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FCC Indecency Rules Don't Apply to Satellite Radio
SirTwitchALot writes "The FCC has announced that Satellite radio services
do not have to comply with the same indecency requirements as traditional broadcasters. Apparently this decision was brought forth by the complaint of a traditional radio station owner, stating that the FCC needs to "level the playing field." Chalk up a win for continued freedom on subscription services."
This makes me wonder why the FCC has such power over TV. Not that I liked seeing Janet Jackson's breast or anything...
That's the gist of the argument. Any service which you have to invite into your home (in other words subscribe to) does not have to meet the same standards as any service which can be picked up accidently by a supposedly innocent bystander.
He took a duck to the face at 250 knots.
The FCC rules that FCC rules do not apply to things outside of the FCC's domain.
Again.
I can't decide whether I find it comforting these kinds of rulings keep showing up so often or worrisome these kinds of rulings are even being CONSIDERED.
In a letter to the FCC, Levine complained that the commission needed to create a "level playing field" in protecting the public interest.
Yes! Once the playing field is leveled, to the ground, charred, smoking, apocalyptic, barren of expression... the public interest will have been protected.
The coolest voice ever.
The basic summary of the decision is that because you pay for the service you are inviting the information in (ahhh, reminds me of "Lost Boys" :) and therefore anything "indecent" is your fault.
... and by going to a library can do so for free. I can turn on the radio or TV today and still see stuff that is considered indecent by many yet not by me. By equating subscriptions with privacy, we are forced into a culture where to get information we want we have to pay for it. It is the "new" thing today but it will likely be standard tomorrow.
... we shouldn't have to pay to get freedom of expression and we shouldn't have to be subject to what someone -else- considers decent/indecent.
I think the whole state of affairs is flawed.
1) If I am a well-off under-18 I likely have access to some form of credit account (even if it is just my debit card attached to my allowance). I can subscribe to one of these services much easier than I can to a satellite TV service because I don't need to deal with an installer.
Is it likely? No, and even then most parents aren't going to care as much. Doesn't change the lack of validity in the presumption.
Plus it doesn't stop me from listening to the music / talk / whatever being played by my friends and simply put satellite radio is a lot more portable than the Playboy channel.
2) I can get access to whatever content I want on the Internet
3) It should be up to the adult or a parent and no one else what is indecent. I personally would MUCH rather have a teenage boy listening to Howard Stern enact boyish fantasies than to have that same teenage boy listening to a radical fundamentalist preacher telling him his thoughts are evil (and I know that the reverse is true for many). I may not consider the preacher indecent (though it gets close sometimes), but that just highlights the point AFAIK.
Point is
It is more productive to voice thoughtful opinions (reply) than to judge (moderate) others.
That guy that complained needs to be taken out an beaten. Rental cars? Please... if the customers of rental cars don't like the service so much, and find it so obscene, then they don't rent from that rental company any more.
/sigh
Listening to Satellite radio is a CHOICE. You can't "accidentally" listen to it. You have to actively and willfully make an attempt to listen to it, and thus the FCC has absolutely NO grounds to censor it.
That guy is just a chump and can't compete in the market place, so he wants big brother to step in and fight his battles for him. People like that need to be removed from the gene pool.
I'm so SICK AND TIRED of being told what I can and can't watch/hear by other people. I wish there was someplace left on this earth I could go start my own nation.
If I buy a television or radio, plug it in, turn it on and tune it in I am inviting the signal into my house.
... oh yeah ... the V-chip has) to be the acceptance of the purposefulness of my actions.
Maybe this could be settled by opening a new market for television and radios where you have to call and pay a slight fee to activate the "uncensored" channels.
Or just turn on the V-chip (and put them in radios) and allow the conscious act of turning it off (and to protect kids have a PIN system like
The whole Janet Jackson debacle should have been left to the free market. MTV/NFL pissed off a whole boatload of people and that was their fault for not understanding their market. If people had to make decisions based on the history of broadcasters instead of using the FCC as a lobby against the entertainment industry, shows would lose viewers (instead they often create "grudge viewers" who watch just to get mad) and the markets would right the boat while viewers would be more intelligent with their watching habits.
The FCC should be for regulating signals and criminal activity. Subjectively "indecent" content should not be able to be punished in a pseudo-criminal manner by an organization that is not representational of their constituency.
It is more productive to voice thoughtful opinions (reply) than to judge (moderate) others.
Had the FCC actually decided that satellite radio had to be `decent', then this would not only put a stop to bad language on Comedy Central, but also to PPV porn on Direct TV or Dish Network, for example. Of course, it doesn't have to be just porn -- any show with nudity would be prohibited.
