones rights as we could all view it anyway.
As an aside it's also very sad when brief exposures of a naked human breast are considered indecent.
May the Maths Be with you!
Agree or disagree with the argument itself, I think that it results to the fact that it is broadcast over "public airwaves." That is in that any basic receiver can pick up the transmission. This is the same as regular network television. While one would hope it would be at the discretion of the viewer/listener, apparently the FCC doesn't see it as so.
( o ) one could say I'm rather baked
how is an individual supposed to make said tape in light of current copyright laws?
So what your saying is that people like howard stern should not be liable for what comes out of their mouths. I am held liable for what I say at every job I have ever had. How is he above that? Because he is a celebrity? Please explain it to me.
Evolution or ID?
Why is it censorship if you require the broadcaster to keep a record of what was transmitted?
And if a broadcaster has something to say, whether contentious or not, why would you not want to keep a record of it?
Why would you impose the burden of indecency enforcement on the overwhelming majority of decent broadcasters? Shouldn't the guilty bear the burden of their misdeeds?
Besides, if the broadcast was so offensive, and had such a nefarious impact on society, shouldn't you be able to find witnesses who saw the program themselves? Won't complainants now have the opportunity to comb over every second of every program on every channel for every word that might have sounded like a naughty sex act? Like "that floor is DIRTY, SANCHEZ, can you stop dropping stuff there"? Or how about "during the medical procedure A WAND IS INSERTED IN THE URETHRA"? "the Chinese restaurant FOOK LONG.."?
For crying out loud, I saw an Oprah show in which a nipple was blurred out during an explanation of a breastcancer self-examination!! You'd think it's fairly important to mention that one bump that's NORMAL to have on your breast?
Besides, the FCC is going censorship crazy anyway at the moment. Profane speech? What's up with that? You have nothing to hide if you're innocent (YEAH RIGHT), but under the FCC's new rules and decisions, who know's when you're innocent, and when you're (retroactively!) guilty?
On the other hand, I'd love it if broadcasters would just hang on to their programs (especially without all the logo's and interruptions and bullshit) on some sort of quality medium, like DVD. I positively hate seeing "old" footage that looks like shit, even though you remember seeing it only a year or two ago in broadcast quality. What do they use to store news footage and episodes of "Friends" anyway? VHS??
In fact, the FCC is encouraging broadcasters to BURN THEIR TAPES after 60-90 days, to prevent costly complaints. Kind of like burning books because you might not like what's in them. Yay for future historians!
SCO employee? Check out the bounty
That was my immediate reaction as well, until I realised that if you're watching a show on tv, or listening to something on the radio, which ends up having 'questionable' material, you wouldn't have had the foresight to record it on the off-chance that the show you are watching/listening to would be 'questionable'. How often have radio DJ's been given formal warnings for inadvertedly swearing on air - it happens, and people phone in and complain, but it's very unlikely that someone is sitting and recording the show just in case the dj says something colourful.
:)
Having said that, I personally am against the rush to censor everything that we see and hear
Maybe they could be.... :-) I don't think their proposed requirement says what medium the archive has to be on. VHS on the really really really long run cycle would still be an archive. You could pick a more obscure medium like betamax too if you want in my opinion. I'm still against the ruling but it might be possible to stick it to the FCC with the medium you choose.