Oh, well I see now how wrong I am. Good thing you were here to point that out to me.
I don't care to prove you wrong. Read the court cases.
You could have tried to explain why you feel the supreme court is right in their decision to allow censorship
You haven't explained why you feel the Supreme Court is wrong. Any attempt for me to prove you wrong would be a strawman argument. The government clearly has the right to regulate the broadcasts of these companies, as they are engaged in interstate commerce. You claim this regulation violates the First Amendment, but you haven't explained why. I don't see it.
Use of the public airwaves is a privilege, not a right.
Use of public property (which, by definition, everyone owns) is a privlege?
In this case, yes. Though I wouldn't say everyone owns it, I'd say no one owns it.
1) The frequencies being used by the satellite companies are not very useful for terrestial broadcast, and therefore most of the general public.
2) Satellite frequencies are not public, they were bought by the companies which broadcast them for millions of dollars. To call them public would be like calling your backyard public.
I see, so any small special intrest group or large mob gets to decide by complaining endlessly to the FCC.
Complaining certainly is within your First Amendment rights.
Why is it that setting strict guidelines violates the First amendment, but knowing that you could possibly be fined if you cross some aribtrary lines isn't considered a restriction?
One is a prior restraint, the other isn't.
Many people have compared FCC fines to speed limits, but then turn around and say FCC fines dont restrict speech, even though thats the purpose of fining for speeding.
I think you're taking two different comments out of context. FCC fines are similar to speed limits, in that they are a regulation over use of a public good. They do restrict speech, I suppose, but they don't violate the First Amendment.
You don't hear the speech over the airwaves that you don't want to hear.
I don't care about whether or not I hear the speech.
Oh, and they aren't your airwaves. If they belong to anyone they belong to the public at large.
Then the public at large has a right to determine what is done with them.
And you're right..my whole point was that the content broadcast over the airwavs doesn't hinder in any way your using them for other purposes.
Yes it does. It's called interference.
There are other frequencies available.
Not frequencies which propagate well for certain types of purposes. And all of those frequencies are equally regulated anyway. The only one you can use for pretty much anything is MURS, and that is a very narrow band.
Does it matter if a station plays audio of hardcore sex or the teachings of jesus?
Of course it matters. If it didn't matter, then broadcasters would have no problems broadcasting what the government wants them to broadcast.
Either way, YOU won't be using that band.
If someone else is using that band for something that benefits the public, then I'm OK with not using the band myself.
Your nonsense about the public good is your way of saying 'i want to censor what is on the airwaves.' Censoring never serves the public good.
Clearly I disagree.
You could use ANOTHER part of the band if you really wanted your own FM station. You have other bands for setting up point to point internet. Use those.
The licensing fees for those bands are actually more than those for FM radio.
What exactly is your arguement?
My argument is that the radio broadcasters have taken a public resource away from the public by promising to use it for the public good and then they complain whenever the FCC tries to enforce that promise. They can't have it both ways. Either auction off the bands to the highest bidders and let them do whatever they want with them (i.e., the end of free radio), keep things the way they are now (i.e. government regulation), or just leave it as a big free-for-all where whoever can yell the loudest wins (i.e. tragedy of the commons).
You think that if a station does broadcast smut YOU should get the band b/c YOU don't like it? What about the people that do? Stern is still on because he has ALOT of fans.
I myself am a Howard Stern fan, as I've said above. That's not what this is about. This is about corporations stealing things from the public with lies.
Get over yourself, if you don't like him don't listen. Either way, it won't transfer thier FM license to you.
At least it will cause them to lose their license so that a company that is working in my best interests can get it.
What does this have to do with regulating WHAT is said using those airwaves?
It's why the airwaves are a public good, which in turn is why they are regulated.
We choose to let these broadcasters use the airwaves in exchange for them acting in the public interest. It's not in the public interest to hear curses and fart noises.
And you get to decide that for everyone?
Of course not. I'm not a member of the FCC.
Why not let the public decide by letting them choose which stations to listen to.
How does not listening to a station make up for the fact that these people are using my airwaves?
It is about free speech; the fact that spectrum is limited does not justify that only what YOU think is appropriate should be broadcast over that spectrum.
But it does. If you want to use my airwaves, then what I think is appropriate matters.
You can't choose what you hear in a library. You CAN choose what you hear on the radio. Don't tune into stations you don't like.
As I've said, not listening to the radio doesn't allow me to use the radio spectrum for other things. The government has given the radio stations exclusive rights to that portion of the radio spectrum. In return they have to promote the public good.
The fact is that people like you are facists and want to control what OTHER people are doing even though it causes no harm to you.
It does harm me. I can't use the FM spectrum to broadcast my radio station because of them. I can't create a point to point internet link using FM because of them. To say that Clearstation doesn't harm me by broadcasting its crap is nonsense.
Except inthis case regulation flys directly in the face of the first amendment.
Interesting thought process. Fortunately the Supreme Court disagrees with you. You have the right to speak whatever you want. You don't however have the right to use the public airwaves to promote that speech.
Clearchannel owns a good chunk of the overall market by itself.
Which in itself is a big reason why it is fined so heavily.
Market capitalization is pretty meaningless with respect to fines. Fines are paid out of revenues.
Fines are paid out of cash on hand, which is part of book value, not revenue. Revenue, ie gross income, is pretty meaningless. I can have trillions of dollars in revenue and not make a penny.
Is airwaves any more of a public resource than newspapers?
Any more? One is a public resource, one isn't even a resource.
Why do they have to be regulated?
