I hold to one simple fact demonstrated by recorded statistics.
I don't know ANYONE with Polio. My parents knew lots of kids with it. I don't know ANYONE who died from small pox. - One of the truly great moments in our history - Totally eradicated apart from 2 samples on ice. I don't need to worry my kids will go deaf or blind from measles.
Look at the numbers, the people saved dwarf the numbers of cases of suspected injury.
I think that this is the vaccine's greatest triumph and also it's vulnerability. We *don't* know anyone who had Polio. Thus, we never witnessed first-hand the horrors that Polio brought to society. Were we more ignorant of the science involved, we might be taken in by claims of potential harms that vaccines might cause. Then, in our own mentals risk assessment, we'd downplay the benefits of Polio vaccination (after all, it wasn't *that bad*, right?) and up-play the "risks" (Dr. Quackenstein says vaccines cause spontaneous zombie-ism).
Like Penn said, even if vaccines caused autism, which they *DON'T*, but even if they did, which they *DON'T*, the number of people whose lives have been saved (and will be saved in the future) by continuing to vaccinate dwarfs any harm that they might cause.
Let's scale back the file sharing community and focus on one uploader and a hundred downloaders. (We'll also, for the moment, ignore that, with BitTorrent, downloaders can also be uploaders.) Now, the uploader rips a new CD release and uploads it. The downloaders swarm to the torrent, downloading copies of it from the uploader. Unfortunately, for all involved, the RIAA has been watching.
Does the RIAA:
1) File a lawsuit against the uploader? They will need to deal with one ISP to get the uploader's name. The damages, even if a mere $1,000 per offense, could easily reach a hundred thousand dollars or more. (Each person who downloaded from him is "an offense.") Plus, taking him out might keep other uploaders from uploading and quell file sharing.
2) File a hundred suits against the hundred downloaders? The RIAA will first need to get the ISP records of the uploader. (This means they need to do #1 anyway.) Then, they will need to find out everyone who downloaded files from him, which files were the ones they own the copyright on, and then sue those John Does. This is going to be resource intensive. Damages in this case might be limited to a mere $750 per person which isn't going to be a deterrent. (It would be hard to prove $150,000 damage from a single downloaded movie. Remember, we're assuming these people didn't share it right back out as they aren't uploaders.)
Now, scale this back up. The RIAA can choose to sue a thousand uploaders or tens of thousands (perhaps hundreds of thousands) of downloaders. Even they couldn't file and manage that many lawsuits. Even if they tried, judges might tire of their courtrooms being clogged up by the RIAA and start dismissing cases to clear their dockets for more important cases. So, while downloading without permission is illegal, it is highly unlikely to get you sued.
Especially when the original artist has passed away. Unless.... longer copyright terms will eventually bring artists back from the dead as zombies and they will create fabulous new works (while munching on tasty braaaaaaiiiiiins). Sweet Zombie Elvis!
And, to add to this example, an unscrupulous company (with little to no government oversight) could make things extremely hard on the startup company. They could sign lucrative contracts with suppliers with clauses that prevented these suppliers from doing business with the startup. They could contact companies that might possibly buy the startup's end product and undercut the startup. They might even take a huge financial hit on this, but they wouldn't care. The large, unscrupulous company would survive the temporary downturn and the startup would fizzle out. If this didn't work, the large company could simply buy out the startup and away it would go.
Heck, if they were evil enough and had no government enforcing rules, they could hire some guys under the table to make sure some "accidents" happened at the startup. Oh, look at that. A fire raged through your main plant crippling all of your operations and you may have to go out of business. What a shame. Tell you what. We're a nice company. We'll buy you out for half of the company's pre-fire market price.
My son's school has a system where the kids say their name and the cost of the lunch is written down. We send our son in with lunch every day and he eats breakfast at home every morning. Yet, last year, the school sent us a bill for the "meals" our son purchased from the school. (Adding to the oddity, it didn't even add up to a proper amount given how much a lunch costs. He would have had to have ordered a partial lunch which doesn't exist.) So, while I wouldn't want my school tracking just what my child is eating, I would also like to prevent us from being charged for meals my son never ordered nor ate. (And, on the off chance that my son was trying to order meals when we sent him in with food, I'd like to be notified of these attempts sometime before the end of the school year.)
