FCC Fights To Maintain Indecency Policy

GovTechGuy writes "The FCC filed Thursday to appeal a recent court decision that struck down its policy of fining broadcasters for profanity or nudity shown on live television. The FCC's brief argues the court ruling would make it almost impossible to punish broadcasters that show nudity or profanity during hours when children are likely to be watching or listening."

Comments

Fucking backwards

[Profane MuthaFucka]

Nobody wants to see a cock on their TV. But let me fucking blow up a baby. Americans fucking love that.

Re:Fucking backwards

[geekoid]

In my experience, it's a vocal minority that oppose nudity. When you look at events like the Janet Jackson wardrobe malfunction and it's the most replayed event ever on TiVo.

You can go on and on with examples. The amount of porn watched and read. No, most people don't care.

regarding this issue. I don't want to turn on Sponge Bob at 2pm and see Sandy with a strap on fucking Patrick up the Ass while Squidward cums on his face.

Re:Fucking backwards

[TheCarp]

I actually wonder if nudity being such a big deal isn't the primary cause of it being such a re-watched event.

This sort of stuff always reminds me the few weeks I spent lounging around French Beaches. Everyone would ask "did you go to the nude beaches". What "nude" beaches? You go to the city beach and women walk around topless, and men wear nearly transparent speedos.

After a few days though, I realized something. I looked over down the beach and I saw a family, 3 generations of women, toddler, mother, and grandmother, all topless on the beach.... and I realzied, they grew up with this, they have done this all their lives... it was ME who was the strange one for even taking notice!

Then of course I came home, and everyone asked about the "nude beaches" and all I could think was, they just need to go there for themselves and see.

-Steve

Le sigh

[Pojut]

I still can't believe that you can show autopsies, murder, drug deals, and all the horrible things shown on the news...but if you show a titty, you face a big fine. ::head shake::

It's freakin' stupid.

Re:Le sigh

[Pharmboy]

Keep in mind that many people thought it dirty to breast feed in public, and that a woman should do it in private, shamefully. And some still think that way and STILL lobby to make it illegal. We Americans are entirely too focused on nudity being "bad", which I chalk up to too many people who can't separate their religion and their politics.

This is the same reason pot is illegal, prostitution is illegal, gambling is illegal (unless the states is sponsoring it, then it is ok) in most parts of the US. Self righteous politicians and those who support them that want to tell others how to live and think.

Re:Le sigh

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Anybody who files an indecency complaint with the FCC should be required to swear, under penalty of perjury, that all of their children(if any) were delivered by C-section, exclusively bottle fed, and bathed and changed only in the dark.

If two seconds of Janet Jackson nipple leads to depravity, our vile custom of allowing mere innocent babies to freely gratify their sickening bodily desires on bare breasts must be the reason that we can't build prisons fast enough to contain the criminal element.

Re:Le sigh

[Pojut]

I'm saying that if you're willing to show people being killed, you should be willing to show people being fucked. Personally, I don't care what they do because we don't watch TV (we don't even have TV service...Netflix is all we need), but my own opinion is that sex is much less harmful to show than violence. Besides, look at most commercials and/or music videos...or reality shows...or just about everywhere else. Sex is EVERWHERE...it's just nudity that stays hidden. That's stupid.

Re:Le sigh

[Jason Levine]

It's not a matter of the milk being expelled from the woman's body. The breastfeeding issue is that some people think that breasts are solely sexual objects and a woman taking one out is being indecent. Nevermind if she's just taking a small portion of it out to feed her child, not to gain some sort of sexual satisfaction, and nevermind that the view of the part of her breast that is out is obscured by the feeding child. No, these people insist that women should remain covered up at all times and should feed their child in the bathroom. (Like any of them would consent to taking their food to a public restroom to eat it.)

People also sometimes claim "mental harm" for being "forced" to watch, but unless you've been chained up with your eyeballs propped open, you have the option of looking elsewhere. I've had women breastfeed in front of me and I tend to look the other way because it's a private moment between mother and child (even if it takes place in a public setting) and it is rude to stare. If I was talking to the woman, I would focus my eyes on her eyes and not on her feeding child.

Women should be able to feed their child wherever they want so long as stopping to nurse doesn't cause a public safety hazard, of course. (e.g. Not stopping in the middle of the highway to nurse her baby.)

Re:Le sigh

[fuzznutz]

The top three stories on this morning's local news show was:

• Man busted for child porn
• Massage parlors raided for prostitution
• Man arrested for "molesting" girls in park by tongue kissing them

I find it odd that most of the people in power came from the generation of "free love" and are so obsessed with preventing sex. In the mean time, I have more hardcore porn channels available on my cable PPV than there were porn theaters in the late seventies. WTF?

Re:Le sigh

[bhtooefr]

Pot is illegal because blacks and Mexicans smoked it, and hemp was threatening the cotton and (wood) paper industries.

Re:Le sigh

[Jedi Alec]

Nonsense. I despise religion as much as you do, but thinking that removing it will eleminate terrorism is a pipedream.

