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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
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??
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
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
...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?
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!
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.
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?
Who gets to decide what is indecent? Me? I doubt it.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
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?
... is when these little pricks work together!"
Certainly not, they'd have been too risky.
Matter of fact, this is just another example of a bunch of lawyers (i.e., Congress) creating a lot of makework. That's all this is: yet another Congressional subsidy to the corporate attorney crowd, as if Sarbanes-Oxley and intellectual property (hah!) weren't enough. We're at the point where no company can take a breath (much less create something worthwhile) without having to consult some lawyer and have him pass on the idea. Which he won't, with laws like this on the books, because if he did, he wouldn't be doing his job.
Regarding "decency" laws: what is it about certain people that they feel the need to force their pattern for living upon everyone else? I just want to grab one of these idiots by the throat, shake him a few times, and point out that I'M NOT OFFENDED BY A FEW BAD WORDS, YOU STUPID LITTLE PRICK, I PAY THE DAMN CABLE BILL NOT YOU, AND WORRYING ABOUT WHAT ME OR MY FUCKING KIDS SEE ON THE GODDAMN TELEVISION IS ABSO-FUCKING-LUTELY NONE OF YOUR GODDAMNED BUSINESS!
"Decency" laws my ass. What we need are laws that make Congress behave decently. I might go for that. But they'd fuck that up too, it's the nature of that particular collective beast. It really is twisted that some of the most amoral individuals in our society are the ones trying to define what is acceptable and "decent" (whatever that actually means) for the rest of us. Still, they do say that hierarchies are like septic tanks: the really big chunks always rise to the top.
And I'm sorry if any of you found this post to be "indecent" but sometimes Congress just torques me into a fucking pretzel. As Lewis Black says, "The only thing STUPIDER than a Republican or a Democrat
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
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.
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.
The beauty of this is, is all of the FCC decency standards may be struck down as a consequence. Not only because of the channel subscriber argument, but something like Comedy Central's Secret Stash is going to be protected speech (Richard Prior, South Park: Bigger Longer Uncut, etc). Remember the original decency regulation argument is based on the idea of a lack of plurality. There isn't that much choice in radio and TV as compared to printed material because of the capital investment required, and if there were no controls, famlies might be left out. That argument is ridiculous now with most cities having a couple major papers and a handful of what amount to pamphlets, dozens of radiostations, a half dozen tv stations and 500 cable channels.
I say bring it on, the FCC is engineering the destruction of their own moral authority.
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.
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!
Even if it means imposing the indecent "indecency regulations" on cable channels?
And what if it means the channels your family likes are no longer available at all, because they were only sustainable in package form?
... and then they built the supercollider.
Congress can also remove old stupid laws. Maybe if they spent odd numbered years getting rid of old laws, then the laws we keep might have a bit more dignity. Or maybe if they really paired down our "Code of Law" to under 5000 pages or so our judicial system wouldn't be such a "game" played by lawyers, and could actually return to being about justice. Wouldn't that be novel.
We are all just people.
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.
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.
the point is that cable companies are given special rights above and beyond normal companies, just try to start up darjen's cable service and string some copper from the telephone poles and see what happens.
since they are given special access to public property there is a legitimate public interest in regulating their buisiness practices beyond simply preventing dishonesty and criminal activity.
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
In fact, a line item veto was also included, Article I, Section VII, Paragraph 2 reads:
http://www.law.ou.edu/ushistory/csaconstitution/
IFC is owned by Rainbow Media Holdings, Inc. which is a conglomerate that also owns AMC among other things.
Sundance Channel is owned jointly by Showtime, Universal Studios, and Robert Redford.
A La Carte was a typo in the original bill. It was meant to read A La Cartel.
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