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Bill to Bring A La Carte, Indecency Regs to Cable
An anonymous reader writes "A bill introduced this week would force cable operators to offer à la carte cable and so-called family-tiers of service. Those opting for à la carte programming would get refunds on their cable bill, but the legislation would also extend broadcast indecency standards to cable and satellite TV for the first time: 'In accordance with the indecency and profanity policies and standards applied by the [FCC] to broadcasters, as such policies and standards are modified from time to time, not transmit any material that is indecent or profane on any channel in the expanded basic tier of such distributor except between 10pm and 6am.' As Ars points out, 'With the parental controls built into every television set, set-top box, and DVR being sold these days, the need for such legislation seems questionable at best. Unlike broadcast television, which is available to anyone with a TV and an antenna, people subscribe to and pay for cable/satellite.'"
Or simply lose a lot of cool ("indy") channels that don't get enough sponsorship to survive on their own?
At night I drink myself to sleep and pretend I don't care that you're not here with me
Gets you unlimited govt in areas where you would prefer it not to be.
How a subscription channel can be a public airway is beyond me, but with infinite commerce clauses and pick and choose federalism, congress can pretty much do whatever it wants.
I still don't understand how/why they bundle fundementally different concepts into one bill.
You can't get a stop sign at the end of your street unless you also vote for new garbage bins for the courthouse...what??
Being forced to support cable channels my family will never watch is the same as being forced to eat one meal a day at that restaurant down the street that no one likes.
Bring on ala carte!
10 MD
Now I'm even more confused. If you can get any channel you want a la carte, then why do you need to impose indecency regs on channels. I could almost see the logic when you had to get Spike and TNT in order to get Nickelodeon for the kids, but now if you can cherry pick the safe channels you specifically want (and as such, pick the not so safe at your discretion), you should do away with the regs and let the market sort out what people are willing to pay for.
Did anyone else read this and think, "Bill who?" No, I, uh, didn't think so . . .
"extend broadcast indecency standards to cable and satellite TV for the first time: "
the price they want is too high.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Would all those great shows like the Sopranos, Sex in the city, Deadwood, etc ever been possible had HBO been worrying whether or not they're hurting all of those beautiful minds in the heartland?
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
This will probably result in mandatory 2-way cable boxes. It will probably pass since it will create more records that can be inspected and sold.
...when we complained about the FCC's censorship, we were told: Oh, you can get cable if you want uncensored stuff.
And they they started labeling everything and building controls into TVs to filter by rating. That was okay, because they told us, with everything labeled, people could complain less about 'inappropriate' things, because, after all, everything's rated.
Look, we've given those fascist 'think of the children' asshats every damn thing they wanted, and, magically, they always want more. It is trivial to filter content from children at this point, via broadcast or cable. We should be reducing such general restrictions, not adding to them, because we've added specific abilities to filter to end users. There's no logical reason we should be extending restrictions them to cable.
The one conclusion is that they wish to keep such content from adults.
You know what? Media companies need to start labeling everything TV-MA. Everything. All channels, all shows, are now listed as bad as possible. You can either live and operate as an adult when interacting with the TV, or you can not ever watch anything ever again. Your choice.
We tired, God knows we tried, but you fascist assholes either mindbogglingly stupid you can't avoid the carefully labelled content we've made, or deliberately don't want to. We're just going to have to draw the line in the sand, and label everything as 'hardcore porn' so you will shut the hell up. If people want cable, or, hell, wish to purchase a TV, they get handed a form that they have to flip past ten pages of porn to sign, and certify that they consent to have the filthiest things possible beamed directly into their and their children's brain.
Of course, TV would remain the same, with different shows aimed at different audiences, but we'd have a lot less assholes whining about it, because there would be huge clear warnings that 'The following show contains every bad thing on earth. Do not watch it under any circumstances.'
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
I am now basically convinced that only people from an engineering field should be allowed to draft laws. Why? Things like this. All it will end up doing is driving up the costs of cable service, undermining the buying power of families.
But politicians are, in general, too stupid to understand that. So are the American people, in general, because they keep electing leaders who are leading us toward national economic suicide. More regulations, more taxes. Gee, you wonder why jobs are leaving America? Could it be the cost of compliance with every asinine regulation that some moron drafts?