You do realize that Google Doodles are a tradition at Google dating back to 2000? They archive all of the doodles here: http://www.google.com/logos/
If you are instead talking about Google's upcoming Realtime Search, then I don't think this falls under a "private play pen" item but an attempt to make a new search tool that people might find useful. If Google stops innovating and rests on their laurels, they risk another company overtaking them. Sure, not everything they do might succeed or be useful to the vast majority of people, but they try many different things and many of those things wind up working out.
I know that many people consider any publicity to be good publicity, but if I was a potential customer of Ryanair and had read recent articles about their plans, I'd come to the conclusion that they are willing to do things that are extremely hazardous to their passengers just to save a few bucks. This would scare me away as a customer. If I were a stockholder, I'd be concerned that the CEO is hurting the public image of the airline. It's one thing to be perceived as cheap. It's another to be perceived as dangerously unsafe.
Same for the movie, book and software industries. Avatar made 1 billion in about a month. Does it need 120 years?
I agree. I'd love to see a study done (a real study, not backed by the RIAA/MPAA) that examines a random grouping of copyrighted works (e.g. books, movies, music) and tracks how much money they make each year. I'm guessing that most works make over 50% of their money in the first 5 years and 90-95% of their money after the first decade. After that, for the vast majority of works, it's likely a slow trickle of money coming in here and there. Some works, I'm sure, have resurgences, get rediscovered or have sequels which cause sales of the original to swell, but for the most part, the original copyright span of 14 years would give the public back their public domain while not costing companies much money at all. (If anything, they'd make more money as they would be able to publish derivative works and mash-ups a lot sooner.)
I see a new way of movie studios deciding on film budgets.
Executive #1: "Next up is Marmaduke 2. They've requested a budget of $575 million." Executive #2: "$575 million? For what?" Executive #1: "Well, it's going to have incredible CGI backgrounds and every thirty seconds, Marmaduke will start dancing in 3D." Executive #3: "Sounds fantastic. Green light it! How are we paying for it, by the way." Executive #1: "Well, we figure that the box office will provide enough money to cover catering, but most will be made by suing a hundred thousand or so file sharers." Executive #3: "Better make it a hundred and fifty thousand. We still need to recoup some money from Alvin and the Chipmunks 9: The Chipmunks Visit and Old Folk's Home. That tanked at the box office." Executive #2: "Rotten Internet pirates. They keep hurting all of our great movies!"
Back when I worked for a popular magazine, we were all called in for an impromtu meeting (never a good sign). Marketing told us how great of a product we had, what a wonderful staff we were and what excellent writing we were doing. Then they said that they had no clue how to sell our magazine so it was being discontinued and most of the magazine staff was fired. (Marketing was safe because they were in the parent company.)
Somehow, after that experience, I'm never surprised when some marketing guy says "This was a tremendous failure despite being such a great product... Must be the fault of someone other than marketing."
Ok, I don't like the Duggers at all, but I think these criticisms are either misguided or don't warrent throwing the parents in jail.
There's no way that the parents can pay adequate attention to each child.
It's true that parents with multiple kids need to split their attention between them. I can't, for example, pay attention solely to my oldest child or I'll wind up paying no attention to my youngest. And, while I personally think that 19 kids would be too many for my wife and I to handle, I don't want the government stepping in and telling me "We've made a law that says people can only have X amount of kids and you just went over the limit so we're taking your kids away from you."
They educate each other (public school is evil etc),
It's called home schooling. A lot of parents do it and their kids turn out fine. (For the record, my kids go to public school.)
take care of each other,
I've known people with large families and that's the only way you can get by. With one kid the parents might be able to do everything while the kid just sits around playing. With two, you might get by with this too. But with 19 kids? Plus, what happens if a parent is sick? Do you really think the kids shouldn't have any household responsibilities? My kids are still young (oldest is 7) but as they get older, I plan on having them take care of things around the house. (In fact, now that he's turned 7, my oldest might start taking on some light household chores.)
and fend for themselves most of the time.
Is it "the parents go out and party leaving the kids by themselves" or is it "one parent is doing laundry, the other is working and the oldest, teenaged kids are watching the younger kids"? Both situations might be called "fending for themselves most of the time" but one is neglect while the other is simply running the household as best they can.
