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

[cappp]

One of my biggest culture-shocks was waking up to UK morning TV and being confronted by a guy with his trousers around his ankles, his balls the subject of the morning discussion. It's covered in this BBC story but the long and short of it is that it was a testicular awareness drive in the model of previously successful breast cancer awareness programs.It was the kind of early morning suprise that lets you skip your morning coffee and, more importantly, was one of the first times I've felt like television actually treated me like a thinking adult. Actually learned a few things that morning too. There's something to be said for the value of broadcasters approaching nudity, the body, and all that with a degree of maturity - its certainly one of the first steps towards a cultural shift.

Re:Fucking backwards

[Creepy]

Yeah - I actually find America is backwater in some ways. Nobody gives a rats ass about nudity in Europe, and while people do binge drink, it is nowhere near the problem it is in America (or Russia, but Russia has cultural issues as well - it is considered rude to leave before the vodka bottle is finished, for instance).

Re:Fucking backwards

[budgenator]

If Gibson is a cock, then Cruise would be more like a penile sheath; Gibson can be crazy on his own, but Cruise seems to need a supporting crew of loonies.

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

[elrous0]

Yeah, but without the FCC, I might have to actually pay attention to what my kids are watching myself. Can't the FCC just screen the babysitter for me, while I take a nap?

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

[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

[networkBoy]

I was at the hospital ER a while back and it was the middle of the night. The waiting room had a mother with her two kids (one a baby, the other ~ 2) and me with my daughter. Our SOs were the ones there for treatment.
Her baby was hungry and she asked me if it was OK if she fed her child.
I told her I didn't see how it was my choice, but since she asked I was fine with it.

One of the nurses (WTF? shouldn't they be the most understanding?) came out from behind their counter and told her not to feed her child there and suggested the rest room. I kindly replied to the nurse that this woman and I were the only two in the waiting room, that I didn't mind at all, and how would she like her next meal to be served while she was on the can? I think she considered kicking me out then thought better of it and let the poor embarrassed woman be.

I mean, had they offered an exam room that might have been fine, I'd see it as the nurse offering up some privacy, rather than shunning this person. Later the mom thanked me, and I told her about all the fun my wife and I had along those same lines. It really bugs me. Thing is, this woman even had some nifty shawl thing that covers everything up (wish we had that when my kids were that young).
-nB

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

[geekoid]

Neither of which killed people in the name of atheism.

It's a false comparison.

People murder in the name of their god, still do. Billy Graham sponsered and creted 10,000 church along the 10th parallel.

Church where the parishioners will circle Muslim towns and kill every man, woman and child in the town.
Muslims are doing the same thing to Christian towns. This is happening right the fuck now.

In BOTH CASES it's because of their belief in God. The do it in the name of their God.

The belief in a power that takes them above the law of man. by it's very nature, means people will feel anything they do in their gods name is good and morally correct thing to do.

Belief in a higher power is bad, horrible and destructive. Whether the higher power is a God, or an unquestioning faith in the government.

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.

Re:Le sigh

[Nadaka]

You are right, it doesn't make much sense. Here is a part that does...

Imagine you are a major chemical company owned by an old money family with payed political lackeys at every level of government. Lets make up a name for them and call them Dupont.

Now imagine that you invent an amazing new product with tough weather resistant fibers that are suitable for use in any kind of rope. This is patented and you have the exclusive right to create this material. Lets make up a name for this and call it nylon.

There is a problem though, there is a cheap widespread naturally occurring fiber that is just as good as your artificial fiber. This means that breaking into the market will be virtually impossible. lets make up a name for this and call it hemp.

Fortunately there is already racially motivated and puritan dislike of the natural materials source. All you have to do is produce some propaganda to sway the opinions of moderates and maybe buy a few more votes and you can remove the competition completely.

This not only lets you move into the market, but to completely replace the market for durable weather resistant rope (because hemp was the only affordable alternative with those qualities).

Dupont is not solely responsible, but they sure as hell were instrumental in the final push that got it banned.

Re:Le sigh

[shaitand]

Everyone is forgetting the oil industry backing as well. You see people always think of oil in cars. What they forget is all the oil that goes into the production of plastics.

Plastics can be made from plant oils, unfortunately they aren't very strong. Ford demonstrated the solution in the body of an old automobile prototype. If you reinforce the plant plastics with the strong fibers from the hemp plant you have a dirt cheap and very strong versatile plastic... patent free.

That's the problem with the hemp plant it is extremely versatile and yes there is money to be made with it, but there are no patents. Why make lots of money on a product when any farmer can compete with a patch of dirt when you can outlaw the cheap and freely available competition and flood the market with patented solutions? Its the same reason the drug industry hates marijuana and continues to release minor modifications of their drugs with new names and fresh new patents.

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?

Forget the FCC

[DarkKnightRadick]

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

Re:Forget the FCC

[MickyTheIdiot]

We're living in the era of no responsibility in this country. At work everything is the fault of the corporation you're working for (convenient since a paper entity can't go to jail). At home it's the media's fault, the teacher's fault, the government's fault depending on the day of the week. No one is at fault for anything right now in the U.S.

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.)

Re:Forget the FCC

[DrgnDancer]

Did you really *see* Janet's nipple? Really? I was watching, I saw a sudden movement from Justin Timberlake, some clothing pull away, and what may or make not have been a flash of jewelry. The actual nipple was on screen for less than 3 seconds, on a pulled away shot, and covered in a very large piece of jewelry. So far as I remember it took an hour or more for there to be verification that there actually *was* a nipple in the shot, after someone isolated the 30-40 frames where it was visible and zoomed in on it.

So essentially you're saying that kids can be mentally damaged but a second or two of viewing something that may or may not from the actual visual evidence on screen have been partial nudity. Regardless, the network (who got fined for indecency) had nothing to do with the plan that Justin and Janet came up with to get themselves some publicity. So even the most stringent fining system in the world would not have prevented the occurrence, because the people who were fined were not the people who planned and executed the stunt (and Justin and Janet couldn't have ever been fined because they're under no obligation to the TV station or the public to act a certain way just because cameras happen to be on them. Their contract is with the NFL).

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.

Re:Hmmm

[BarryJacobsen]

What search engine are you using where anywhere in the top 10 pages of results for "Horses" are there horses mating with humans? Google with Safe Search disabled doesn't even have anything like that.

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.

I don't know anyone like that...

[MikeRT]

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).

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.