Sheesh. The people who are too lazy to regulate their own kids' use of TV will love this. They'll get their "family tier," only it'll probably cost them about $20-$30 more per month than the current system costs.
Then they'll institute price controls because these same whiners will demand $45-$50 or less. Then, the cable companies will make less money per customer, weakening their position.
Need I go on?
Unlike broadcast television, which is available to anyone with a TV and an antenna, people subscribe to and pay for cable/satellite.
The author has never lived in a concrete apartment building with nothing but cable available. When *I* lived in such places (and a few others that had bad broadcast reception for other reasons), I had the option of not subscribing, which meant absolutely no TV, or maybe a couple of snowy channels.
I'm not commenting on the article in general. I just thought that particular statement was ill-informed.
Like all politics, it is a form of gamesmanship.
It forces those voting on a bill to make a decision about how bad they want one thing versus how bad they don't want the other.
And it works both ways. Someone who initially would be dead-set against a bill is more inclined to do so if they get something that they do want in return for a yes vote.
Multiple reasons:
#1. To get an "earmark" (aka "pork") passed because it attached to a bill that will be sure to be passed.
#2. To force an opponent to vote AGAINST it because of their stance on a particular issue.
#3. To get an opponent to vote FOR it because it includes on of their pet projects.
There are rumors that one reason the parental controls aren't being used is because the parents who want them are also dependent on their children to set them up.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
With the V-chip in every TV sold, I think it's time to end FCC restrictions on over-the-air television, not the other way around.
-- Don't Tase me, bro!
The supreme court would smack this down hard. There are already parental controls for those who need them. I think the tiers of "decency" are a good idea as a marketing idea for cable companies, but it shouldn't be mandated by the state.
This violates free speech plain and simple. They managed to slip this crap through on radio by claiming that broadcast radio was pushed out to consumers. Supposedly this meant that broadcasts were equivalent to yelling in the street. That was a fairly lame argument since you had to make an intentional effort to actually hear those broadcasts but whatever. Cable TV doesn't even meet that shady criteria. You actually have to pay to have a wire run into your home and pay a subscription to receive it. Cable TV is like speaking privately in your home. In your home YOU and not the public and not the FCC decide what content you want to purchase.
Cable companies and content producers should ignore this. If the FCC tried to claim to that they are a higher authority than the constitution they would quickly be put in their place by the courts. This provides an excellent window of opportunity to get rid of all the censorship the FCC has forced upon television.
"Here's that delicious dish that you've been asking us for so long. Oh, just don't mind the huge turd wrapped around it."
Nice. Thanks politicians.
What is the rationale for the Free Speech infringement here?
With broadcast regs, it is reasoned that the airwaves are a limited public resource. Thus, the public supposedly has a right to regulate content broadcast over it.
But cable is neither a limited, nor a public resource. And I don't gather that satellite is either. So how does the Congress get around the First Amendment and regulate their content?
Is this unconstitutional or what?
Congress can try all they like, but there's basically no difference from a first amendment perspective between censoring cable, and censoring any other subscription based press medium.
In other words, if the Supreme Court were to rule in favor of censoring cable, say goodbye to the first amendment. Normally I'd say this was impossible, but with the extreme right leaning of the court these days, anything is possible.
AccountKiller
Who gets to decide what is indecent? Me? I doubt it.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
How else can you get people to voluntarily give up their 1st Amendment right, without promising to ease up a bit on the cable monopoly. And it works too, just the other day this guy politely asked me to voluntarily give up my wallet, and he promised he wouldn't shoot me, thus saving my life.
More like a "you scratch my balls, I'll scratch yours" proposal, I would estimate. Both of these items are "pet projects" to someone.
Congress is just a bunch of ball-scratchers, I tell ya!
A la carte good, censorship bad. They don't have much leg to stand on since cable isn't broadcast on public spectrum and satellite already has special permission to broadcast "indecent" content so long as it is scrambled or encrypted. There's no way the satellite lobby will let the congress-criters take this away.
I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
Why is it they are only picking on cable? Why cant this law apply to Satelite providers and fios tv also?