Unless you can prove specific child abuse happening (e.g. refusing to feed the kids, beating them, etc) I definitely wouldn't want the government stepping in to take the kids away from the parents. And I wouldn't want to see forced sterilization or anything along those lines either (ala China). Again, I don't support the Duggar's quest to see how many kids she can have before her uterus runs off to Bermuda, but I don't think government intervention is needed either.
Wait, they sold you the rights to Unix? They sold me the rights! I probably should have been suspicious when they handed me a photocopied piece of paper that read "The Rights To Unix."
They offer their business plan, you can take it or go to the competitors.
Sounds good to me. If Time Warner does something I don't like I can go to.... hmmm.... FIOS isn't in my area yet. I suppose I *could* go to DSL but Verizon doesn't seem to be supporting that as well as they used to. And what if Verizon does something I don't like? No other company in my area offers high speed Internet.
The problem with the "go to the competitors" argument is that most people in the US have a choice of two or less companies from which to get broadband. You can't rely on the threat of competition with two or less companies.
Hey my two kids were breastfed and they're just fi..... Wait a second. They're both addicted to Dihydrogen Monoxide! They clamor for it every day, sometimes more than once! Oh my god, what have we done!!!!! *collapses to the ground in uncontrollable sobbing*
Copyright still serves a purpose in our society. Let's say I produce a great book, something along the lines of the next Harry Potter. Should a movie studio be able to just take my book and make it into a movie without my permission? Of course not. I should be able to sell the movie rights to whichever studio I wish (or no studio at all).
Of course, the lengths that copyright lasts for these days are ridiculous also. It's very unlikely that my hypothetical "hot new book" will be making me anything but the occassional pocket change 40 years from now. And, even if it somehow manages to make me money, is the fact that my book was in the tiny minority reason to keep all of the non-profit-generating books out of the public domain?
Remember, the copyright deal is that authors get a temporary monopoly of control on their work in order to attempt to make money on it. This gives them the incentive to produce the works. In exchange, the author reliquishes control after a certain period of time and the public gets to decide what they do with it.
I'd like to see copyright revert back to the original 14 years + 14 years of the founding fathers' time. (14 years plus a one time 14 year extension.) If your work was still making money after 14 years, you could renew for another 14 years. If not, or once that second 14 year period passed, the work would be in the public domain. (Renewal gets past any abandonware issues.) How many works from 1982 are still making their creators significant amounts of money?
What kid's channels are your kids watching? Some don't even have commercials and the ones that do advertise kids toys. The worst you'll get is your kids clamoring for Bakugon toys or McDonald's chicken nuggets. They won't be telling you that the commercial showed Swiper stealing Dora's pants or anything!
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.)
I'd also add that the level of sex/violence that is acceptable varies from household to household. I might let my seven year old watch Batman The Brave and The Bold while Batman is punching out bad guys. Someone else might think that's too violent and restrict them to shows like "Super Why" on PBS. Both approaches are perfectly acceptable, but there's no way the government can accomadate both of these, plus the millions of other permutations in between and to the extremes. Better for the parents to watch with the kids and make their own decisions.
I tend to take one of two approaches with new shows.
1) I'll watch the new show with them and will turn it off if something I don't care for happens. Then, I'll have a talk with them about why that was wrong and what the character should have done.
2) I'll DVR the show and watch it before they do so as to pre-screen the show for inappropriate content.
Practically, I've rarely had to turn off a show since they tend to self-limit what channels they watch to just the kids channels and they're young enough to not want to watch stuff with too much sex/violence/etc. Still, parents could use those 2 rules and we wouldn't need as much government involvement in what's on TV.
The problem isn't so much the FCC or what's on TV. It's the Parents Television Council. They've appointed themselves the judge and jury of all things TV and will get their members to complain en masse about shows that offend their delicate sensibilities (such as nudity, cursing, homosexuality, etc).... even if they've never seen the show in question. They've even complained about a Spongebob Squarepants episode for cursing when the "cursing" was a dolphin noise (unrecognizable as a real curse word) and the main characters in the end learned not to curse. But the lesson and lack of real cursing didn't matter. They heard "cursing" and "Spongebob" and so were off to complain!
My wife and I need to report ourselves for indecency. Not only did my wife breastfeed our two sons, but the older son has seen the younger son breastfeed. Who knows what damage his (then) five year old mind sustained by seeing his mother feeding his (then) infant brother!
