Supreme Court to Hear FCC Indecency Case

MachineShedFred writes "The Supreme Court of the United States has announced that it will be hearing the FCC's appeal to the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals' decision that the FCC has changed its policy on fleeting expletives without adequate explanation. It's now on the FCC to explain to the Supreme Court why its policy has changed. This is also the first time the Supreme Court has heard a major 'broadcast indecency' case in 30 years."

Comments

I think...

[Anonymous Coward]

I think I speak for us all when I say "About fucking time!"

Where does it stop?

[Ethanol-fueled]

How blatantly arbitrary and unfair. Why is the FCC flipping out over "fck" on the radio after this went unpunished!

On a related note( possibly straying offtopic) this was a big issue in L.A. and elsewhere across the US with Spanish-language radio stations that were getting away with their equivalent of uncensored Howard Stern. How will the FCC go after them? What about Korean radio curses? When does it end? Hopefully the FCC will be so swamped with complaints that they'll be unable to investigate them all, and then they'll quit being our mommy and focus their efforts towards the future of spectral management.

Need to replace the FCC

[Thaelon]

What we first need to do is change the FCC so that it's not headed by appointed officials, but rather by elected representatives.

The FCC's power has grown far beyond it's original intention (regulating airwaves frequencies in the U.S.). Apparently they only do things in response to complaints. Or at least that's how it once was. But the really fucked up thing is 99% of complaints come from one organization.

So essentially this one single organization is responsible for most of the - detrimental in my opinion - changes to what is allowed to be broadcast or not.

It's not the popular decision. People just think it is because this one fucked up organization has such broad powers and people just assume that it's the popular opinion. It is not.

The organization responsible for all this? The Parent's Television Council. The sick thing is they're proud to be the nation's most influential advocacy organization yet have barely a million members. That's right one million uptight fucks are responsible for 99.8-99.9% of all FCC regulation that affects 303 million people.

And the FCC allows it.

To other countries: The US is not up tight! Most of us love a good nipple on TV. It's this one organization that has been acting via the screwed up joke that is our FCC that has watered down our TV, not popular opinion.

Bad words

[tepples]

What I want to know is why are ANY words considered profane or obscene to begin with, as if no one was unconfortable with these words they would simply not be used for shock effect nor expression the way they are now. English swear words tend to fall into three conceptual categories that westerners treat as serious business for more-or-less understandable reasons.

• Intercourse (blowjob, cock, cooter, cum, cunt, dick, dong, fuck, jizz, pussy, screw). This brings VD and extra mouths to feed.
• Elimination of waste material from the body (ass, fart, peter, piss, shit, turd). These spread disease.
• Religion (damn, god, hell). Names referring to spirits considered good are said to cheapen the name; names referring to spirits considered evil are said to make them more powerful.

Restrictions apply much less strictly to words in Childish (e.g. call the stork, poop, wee, etc.) because children have to have some name for their own parts and functions. They also apply less strictly to words in Medicalese (e.g. feces, flatulence, intercourse, penis, urine, vagina) which symbolize intent to apply a serious tone to the discussion of serious business.