(It's odd how violence is ok, but the slightest view of a nipple and people go nuts.)
In any event, it's refreshing to see the FCC make a good decision once in a while.
If I buy a television or radio, plug it in, turn it on and tune it in I am inviting the signal into my house.
But you're forgetting the "Won't somebody think of the children" rule. If I buy a TV just so I can watch Pat Robertson warn me about the evil that gays and *shudder* liberals pose to my existence, what's to prevent my theoretical 5-year old child from turning on the tube and being assaulted by some tripe-spewing volcano of depravity (or an NBA game) coming over the "free" airwaves.
And v-chips? Pshaw I say. I can barely be counted on to form my own opinion when it comes to presidential elections. How am I supposed to regulate what my children watch?
He took a duck to the face at 250 knots.
Cable can broadcast whatever they want. There was a Supreme Court Decision on it. From what I understand though, the reason why Cable channels don't just broadcast hardcore pornography is that they want to keep their advertisers.
This is why MTV is so tame. MTV could allow uncensored rap/nudity/etc, but the advertisers are too conservative to alow such a thing. It's just capitalism at work.
There are two major types of satellite in the US. One is TVRO, or "BUD" which uses a large dish and receives mostly on the C band (although I believe it can do ku band) - it uses fairly open standards. The other is DBS (Direct Broadcast System) which uses a mini-dish and receives I believe exclusively on the Ku band - it uses very closed standards. Originally TVRO was more popular, but DBS has become more popular over the years. DirecTV, Echostar's DISH network and a new service called Voom are three American DBS companies.
Looking at broadcast maps, it occurred to me that signals seem to be confined to a continent. European porn channels are mostly confined to Europe, American porn channels are mostly confined to North America. I didn't see any satellite that spanned the Atlantic with its signal. Mississippi, Alabama, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Utah or Tennessee and the City of Cincinatti, Ohio have laws against the content of American porn satellite channels, so satellite companies won't sell to subscribers there (or will limit what they can get). Southern states legislatures probably have an effect on the rest of the country, European satellite TV can show a lot of content that American TV can not. But the adult content Americans can get from Europe is limited, if any, at least from what I could see - correct me if I'm wrong.
Anyhow, I'll look up some specifics about the various channels (like TEN, Playboy etc.) and post it as a reply to this message a little later.
Yeah, I know. Having travelled to Norway, the UK and Ireland I am familiar with how weird U.S. television policies have become.
Interestingly to me, while there was more sexuality on overseas there were less crime dramas and less violence overall in those areas. I know which of the two I would rather a developing mind see.
It is more productive to voice thoughtful opinions (reply) than to judge (moderate) others.
Comedy central does not get all of its money from cable subscribers (like HBO does), so it must get sponsorship. That means it must have shows that sponsors are willing to pay for. Since sponsors tend to get a bit gunshy around swearing and nudity, most cable stations have to avoid it.
Unfortunately, sponsor censorship is just a fact of life. If you want to pay for all of your own programming, subscribe to HBO (it's well worth it, IMHO), and get all the sex and swearing you can handle. If you want Proctor & Gamble to pay for your programming, you have to let them dictate what will not be part of it.
aQazaQA
What a load of bullshit, this reminds me of the senator who after seeing the video of a marine shooting an injured insurgent in a mosque was outraged and said that embedded news teams should be banned! This is totally ridiculous - OF COURSE the playing field should be levelled, otherwise what is the fucking point of the FCC? The field should however (and this to me is like explaining that the earth goes around the sun) be levelled on the totally opposite direction - get rid of the bloody censorship altogether! WTF are these people smoking?
Now could someone please explain why a V-Chip like system (that either blocks out the audio/video when it gets the signal OR unblocks a scrambled audio/video when it gets the signal) has not been standardised to solve this stupid problem? All the FCC needs to do is find out how many people oppose censorship vs how many are in favour and then decide which system to use and therefore who has to buy new radios/tvs or adaptors if they want to take advantage of it, it really is that simple. Or just do what the rest of the world does and not get so anal about hearing people swear.
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A few winters ago, my local PBS station (Mountain Lake PBS), was showing a documentary on birthing. Well, they got to the point where the focused the camera on the woman's crotch (not blurred out), and the transmitter hiccupped somehow, freezing the image perfectly centered on her nether region. This wasn't a problem at the studio, it was a problem at the transmitter/antenna site.
Well, they don't call this station Mountain Lake PBS for nothing. The transmitter is in a pretty remote location and could only be reached by snowmobile at this time of year. So, the image lasted quite a long time (12 hours, IIRC) before it got fixed. As silly as it sounds, the incident made national news. Just thought I'd share.
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