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.)
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I think that this is the vaccine's greatest triumph and also it's vulnerability. We *don't* know anyone who had Polio. Thus, we never witnessed first-hand the horrors that Polio brought to society. Were we more ignorant of the science involved, we might be taken in by claims of potential harms that vaccines might cause. Then, in our own mentals risk assessment, we'd downplay the benefits of Polio vaccination (after all, it wasn't *that bad*, right?) and up-play the "risks" (Dr. Quackenstein says vaccines cause spontaneous zombie-ism).
Like Penn said, even if vaccines caused autism, which they *DON'T*, but even if they did, which they *DON'T*, the number of people whose lives have been saved (and will be saved in the future) by continuing to vaccinate dwarfs any harm that they might cause.
Let's scale back the file sharing community and focus on one uploader and a hundred downloaders. (We'll also, for the moment, ignore that, with BitTorrent, downloaders can also be uploaders.) Now, the uploader rips a new CD release and uploads it. The downloaders swarm to the torrent, downloading copies of it from the uploader. Unfortunately, for all involved, the RIAA has been watching.
Does the RIAA:
1) File a lawsuit against the uploader? They will need to deal with one ISP to get the uploader's name. The damages, even if a mere $1,000 per offense, could easily reach a hundred thousand dollars or more. (Each person who downloaded from him is "an offense.") Plus, taking him out might keep other uploaders from uploading and quell file sharing.
2) File a hundred suits against the hundred downloaders? The RIAA will first need to get the ISP records of the uploader. (This means they need to do #1 anyway.) Then, they will need to find out everyone who downloaded files from him, which files were the ones they own the copyright on, and then sue those John Does. This is going to be resource intensive. Damages in this case might be limited to a mere $750 per person which isn't going to be a deterrent. (It would be hard to prove $150,000 damage from a single downloaded movie. Remember, we're assuming these people didn't share it right back out as they aren't uploaders.)
Now, scale this back up. The RIAA can choose to sue a thousand uploaders or tens of thousands (perhaps hundreds of thousands) of downloaders. Even they couldn't file and manage that many lawsuits. Even if they tried, judges might tire of their courtrooms being clogged up by the RIAA and start dismissing cases to clear their dockets for more important cases. So, while downloading without permission is illegal, it is highly unlikely to get you sued.
Especially when the original artist has passed away. Unless.... longer copyright terms will eventually bring artists back from the dead as zombies and they will create fabulous new works (while munching on tasty braaaaaaiiiiiins). Sweet Zombie Elvis!
And, to add to this example, an unscrupulous company (with little to no government oversight) could make things extremely hard on the startup company. They could sign lucrative contracts with suppliers with clauses that prevented these suppliers from doing business with the startup. They could contact companies that might possibly buy the startup's end product and undercut the startup. They might even take a huge financial hit on this, but they wouldn't care. The large, unscrupulous company would survive the temporary downturn and the startup would fizzle out. If this didn't work, the large company could simply buy out the startup and away it would go.
Heck, if they were evil enough and had no government enforcing rules, they could hire some guys under the table to make sure some "accidents" happened at the startup. Oh, look at that. A fire raged through your main plant crippling all of your operations and you may have to go out of business. What a shame. Tell you what. We're a nice company. We'll buy you out for half of the company's pre-fire market price.
My son's school has a system where the kids say their name and the cost of the lunch is written down. We send our son in with lunch every day and he eats breakfast at home every morning. Yet, last year, the school sent us a bill for the "meals" our son purchased from the school. (Adding to the oddity, it didn't even add up to a proper amount given how much a lunch costs. He would have had to have ordered a partial lunch which doesn't exist.) So, while I wouldn't want my school tracking just what my child is eating, I would also like to prevent us from being charged for meals my son never ordered nor ate. (And, on the off chance that my son was trying to order meals when we sent him in with food, I'd like to be notified of these attempts sometime before the end of the school year.)
You do realize that Google Doodles are a tradition at Google dating back to 2000? They archive all of the doodles here: http://www.google.com/logos/
If you are instead talking about Google's upcoming Realtime Search, then I don't think this falls under a "private play pen" item but an attempt to make a new search tool that people might find useful. If Google stops innovating and rests on their laurels, they risk another company overtaking them. Sure, not everything they do might succeed or be useful to the vast majority of people, but they try many different things and many of those things wind up working out.