Cable rates have increased at 6 times the rate of inflation this decade, it's insane.
I want cable, but I don't want to scroll through 200 channels of crap I'll never watch (MTV, VH1, Lifetime, Oxygen, the fucking Golf channel... these are my opinions, keep your flames).
I do want to watch the Hitlery, er--I mean, History Channel (when it's not about WWII), History International, the Discovery networks, Comedy Central, and a few select others. Give me my 20 or so channels that I actually want at $1 each, and I'll be happy.
I'm still subscribing, and there are still commercials, so the only people who lose from censoring cable are the majority of people who aren't offended by OMGBOOBIEZ!!!111one on the National Geographic channel. If you don't like it, turn back to the 700 Club.
The premium channels (HBO, Showtime, Skinemax, etc) are the ones they likely want to censor, and these are the ones you have to effectively subscribe to twice.
The FCC is not my kid's parent, I am. Don't impugn my ability to perform my parental duties, you pseudo-family-values fascists. I suspect that they want to do this to increase DVD sales.
sigh... while I am against indecency laws, they don't mean the constitution is dead.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Religion infecting politics is the most prominent indecency which exists in 2007, worldwide.
Soldiers didn't give their lives so that small-minded religious bigots could impose their obscene restrictions on everybody else.
A major reason why I pay for premium channels is so I can watch things like Penn & Teller Bullshit! and Orgazmo. If pay cable has to be just like the three major networks of old then I'm dropping my cable like a hot rock. You hear that cable operators?; I'm not the only one who pays to see things the more public networks can't show. Lobby this one down pronto.
More pompous grandstanding for the electorate. Instead of doing real work once again congress campaigns from The Hill. It will be a cold day in hell before Disney lets you subscribe to ESPN without paying for Disney Channel, Toon Disney, ABC family, ESPN2, ESPN Classic, ESPN Spanish. If the cable companys can't stand up to Disney there is no way congress or the American people can. Not that congress wants to fight them, they are owned by the Media corps anyways.
They have to justify their existence SOMEHOW!
And what Congress does is pass laws. So, to justify their existence, they pass MORE laws.
From Congress' viewpoint, the only stupid law is the one you didn't pass that causes you to lose the next election.
What we need is a citizen's uprising and make ALL laws expire after 5 years (or 10 years or whatever).
That way Congress can happily pass laws that they've already passed (thereby justifying their existence) and the rest of us can get on with our lives.
Actually, there shouldn't.
If consumers want to buy just one cable channel, then they need to all go to the cable office together and cancel their services at the same time.
If enough consumers want it, it'll happen.
But every time you allow your government to regulate things, you lose a little more control.
Small government == good government.
I'd rather you do it wrong, than for me to have to do it at all.
just call it freedom channel.
people who support micromanagement from government on such level deserve the censorship.
or let's just illegalize all TV and get over it.
How is it constitutional for the federal government to tell any company what product(s) they must or can't offer?
The indy channels disappeared a long time ago. What you think of as "indy" channels are just the media monopolies doing odd stuff to try to capture niche audiences.
The real indy channels went away when the MMs used their clout to force the cable companies to buy big bundles of channels. ("If you want to carry the local Fox station, you have to carry our new FX channel too. Yes, we know there's nothing on it yet. We'll worry about that later.") That left no room for all the weird little cable channels you used to see: the channels run by obscure religious sects, the public-domain movie channels (I saw the entire work of Ed Wood on one of those!), the Flat Earth society channel, the origami fetish channel...
Of course, these bundles aren't cheap, which is why cable rates are so ridiculous.
I think the folks that want alacart (I insist on spelling it that way, given the context) aren't interested in saving money or "protecting" their kids. They are just are pissed off that some of their money is going to pay for "un-Christian" content. In other words, this is just another lame "culture wars" battle that has no relation to the real world.
Seriously, I would do anything for this bill to get passed. Obviously the decency thing is fucking bullshit, but we'll worry about that later. Cable companies will stop at nothing to avoid offering a la carte service; it's a tough nut to crack. In fact their lobbyists are undoubtedly behind the deceny part of the bill in order to get everyone to vote against it. Well, fuck that. I say we pass this shit so they finally have to start giving us what we want.
