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Senate Committee Passes FCC Indecency Bill

An anonymous reader writes "US Senate Commerce Committee today passed a bill that would allow the FCC to fine broadcasters for slip of the tongue expletives, negating a ruling by federal appeals court in New York that commission's policy on 'fleeting expletives' is arbitrary and capricious. 'A mandate by Congress that a "fleeting expletive" can now be found indecent will create a vast chilling effect on broadcast speech, the advocacy group Center for Democracy and Technology claims. CDT points out that prior to this bill and the FCC's policy change, the FCC exercised discretion in determining which utterances were indecent, and consistently found that one-time uses of curse words were not indecent.'"

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  1. Re:The evil CDT by CaptJay · · Score: 5, Interesting

    In a funny twist of english influence over french-speakers in Quebec, we imported 'fuck' into our day-to-day speech.

    We use 'fuck' extremely casually: 'ah fuck!' is often used when a native english speaker would say "Ah, geez!", and 'fuck it!' is used just as casually...

    Just wanted to add another example to your argument that the actual word has nothing to do with it, rather it's the way people are used to hearing/saying it in their culture.

    --
    "I remember Y1K, every abacus had to get another bead"