I know that many people consider any publicity to be good publicity, but if I was a potential customer of Ryanair and had read recent articles about their plans, I'd come to the conclusion that they are willing to do things that are extremely hazardous to their passengers just to save a few bucks. This would scare me away as a customer. If I were a stockholder, I'd be concerned that the CEO is hurting the public image of the airline. It's one thing to be perceived as cheap. It's another to be perceived as dangerously unsafe.
I agree. I'd love to see a study done (a real study, not backed by the RIAA/MPAA) that examines a random grouping of copyrighted works (e.g. books, movies, music) and tracks how much money they make each year. I'm guessing that most works make over 50% of their money in the first 5 years and 90-95% of their money after the first decade. After that, for the vast majority of works, it's likely a slow trickle of money coming in here and there. Some works, I'm sure, have resurgences, get rediscovered or have sequels which cause sales of the original to swell, but for the most part, the original copyright span of 14 years would give the public back their public domain while not costing companies much money at all. (If anything, they'd make more money as they would be able to publish derivative works and mash-ups a lot sooner.)
I see a new way of movie studios deciding on film budgets.
Executive #1: "Next up is Marmaduke 2. They've requested a budget of $575 million."
Executive #2: "$575 million? For what?"
Executive #1: "Well, it's going to have incredible CGI backgrounds and every thirty seconds, Marmaduke will start dancing in 3D."
Executive #3: "Sounds fantastic. Green light it! How are we paying for it, by the way."
Executive #1: "Well, we figure that the box office will provide enough money to cover catering, but most will be made by suing a hundred thousand or so file sharers."
Executive #3: "Better make it a hundred and fifty thousand. We still need to recoup some money from Alvin and the Chipmunks 9: The Chipmunks Visit and Old Folk's Home. That tanked at the box office."
Executive #2: "Rotten Internet pirates. They keep hurting all of our great movies!"
Back when I worked for a popular magazine, we were all called in for an impromtu meeting (never a good sign). Marketing told us how great of a product we had, what a wonderful staff we were and what excellent writing we were doing. Then they said that they had no clue how to sell our magazine so it was being discontinued and most of the magazine staff was fired. (Marketing was safe because they were in the parent company.)
Somehow, after that experience, I'm never surprised when some marketing guy says "This was a tremendous failure despite being such a great product... Must be the fault of someone other than marketing."
Ok, I don't like the Duggers at all, but I think these criticisms are either misguided or don't warrent throwing the parents in jail.
There's no way that the parents can pay adequate attention to each child.
It's true that parents with multiple kids need to split their attention between them. I can't, for example, pay attention solely to my oldest child or I'll wind up paying no attention to my youngest. And, while I personally think that 19 kids would be too many for my wife and I to handle, I don't want the government stepping in and telling me "We've made a law that says people can only have X amount of kids and you just went over the limit so we're taking your kids away from you."
They educate each other (public school is evil etc),
It's called home schooling. A lot of parents do it and their kids turn out fine. (For the record, my kids go to public school.)
take care of each other,
I've known people with large families and that's the only way you can get by. With one kid the parents might be able to do everything while the kid just sits around playing. With two, you might get by with this too. But with 19 kids? Plus, what happens if a parent is sick? Do you really think the kids shouldn't have any household responsibilities? My kids are still young (oldest is 7) but as they get older, I plan on having them take care of things around the house. (In fact, now that he's turned 7, my oldest might start taking on some light household chores.)
and fend for themselves most of the time.
Is it "the parents go out and party leaving the kids by themselves" or is it "one parent is doing laundry, the other is working and the oldest, teenaged kids are watching the younger kids"? Both situations might be called "fending for themselves most of the time" but one is neglect while the other is simply running the household as best they can.
Unless you can prove specific child abuse happening (e.g. refusing to feed the kids, beating them, etc) I definitely wouldn't want the government stepping in to take the kids away from the parents. And I wouldn't want to see forced sterilization or anything along those lines either (ala China). Again, I don't support the Duggar's quest to see how many kids she can have before her uterus runs off to Bermuda, but I don't think government intervention is needed either.