Best case scenario:
Cable channels are a la carte. Cheaper, and we only have to pay for what we want to watch. They agree not to show scarystuff/pr0n/bad language/etc --ON THE BASIC "FAMILY" CHANNEL PACKAGE-- until late at night, or not at all. But they leave the rest of the channel packages ALONE. NO OVERSIGHT, NO CONTROL, NO INDECENCY RULINGS.
Probable case scenario:
This is all just a ruse to get government "indecency" hooks into cable programming. Remember, ALL governments eventually seek to make themselves larger and more powerful; to expand into things they have no business (or legal right) to be in. Once they get a toehold, a few years later, they have massive amounts of control and influence over it.
Note: Rep. Lipinski is the real driving force on this bill, and its not the first time. He had another similar bill last year or the year before IIRC. He salivates over controlling the cable networks under the guise of "OMG, someone please think of the children!". (As a sidenote, he basically "inherited" his seat in Congress from his incumbent father. But thats how shady Chicago politics work.)
Lipinksi is a Democrat, so please drop the Republican/Middle America/Christian bashing for a moment. When it comes to extending government control and influence, the (current) Reps and Dems are equally evil-minded charlatans. The Dems are pushing harder and harder for control of things like cable and talk radio (to silence the political discourse of alternate media).
If you agree that this bill is asinine, support Ron Paul for President. He understands the stupidity of such things, and knows they are unconstitutional.
It's not really a'la carte. They make you subscribe to the whole tier then refund the cable company's cost for each channel you drop from the tier. Every cable company will immediately be paying a fee to allow channels from each media company then pay only a penny per channel per subscriber. That way they can charge $20/tier then refund $.50 when when you opt out of every channel in the tier. This will be rife with abuse!
I think the 'V-Chip' is essentially useless the way it is, or was, implemented.
I think it should have been enabled by default and set to the G rating. That way, if you wish to enable anything above that rating, you must enable it yourself. That is the only way you can put the choice and responsibility in the hands of the viewer. This would have given programmers more freedom yet more accountable.
If you set 'V-Chip' to allow PG, or adult, then that's what you're allowed to see and programmers are allowed to show it. If something gets shown outside of its rating, well, then you have a right to complain and the programmers should be reprimanded, fined or whatever.
Unfortunately when they started shipping sets, the 'V-Chip' was off by default, so its too late implement the system the way it should have been. If you tried doing that now, all the people who already purchased a set would still complain instead of turning on their 'V-Chips'
Support national "Wear a Fuck TShirt" Day. Its July 7th. Wear a TShirt that says fuck and go to public places. "Fuck the FCC" is a popular one.
crap.
Here's the question I've wondered for along time......
This country is HORRIF!ED by the sight of bare breasts, including TV.
I've always suspected it was attributable to the fact that our lawmakers are from a very different age, and as we grow older, some of us will become the lawmakers and (H0PEFULLY) won't be so freaking uptight.
Or will we? Are there lame overly conservative dipshits among our contemporaries? Will we ever get naked boobies on American TV?
Extra credit; will it be a bad thing that we're so relaxed? Will we bring anarchy unto ourselves as loosened morals are taken further and further? Will society become a real life continuous episode of Jerry Springer?
I pulled the plug on my TV about 2 years ago. Not bragging about it, I just got upset about a $40 a month fee, biased news, empty programming, endless reruns, series based on previous series that were based on...., series based on commercials, 20+ minutes of commercials in an hour show.
I took about 6 months to get use to being without the TV. I am busy enough with my normal life now that I would not want to lose the hours I use to spend watching it. It's strange now when I am at a friend's house while their TV is on, I get mesmerized / hypnotize by it, all intelligent thought is removed.
A lot of people find it enjoyable; great for them, I found it to be an addiction.
HBO, Showtime, and similar channels will migrate to IPTV much quicker. That is, until the government decides that belongs to them too.
I wonder if I use bold in my signature, people will notice my posts.
Really? Let's look at the facts. The last big first amendment issue the supreme court looked at was the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform. In a 5-4 decision, the supreme court decided that it was ok to abridge the first amendment.
