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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."
Nobody wants to see a cock on their TV. But let me fucking blow up a baby. Americans fucking love that.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
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.
Living With a Nerd
"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?
Whatever happened to parents being ultimately responsible for what their children are watching?
"There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death." Proverbs 16:25 (NKJV)
I think there do need to be standards for what's shown at least on broadcast TV but I think the pants-wetting hysteria from the Family Research Council and their ilk isn't the answer.
These airwaves are for the public use. Want to drop the f-/n-/q-bomb? Start up your own pay channel and go nuts.
their minds are scarred and they are ruined for life, they enter a death spiral of drug use and prostitution. all it takes is one glance of a boob, and the fate of your child's life will change on the spot to one of apathy, laziness, fatalism, and moribund lack of emotional affect
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
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.
Some bring out the best in others, some the worst. Some bring out far more.
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.
Well, if people didn't have sex, we wouldn't have had the current crop of corrupt bankers and politicians, now, would we?
You gotta remember that the pilgrims didn't come to the US to "practice religious freedom". They got kicked out of Europe for being too puritanical. From the beginning the US has been at war with sex and "indecency".
It amazed me that you could show the most awful slasher flick and at most get an R rating but typically get a PG-13. But if you so much as showed a few seconds of a tit that was R for sure. And male frontal nudity was an X.
As a father I like the idea of being able to leave my kids at a computer or TV without having to continually monitor their activities. Here in the UK we have the BBC and thus their two fantastic advert, nudity, profanity free childrens channels. And on the home computers I've stuck K9, which seems to do a pretty good job without spoiling their use of the computer. Recently they went to a relatives house and log onto their PC. The eldest searched for "horses", as this is something she is interested in, and got links to, amongst what you would expect, "horses mating with humans". There must be a balance, of course, but I do not feel that I can let broadcasters, in the loosest definition, decide what is and what is not suitable for my children. I do not want them to grow up thinking profanity, nudity, violence or whatever is normal behaviour. Similarly, I do not want them subject to some of the adverts that appear on some childrens channels (e.g. give money to help save some poor kid's life... I feel there're more appropriate ways of teaching kids about these issues). So we need something in place, whether that is common sense or an impartial body. Unfortunately I don't think common sense is an abundant commodity and so the US would probably benefit from keeping the FCC's indecency policy in place. There's no K9 for live TV, alas.
It always surprises me how stupid American law has gotten.
Restaurants put "hot coffee" on cups for fear of being sued.
People get worse sentences for stealing a song then if they would steal a whole business' inventory + more..
God forbid a vagina or penis shows up on tv and it becomes a crazy national topic for a month.
The fcc would love that kind of attention and be there to feed the parents with "we're doing it for the children" and also burp them afterwards...
These kids will probably know more about sex then the collective minds of the fcc. The kids don't need censorship, the fcc needs censorship.
- Yours truly, guy who thinks fcc needs to censor their own penises first before moving onto bigger fish.
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.
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.
Technoli
and I know a lot of social conservatives who aren't happy with nudity and profanity on TV and radio when kids are awake. In fact, based on the ones I know, I'd say they'd far rather their child see some boobies than another child or a family get blown up.
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. The US has lost sight of the value of that since unlike the rest of the modern world, no country has tried to invade us in almost 200 years come ~2013 (when the British invaded the US in the War of 1812).
The government has no business restricting speech, even if it weren't written into our consitution. To all those who cry "think of the children", let's just list a few glaring problems with that argument, any one of which would invalidate it:
I recently watched the "Penn & Teller: Bullshit!" episode on sex/virginity and it's really obvious but needs to be restated: ABSTINENCE-ONLY EDUCATION DOESN'T FUCKING WORK. Get a clue and get a grip: sex is not bad, and people (including children) should not be punished for being curious or having sexual impulses. Factual, scientific, rational education is the answer.
Nathan's blog
I don't have a problem with nudity or profanity. I'd argue nudity and profanity is much less harmful than glorified violence. On the other hand, American culture suffers from this odd dichotomy of prudishness taking things way too far. A lot of people seem incapable of anything other than shocking and offensive entertainment. Americans seem to be the source of some of the most depraved content in the world when it comes to mainstream entertainment. It's like Americans have this desperate, immature need to prove they're "adults" by enjoying excessively violent, shocking and offensive and overly sexualized entertainment. It's like writers, directors and producers are comprised of wannabee iconoclasts. I'm not saying I can't enjoy this sort of thing, but simply that I don't need to be bombarded with it constantly. It's nice to experience entertainment with a bit more maturity.
For parents with children, like myself, the solution is simple: don't let them watch television or don't let them watch broadcast television. That way you're in total control of what they're watching. And better yet, they're not being bombarded with constant advertising, which I think is a far larger problem for society compared to any tv show which can easily be dismissed as fantasy. It's not like there's much of substance on television anyway. Kids should be occupying their time with other activities anyway. The last thing we need is to perpetuate this dependency on television for entertainment.