Wait, they sold you the rights to Unix? They sold me the rights! I probably should have been suspicious when they handed me a photocopied piece of paper that read "The Rights To Unix."
I loved that show. As I recall, the box was destroyed which sent the room into a panic seeing as they just destroyed the entire Internet.
Found a video of it online: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QAUyaELfwBo&feature=related
Yes, I'm the same Jason Levine as on DSLReports.
Sounds good to me. If Time Warner does something I don't like I can go to.... hmmm.... FIOS isn't in my area yet. I suppose I *could* go to DSL but Verizon doesn't seem to be supporting that as well as they used to. And what if Verizon does something I don't like? No other company in my area offers high speed Internet.
The problem with the "go to the competitors" argument is that most people in the US have a choice of two or less companies from which to get broadband. You can't rely on the threat of competition with two or less companies.
Can it have 2 sides? On one side I can calmly be exclaiming how great Heaven is. On the other side, however........
Hey my two kids were breastfed and they're just fi..... Wait a second. They're both addicted to Dihydrogen Monoxide! They clamor for it every day, sometimes more than once! Oh my god, what have we done!!!!! *collapses to the ground in uncontrollable sobbing*
Copyright still serves a purpose in our society. Let's say I produce a great book, something along the lines of the next Harry Potter. Should a movie studio be able to just take my book and make it into a movie without my permission? Of course not. I should be able to sell the movie rights to whichever studio I wish (or no studio at all).
Of course, the lengths that copyright lasts for these days are ridiculous also. It's very unlikely that my hypothetical "hot new book" will be making me anything but the occassional pocket change 40 years from now. And, even if it somehow manages to make me money, is the fact that my book was in the tiny minority reason to keep all of the non-profit-generating books out of the public domain?
Remember, the copyright deal is that authors get a temporary monopoly of control on their work in order to attempt to make money on it. This gives them the incentive to produce the works. In exchange, the author reliquishes control after a certain period of time and the public gets to decide what they do with it.
I'd like to see copyright revert back to the original 14 years + 14 years of the founding fathers' time. (14 years plus a one time 14 year extension.) If your work was still making money after 14 years, you could renew for another 14 years. If not, or once that second 14 year period passed, the work would be in the public domain. (Renewal gets past any abandonware issues.) How many works from 1982 are still making their creators significant amounts of money?
What kid's channels are your kids watching? Some don't even have commercials and the ones that do advertise kids toys. The worst you'll get is your kids clamoring for Bakugon toys or McDonald's chicken nuggets. They won't be telling you that the commercial showed Swiper stealing Dora's pants or anything!
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.)
I'd also add that the level of sex/violence that is acceptable varies from household to household. I might let my seven year old watch Batman The Brave and The Bold while Batman is punching out bad guys. Someone else might think that's too violent and restrict them to shows like "Super Why" on PBS. Both approaches are perfectly acceptable, but there's no way the government can accomadate both of these, plus the millions of other permutations in between and to the extremes. Better for the parents to watch with the kids and make their own decisions.
I tend to take one of two approaches with new shows.
1) I'll watch the new show with them and will turn it off if something I don't care for happens. Then, I'll have a talk with them about why that was wrong and what the character should have done.
2) I'll DVR the show and watch it before they do so as to pre-screen the show for inappropriate content.
Practically, I've rarely had to turn off a show since they tend to self-limit what channels they watch to just the kids channels and they're young enough to not want to watch stuff with too much sex/violence/etc. Still, parents could use those 2 rules and we wouldn't need as much government involvement in what's on TV.
The problem isn't so much the FCC or what's on TV. It's the Parents Television Council. They've appointed themselves the judge and jury of all things TV and will get their members to complain en masse about shows that offend their delicate sensibilities (such as nudity, cursing, homosexuality, etc).... even if they've never seen the show in question. They've even complained about a Spongebob Squarepants episode for cursing when the "cursing" was a dolphin noise (unrecognizable as a real curse word) and the main characters in the end learned not to curse. But the lesson and lack of real cursing didn't matter. They heard "cursing" and "Spongebob" and so were off to complain!
My wife and I need to report ourselves for indecency. Not only did my wife breastfeed our two sons, but the older son has seen the younger son breastfeed. Who knows what damage his (then) five year old mind sustained by seeing his mother feeding his (then) infant brother!
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.)