Who were the 5 first amendment haters? Breyer, Stevens, O'Connor, Souter, and Ginsburg, the 4 liberal, 1 wishy washy jurists.
Justice Thomas (perhaps you consider him extreme right leaning?) dissented, calling it the "most significant abridgment of the freedoms of speech and association since the Civil War."
Who do you agree with?
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
Holier than thou on one side, on the other side taking money, lying, a hive of intrigues with a moral of cheating on their wifes going to prostitutes - ahem, escort services and getting neck massages -
The "forbidden" 6 (?) words: fuck, shit... are used in daily life - and?
It's all a big smoke screen to hide the real issues that a large part of the population is getting sucked on!
*) they: "democratic" representatives watching out for you, so you are not taking any harm!
You are delusional if you think ESPN would not survive a la carte; or are you being sarcastic? Sarcasm doesn't translate very well over the Internet, you know. Also, MTV would have no problem surviving (unfortunately).
Yes, I'd like the ala-carte programming. But getting the stupid FCC regulation with it. That's not actually a stick, it's an overweight baseball bat, being handled by a pumped up steroid enhanced baseball player.
It looks to me like another attempt by the government to jack us up with more big-brother monitoring. The FCC used to be a good thing. But now, my personal opinion is that it should be disbanded. It used to be to control broadcast channel frequencies, and other radio channel frequencies ( and the protocols and licenses to use them ). It looks like we may be losing another chunk of freedom, in the name of protecting us from those evil titty's.
AHHHHHHH ATACK OF THE KILLER DIRTY WORD!! WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE!!
I take no responsibility for what I say. Even though I'm never wrong
First off, yes, I work for a certain large cable providers. I am pretty low on the food chain, and I do not speak for my employers, blah blah blah.
There are 3 major obstacles that will stop this from saving money for customers.
To make this work, the cable providers will need to scramble everything beyond the basic local broadcast channels(which they are required to carry by law for every subscriber. At least in Massachusetts). So for customers who don't have a cable box on TVs but have the standard cable channels, they will now be forced to get a cable box on every set.
Back end expenses. While most people here know how to install a cable box, you'd be surprised how many don't. All the man hours and inevitable overtime to install boxes on every TV, as well as the cost of the boxes themselves will add up fast. And let's not forget the having to retool the back end billing systems to accommodate a hundred plus new rate codes.
There are not as many cable channel owning companies as many believe. If you think that renegotiating the contract for individual channels is going to make the media and cable companies any less money in the end, you may have another thing coming. Those 'couple channels' you actually watch will likely be the most expensive, to the point it will be practically cheaper just to get the package you had before. Oh, and the home shopping network you want to get rid of is likely a locally broadcast channel a cable company can't drop if it wanted to.
On top of these, you will lost out in variety, since the less mainstream channels will suddenly find themselves with fewer viewers. They will get less money from the cable stations who aren't carrying them in the number they used to, and fewer viewers means less ad revenue. Some will go belly up, others will have to scale back on their programming.
The idea of government enforced a la carte sounds like a good idea, full of rainbows and unicorns and sugar plum hills, but in my opinion, it is anything but for the consumers.
"Useless organic meatbag" -HK-47
For the same reason you can't get Sci-fi in my area unless you buy the sports package. I'll let you figure that one out yourself because I'm tired of trying.
Why should kids who's parents have cable be abused, by being forced to watch the crap that is on the cable channels these days?
I work for a small cable company, and a la carte would S U C K for small companies.
Provisioning customer based on a per-channel basis would be an absolute nightmare with any of the software we've seen.
Right now we have 2 main channel packages and a few add-on packages . The 2 main packages are basically broken into "all normal cable channels" and "all normal cable channels, plus premium movie channels". These blocks are based on contracts that we have with the networks that we pay on a per-subscriber basis. ALOT of specialized networks that we don't currently offer WILL NOT ALLOW us to put them on our "extra" channel packages such as our sports add-on package, then demand it be offered in all our standard packages. We don't end up adding them because the per-subscriber charge is relatively high($1+ each/MONTH) and we don't believe in raising rates every 6 months (done so twice in 5 years, and still a lot of complaints).