Terrorism is simply a form of warfare, and in situations where one is outnumbered by one's enemies on the scale of 1 to 10000 effectively the *only* form of warfare available.

So unless we run completely out of other excuses to bash one another's brains in...terrorism is here to stay.

Re:Le sigh

[drinkypoo]

No, it must be the fault of ordinary Americans, who are always wrong about EVERYTHING.

Some ordinary Americans, perhaps even the majority, don't care about what they can't see. This was a nation founded more or less on the principle of being able to beat your own dog and children, but we've come a long way since. But doing things to people and making information available are not remotely the same thing.

Drugs, prostitution, and gambling are all social ills with well-documented effects. Progressives campaigned tirelessly against them back in the 20s and 30s.

Yes, campaigned against them, when making them illegal makes them more harmful. Excellent logic, there.

Drugs, prostitution, and gambling are both symptoms and causes. Barring evolving out of them they will always likely all exist. The trick is to integrate them into society in a way that is least harmful, not to engage in futile attempts to eliminate them. Each of these things is also a matter of degree and even opinion. In (or near) the words of one female comic, if you're married, you're just a whore for a washer and dryer. Flip a coin to make a decision as to who will do or get something and you're a gambler. Sugar is a drug by every definition of the word. Caffeine and nicotine are powerful drugs which are readily available in nearly every society on the planet. Governments run lotteries.

Drugs, prostitution, and gambling are here to stay. We only have to decide how we will handle this fact.

Please don't make me draw the parallels to "decency", or I will do it in crayon for your sake.

Re:Le sigh

[Lumpy]

You are trying to convince a fanatical puritan that normal human behavior is good, and violence is bad. This goes against all they believe in.

Puritans love violence. History shows they used it at the drop of the hat against anyone that disagreed with them.

Sex and nudity is a good thing.

Re:Le sigh

[easterberry]

Don't be ridiculous. Pol Pot and Stalin were atheist and they were right cunts too. People do bad things because we're stupid animals, not because some people believe in deities.

Re:Le sigh

[easterberry]

Why can't you take a shit in public?

It's unhygenic and smells bad. Both are objectively legitimate reasons that have nothing to do with morality or values. Citation on the well documented effects of pot and marijuana? Because last I checked Amsterdam was doing alright.

Re:Le sigh

[dmgxmichael]

Well, to be honest, in a perfect world the connotations would be reversed - violence would be vulgar and sex would not be. If I can have only one I'd choose to have violence be seen as vulgar in the hopes there'd be less of it.

Re:Le sigh

[Applekid]

Easy. The hippie/me generations had kids, and they've memories vivid enough to remember the hedonistic excesses they were able to partake in under their parents' noses.

Can't have any of THAT, after all, due to a lovely combination of "precious-little-snowflake" and "think-of-the-children."

Re:Le sigh

[drinkypoo]

Pot is illegal because blacks and Mexicans smoked it, and hemp was threatening the cotton and (wood) paper industries.

You're close; that's why it was made illegal. It continues to be illegal because drug users are an easy group to demonize (in spite of the fact that nearly all of us are one) and therefore they can be milked for profit. If you want to profit from privatized prizons, you need to have someone to put into them. The mechanism of its continued illegality is partly marketing, and partly the disenfranchisement of felons; once you've received a felony drug conviction, you can no longer vote to legalize drugs.

Re:Le sigh

[computational super]

Well, I think that you're ugly, and I don't want to see your face. Put a bandana or a burqua over it or stay inside all the time or something. Have some respect for the rights of other people not to have to look at your face.

Re:Le sigh

[Abcd1234]

Both are bodily functions that involve the excretion of fluids.

Yeah, so's spitting, but any idiot knows that comparing spitting to shitting in public is, well, idiotic.

Or, to put it another way: If there's anything shitty around here, it's your penchant for false equivalences.

FTS:

[absurdist]

"The FCC's brief argues the court ruling would make it almost impossible to punish broadcasters that show nudity or profanity during hours when children are likely to be watching or listening."

And this is bad how?

Re:FTS:

[paeanblack]

"The FCC's brief argues the court ruling would make it almost impossible to punish broadcasters that show nudity or profanity during hours when children are likely to be watching or listening."

It returns them to arbitrating the technical aspects of spectrum licensing instead of being an unregulated police agency. They are accustomed to being the gatekeepers of content distribution in American society. Losing that kind of power really undercuts a fiefdom...can't blame them for sulking about it.

Re:FTS:

[gorzek]

I thought the whole purpose of the V-chip and the TV-[X] ratings was so that content didn't have to be restricted. Parents could just set their TVs to not show anything above, say, TV-PG. And yet we still have this insane push to censor broadcast TV.

Only in America can a show about investigating grisly murders run for 20 years but a couple seconds of titty is worth millions in fines.

(But I love Law & Order.)