I'd imagine very many of the premium and specialized networks who live off the per subscriber charge MUST fight this tooth and nail. Not to mention all of our wonderful Java based on-screen guide software displays all available channels whether the subscriber gets them or not, so a la cart would generate a lot of 1-channel for 1-month issues because they want to watch 1 show on it once.
Pricing would be interesting as we offer triple-play services on a FTTH Network, so breaking the $85/month into the 3 services which are co-dependant due to the fairly expensive FTTH NID on each house, and and further breaking each channel down would come out to like 30 to 40 cents per channel. But some channels cost 2-3 times that much per subscriber, and ones like over-the-air broadcast ones are simply encoded and broadcasted with little or no network cost.
That's better than my area. If you want digital cable you have to take everything except the premium movie channels and the prices reflect it.
Let's see what survives. Was I paying for your shit, or were you paying for mine?
From a market value perspective ala carte just makes no sense at all. Yes you get a lot of channels you don't, no you're not paying for them. Whoever is appropiating value from them is paying for them. Remember: it costs NOTHING to provide you a channel of cable. The content and distribution network is already there. Marginal cost is truly zero.
Everyone has different value amounts on each channel. It can be arguably assumed the value of no channel is negative. So what do you do? You try to come up with a bundle of channels that presents approximately the same amount of value to most customers. It simplifies billing and tends to work out pretty well for all parties involved.
First they will pass this Bill, then the next one will be for The Internet.
I dislike it when politicians pander to peoples stupidity.
Its times like these when I am just plain disappointed in our country.
"Unlike broadcast television, which is available to anyone with a TV and an antenna, people subscribe to and pay for cable/satellite.'"
And so if I don't want it don't buy it! Nice theory. Problem for me is I do want it, 90% of it anyhow, but I don't want the 10% that is complete smut. As it stands now I've either got to take the bad with the good or do without all of it entirely. The OPTION to buy and view descent programming without penalty of bringing smut into home sure sounds reasonable to me. You want your smut, by all means, buy it, jerk off to it, enjoy yourself, but I shouldn't have to subsidize it.
I choose not to watch certain types of programming and as an adult and a parent, I have always had the choice and the right NOT to buy HBO, Cinemax, etc. Now to have the opportunity not to HAVE to pay for the Golf Channel, Telemundo, Univision, etc. sounds pretty tasty to me! Bon appetit and bring it on!!! :)
I'd rather pay for channels I don't use, then let them determine what is decent for me. If they are putting these two measures through as one bill, then I hope it fails.
Well, I don't think anyone realistically believes you can save money by cafeteria channel selection. So it's likely a back door project to legalize cafeteria pricing so the channels you purchase today can be even more expensive tomorrow. Personally I like have some non-standard channels around. Sometimes they have really intersting stuff on them. But I don't know about them at the time I make my cafeteria selections.
I don't think I mind the content regulations. I'm getting tired of a show, in order to make ratings, push the boundaries on vulgar unimaginative programming. When you have to be funny without swearing or refering to body parts or body functions, it does require you to be a little more creative.
Exactly. It should be a law that a bill can only be made up of provisions relating to a single purpose. (No "To Promote Economical Status and Decency in Television" crap. Straight, one term titles) We can put it on the next Iraq spending bill. :P
The indy channels disappeared a long time ago. What you think of as "indy" channels are just the media monopolies doing odd stuff to try to capture niche audiences.
Funny, I didn't know IFC and the Sundance channel was part of the media monopoly.
FalconShould there be a Law?
I still don't understand how/why they bundle fundementally different concepts into one bill.
You can't get a stop sign at the end of your street unless you also vote for new garbage bins for the courthouse...what??
One item is piggybacked onto another item because that's the only way it would be approved, and congress knows this.
FalconShould there be a Law?
If you can get any channel you want a la carte, then why do you need to impose indecency regs on channels.
Because they are a bunch of prudes.
FalconShould there be a Law?
It makes sense for Congress to require cable programming to include ratings on a 0-10 scale in several categories, then craft some standard ratings categories (like R-violence, PG-sex, G-smarmy) around them, purely informational. Which would be carried with the program's signal to the terminal, which terminal would include SW like a V-Chip or nannyware, keyed optionally to either the standard ratings or the specifics in the categories, and keyed to time of day and day of week. All of which restriction should be optional, with detailed config and "decision support" training on a dedicated cable channel.
Parents should take responsibility for their kids' viewing, and their own. Rather than dilute cable to the lowest common denominator, they should filter what they don't like. Making it easy for them will get them out of the way and stop them from hassling, and censoring, the rest of us.
--
make install -not war
Regarding "decency" laws: what is it about certain people that they feel the need to force their pattern for living upon everyone else?
People like this don't have enough confidence in their own stance to allow others to choose otherwise. And because they aren't confident they have to dictate to others.
FalconShould there be a Law?
How DARE the cable company force 2 mexican channels down my throat when I'd much rather have the national geographic channel and boomerang in their place. I don't talk Spanish, and it should be illegal to do so in America. This could not come soon enough. Who cares if new channels fail? There are more than enough channels out there already. If someone wants to create a new series, they can go to one of them. Who the hell wants to watch new TV series, anyway? All this reality bullshit sucks a fat one and should be banned.
Not that I'm saying they *should* be regulated. But when you have Ted "the tubes" Stevens up there, anything could happen.
Are those tubes, like the bridge, going to nowhere?
FalconShould there be a Law?
the legislation would also extend broadcast indecency standards to cable and satellite TV for the first time: 'In accordance with the indecency and profanity policies and standards applied by the [FCC] to broadcasters, as such policies and standards are modified from time to time, not transmit any material that is indecent or profane on any channel in the expanded basic tier of such distributor except between 10pm and 6am.'
I thought this BS was over...especially since if you teach the parents how to operate their remote by showing them how to turn off the TV or switch the channel when they find something "objectionable"...there would be no need of this legislation. As a buddy of mine who used to work at a cable company in the bible noose used to tell people (hate using this term in such a loose way) who would call in to complain about the Playboy Channel...either you're paying extra for it or else you're stealing it...which one is it??? On the other hand...if it bothers you that much...you have 3 options: 1. Don't subscribe...2. You have a channel tuner...learn what it is & use it...3. Turn off your TV by flipping the switch or unplugging it from the wall.
Those with the little minds would get so mad they would hang up & call his boss (who would just laugh at them even harder & tell them that unless they were a subscriber to the programming...he needed to get some work done) or keep on complaining. By going into a tirade during the overnight shift he worked...for some reason...the phone would disconnect & stay disconnect for long enough for him to go run some errands for his job.
My point is that if this type of programming that you allow to be in your home bothers you this much...you can either not watch it...watch it while doing strange things to yourself while wearing your Victoria Secret's or not subscribe to it in the first place. I'm not at your house holding your eyes open & pointing a gun at you to watch it...so STFU about someone else other than yourself corrupting your children!!!
Don't worry about the world coming to an end today. It's already tomorrow in Australia. - Charles M. Schulz
Buy a guitar or piano and learn to play music
I prefer the flute and have one by David Nighteagle. Unfortunately I haven't learned to play it yet. I'd love to learn to play it like R.Carlos Nakai.
FalconShould there be a Law?
I think it should have been enabled by default and set to the G rating. That way, if you wish to enable anything above that rating, you must enable it yourself. That is the only way you can put the choice and responsibility in the hands of the viewer.
It's the viewer's responsibility to set the tv's v-chip to G if they only want that.
FalconShould there be a Law?
apologies if redundant, but this thread is making me crazy: 1. on my planet, alacart will have absofuckinglutely nothing to do with lower rates - don't know about others'.... 2. as other posts as noted, fewer channels will lower diversity and increase homogenization 3. production costs will go down due to support for fewer channels while revenue model increases 4. name the broadcast or cable organization that won't lobby for this, while your rep to WashDC brags about passing this bill to save the children To the tune of Mickey Mouse: F-U-C, K-E-D, A-G-A-I-N
Pathological kinda promises Path + Logical - but instead, you get stuck with pathetic.