Re:FTS:

[Conspiracy_Of_Doves]

You expect parents to exert effort and initiative and use any kind of their own judgment in raising their children? That is unAmerican!

In this country, parenting means just being present until your children reach an arbitrary chronological age in a completely sterilized society.

Forget the FCC

[DarkKnightRadick]

Whatever happened to parents being ultimately responsible for what their children are watching?

Re:Forget the FCC

[orthancstone]

Most people like to proclaim they are responsible right up until the point that you try to hold them accountable for their actions. Then it suddenly becomes someone else's fault.

Re:Forget the FCC

[Jason Levine]

And the correct response, if you happened to think that was so awful, was to have a talk with your children about how Janet's exposed nipple was wrong and what she should have done instead. If you want to pass your values to your kids (as is your right), talk with them when "wrong" situations come up. Most kids would have listened to their parents and learned not to flash their body parts in public. (Yes, we've had to have this talk with our son about other body parts and, yes, he listened to us.)

Great news everyone....

[NiteShaed]

The FCC's brief argues the court ruling would make it almost impossible to punish broadcasters that show nudity or profanity during hours when children are likely to be watching or listening."

Good. The FCC has no business regulating the content of what gets broadcast, only the means of broadcasting it, ie: making sure everyone stays in their licensed frequencies and doesn't stomp on each others transmissions.
We're now living in a time where it's trivially easy to block potentially offensive channels, or restrict their use with a code to keep them out of children's reach if their parents don't want them watching. If you don't like that channel X broadcasts unedited showings of "Porkey's", don't watch channel X. You, as a viewer, have no right to expect a government agency to protect you from being offended, and the government has no right to prevent a broadcaster from showing what they choose, or me from watching it if I like.

Re:Hey FCC, the cold war is over

[MickyTheIdiot]

You've hit on one of the primary contradictions in thinking in the U.S. of today. Most people are for the free market making decisions... that is until it makes a decision they don't like for some reason. Then they go to the government to "protect their interests" or to protect themselves through legislation. So many of the stories on Slashdot, especially the governmental and corporate stories, come down to that... a corporation or other group of people who were so gung-ho about the free market when things were going THEIR way now want governmental protection now that the market has changed. See also: FCC. See also: RIAA. See also: MPAA.

Re:Hmmm

[MickyTheIdiot]

There are plenty of ways in the U.S. for a parent to decide what they want their kid to see without taking choices away from me as an adult. Again... it takes effort. Every device out there has parental controls... the finest grain parental controls we ever have had... so use them. And if you don't want your kid to see certain things then it's YOUR responsibility to keep him/her off of my computer that has parental controls turned off, not the other way around.

No harm

[airfoobar]

What's wrong with kids seeing the odd tit on TV? It's just a part of the human body, and let's not forget we all came out of a vagina. All this bitching probably comes from a bunch of super-religious nuts who are trying to make people feel bad about their bodies, so they can keep telling them god will save them.

America...

[Conspiracy_Of_Doves]

There is no country that is more simultaneously obsessed with and embarrassed by sex than the United States.

America seriously needs to grow the fuck up.

Re:I don't know anyone like that...

[Omestes]

Of course, war is different for children, especially boys. There is a big difference between seeing soldiers fight one another and seeing senseless crime and atrocities. You can claim there isn't, but that doesn't make it so, and for millennia, civilizations have understood the difference between glorifying the warrior ethos and senseless violence. The former, is not inherently harmful to children, and is actually good for a society that wants its boys to grow up to be **men** and not overgrown boys who act like pansies in the face of a violent world.

**checks pants**

Last I checked, I am a man, and I find mindless nationalism and international chest-bumping to be completely, and totally, irrational and idiotic. Especially nationalism, nationalism is one of the dumbest social constructs we can train our children to uphold (outside of, maybe, various flavors of extreme religious dogma). Training our young men to go kill other young men because their flag is different, and they might speak a different language, is stupid, not "manly". As history shows, having a glut of young men glorifying war leads to war. If all you have is a war hammer, everything starts looking like a war nail, etc... I, personally, would rather we have a glut of young men (and women) glorifying something interesting, like reason.

I read your comment in the voice of R. Lee Ermey, by the way, it didn't help make your point.

War should be seen as a terrible necessity of last resort, not as some glorious brojuajua. We like war too much, in my opinion, hence our two largely unjustified and wasteful (both in money and human life) wars of the moment. How much glory is there in Iraq or Afghanistan? Everyone I know who has been involved in either didn't find it very glorious. Same with all the Vietnam and WWII veterans I know. My grandfather was one of the first US troops to hit Auschwitz, and he never talked about it, ever. I very much doubt he found any glory in that experience. Or at least he found as much glory in war as all of the hordes of suicidal and PTSD suffering current "glorious warriors".

Most war is nothing but senseless violence. America hasn't been in a justifiable war since WWII, the rest has been nothing but moronic slaughter for political ends. How glorious! How manly! How idiotic. Being there is no glory in being a disposable tool for your government.