Wow. Could we stop the unreasoned freaking out and RTFA? Apparently, all the bill says is that people who don't like to watch things that would be considered offensive on broadcast TV should be offered a package that doesn't include such things. It doesn't say that all cable channels have to meet broadcast decency standards.
This bill is a Good Thing(TM). It's mandating that we all be offered the TV choices we want, whether we're whacko right-wingers who are afraid of breasts (oggey-boogey-boogey!!!) or we're slashdotters who only want to buy SciFi, CNN, Discovery, and the Softcore Cable Porn channel.
So chill out. They're not going to take away your softcore porn, they're just not going to make you buy HSN or the paranoid parents out there buy anything that might expose their kids to a new idea.
One way or another the cable/fios/satellite company is going to get their $50/mo (or whatever) plus fees plus rentals plus plus plus. When it's all over you're going to pay the same amount, or more, for less.
In fact, a line item veto was also included, Article I, Section VII, Paragraph 2 reads:
http://www.law.ou.edu/ushistory/csaconstitution/
To all who claim this is a violation of Free Speech: Free Speech is about being able to complain about your government without finding yourself in prison. It is not about your ability to say whatever-the-hell you want to say.
Amendments are remedial in nature: they are enacted to correct a flaw in the law. When looking to understand an amendment, look to the original law, the abuses, and how the amendment would remedy that abuse.
Look at the context of the First Amendment. The issue was about troops being used to silence opposition to the British Government, not about whether you could run around topless.
Regardless, I have sought ala carte selection since the 1980s, when I was a teenager. It wasn't because I thought MTV was indecent. I wanted ala carte because I only watch a half-dozen channels and don't like subsidizing channels that wouldn't otherwise survive. Forcing a pack of channels is inherently anti-democratic and anti-libertarian. It allows a fat corporation to shove more channels into the lineup and receive a greater share of your monthly fee. Packaged deals are the payola of the cable industry.
I presently don't get to watch the History Channel and others I would like to watch precisely because I would be forced to give money to other channels (and by extension corporations) that I don't want my money going to.
Roger Waters once complained about having 13 channels of shit to chose from. Now, there are 130. I only want 6; let me pick. That is the essence of freedom.
What those who want activist courts fear is rule by the people.
around here it is something in the range of $120 a month for cable with no pay channels- that is insane- I don't have cable for this reason- if I could choose the few channels that I would watch I might actually get cable-
also- I am all for freedom of the media but this bill really is all in the details- the idea of doing a "family oriented" designation actually sounds like a good idea since it lets all of the other channels off the hook and they won't be forced to do the "after 10pm" thing.
also- I can see this as good and bad for independents- It may be possible to bring more independents on the scene since they would be able to charge and be charged based on actual niche interests- the cable companies would want to have more channels for people to choose from- if places like IFC and such went down a lot of people would be turned off from cable since the overall amount of content would be lost and in the end they would conceivably want to have more stations since they can charge consumers per-channel. At the same time if say the "I am bob and here is my living room" channel came out and no one wanted to subscribe to it- it would go down. I think that the overall economics would need to be deeply examined.
Honestly, where the hell are they? Did they not realise that they grew up just fine? Or maybe they didn't, and that's why they're as wacked out as to think that the government should become their children's parents, or possibly even their own parents?
I'm all for a cable system where I can pick and choose my own channels. Then I could get just ESPN, ESPN2, Comedy Central, and HBO. But no, instead I'm forced to pay for WE, Lifetime, Lifetime Movies, Oxygen, and a bunch of other crap that I'll never use. This is why I will not pay for TV any more. I remember reading on a PBS page about some guy in Canada becoming his own cable company for his neighborhood. He only had to pay something like $0.50 per channel per subscriber, so if he had 2 subscribers, one of them ordered Disney and ESPN while the other ordered only ESPN, he would only have to pay $1.50. It sounded really cool, but I'm sure that due to differences in licensing laws and the like that such a thing could never happen in the US.
The point being that it should be set to a lower threshold and allow the viewer to raise it to whatever level they are comfortable with.
No I didn't. I don't think the V-chip should be set period to an initial setting. The parent, or viewer, should set it the first tyme the tv is turned on. At the same tyme the security code should be changed from default.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Fuck that shit!
-Turkey