Because we can't all use the airwaves at once. Demand for the airwaves exceeds supply. We choose to let these broadcasters use the airwaves in exchange for them acting in the public interest. It's not in the public interest to hear curses and fart noises.
Regulating free speech is reason enough to hang your local conrgessmen from a lamppost in town square for not standing up for your rights.
This isn't about free speech. It's about regulation of a finite resource. Freedom of speech doesn't mean I can go into a public library and start yelling out obscenities.
Both 'pedias can suffer from bias and distortions due to the opinions and prevailing cultures of the authors. Wiki follows the whims and fads of the editing/contributing public and Britannica follows the whims of the academic elite.
I think you've hit the nail right on the head there. That said, Wikipedia admins probably have less bias than Britannica editors. Wikipedian admins tend to be strongly opposed to any bias. Perhaps this could be considered a bias toward moral relativism and skepticism, but that's probably a bias an encyclopedia is supposed to have.
Sure, there are also biases towards open source, against George Bush, even against the United States to some extent, but I just don't think it's as bad with Wikipedia. Maybe it's a fallacy that collective intelligence is better than individual intelligence when it comes to encyclopedia topics. I don't know, the audience gets the millionaire question right more than I do.
A 2GW nuclear site produces 48 million kilowatt hours per day; that's ultimately sold at retail for about $4 million per day, or about $1.5 billion per year.
Clearchannel had $9.4 billion in revenue last year. Of course, revenue has nothing to do with net worth. Clearchannel is worth $845 million. I'll leave looking up the net worth of the highest fined nuclear site to you.
You think they run a point-to-point line from HBO to your local catv affiliate?
Of course satellite is regulated completely differently from broadcast. I suppose they technically use airwaves at some point in the process, but it's far from the same thing as broadcast stations, who use airwaves which were given to them specifically for use in the public interest.
They are both deliberate actions, and the nuclear and medical ones have far more severe consequences.
No, they're not both deliberate actions. One is deliberate, the other is caused by negligence. To say they are both the same is like saying unintentional killing is the same as first degree murder. There is a whole array of degrees of mens rea. Something might be accidental, caused by negligence, caused by gross negligence (or recklessness), committed intentionally, or committed knowingly (both intentional and committed with knowledge that the act was criminal). To compare Howard Sterns actions (certainly intentionally and arguably committed knowingly), with a nuclear accident (at worst caused by gross negligence but more likely by simple negligence) is not at all fair.
And much lower fines (if any) are given in these situations.
The major problem isn't the language, the psychotic religious right being in charge, who are trying to legislate morality.
They're regulating a public resource. When FM and television broadcasters start paying me money to use my airwaves to broadcast their crap then the government can stop regulating it. That said, I'd rather the FCC focus on banning Who Wants To Marry My Dad? rather than Howard Stern.
Just looked it up. Sirius payed $83.4 million for its slice of the radio network. XM payed $89.9 million. For all intents and purposes, it is a private resource, not a public one (just like your backyard).
That might be one factor, but you can't ignore two other big ones. Nuclear power plants have less money, and what they are fined for is accidental, whereas what Howard Stern does is intentional.
The broadcast is open only those those who tune it in.
There's a difference, but I agree it shouldn't make a difference on the regulation. I suspect the real reason for the difference in regulation is that Sirius/XM are paying a lot more in licensing fees than FM broadcasters. I just looked it up and FM broadcasters only have to pay $500/year. Still haven't found how much Sirius is paying, but if it's anything like the cell phone companies (who also carry private communications), it's a lot more than $500/year.
It's not like he's standing on your front step shouting cuss words, you have to explictly choose to listen.
No more than I have to explicitly choose to download and read spam.
The broadcasting companies and the on-air personalities are not necessarily intentionally breaking FCC rules. Now there are people like Howard Stern who push the limit and go over knowingly, but in their defense the FCC does not clearly define what is allowed and disallowed.
In the two biggest examples, Stern and Jackson/Timberlake, both are alleged to have acted knowingly. In any case, even if they didn't know they were breaking the rules (and at the least Stern acts in careless disregard for the rules), they still were acting with a higher level of mens rea than something which would be completely accidental. They said/did what they said/did on purpose (in the Jackson/Timberlake they are allegeged to have done it on purpose though they deny it). There are many levels of mens rea, from negligence to recklessness to intentional to knowingly. In the vast majority of cases the broadcasting companies are acting at least recklessly.
The FCC should come down and make a very clear ruling on what they consider offensive and what is finable and what is not.
I believe they don't because this would be a "prior restraint" of free speech and thus unconstitutional. As long as they do it afterwards it isn't a prior restraint. See FCC v. Pacifica Foundation.
Also the broadcasting companies are also fined if the callers use inappropriate language or say something offensive on the air. (Yes there is a delay button, but if the caller is persistent then they can get around the delay because it has to reset.)
A call should be cut off if the station even runs out of delay. In any case, a station wouldn't be fined the maximum for such a simple mistake. We're talking about the maximum fines here.
Make sure the FCC knows you want them to keep their grubby paws of satellite radio.
The terresterial broadcasters are now saying that they won't be able to compete against satellite unless the FCC levies the same restrictions against satellite that they do on regular radio.
I don't know enough about the technical (and financial) details to say for sure. Maybe the satellite companies are using relatively little of the bandwidth and paying a hefty enough fee that it's worth it. AFAIK television stations get to use the airwaves for free, is it the same way with FM radio stations?
DVD players and computers giving off radio signals don't significantly impair our radio waves. And even then, regulating language wouldn't make any sense, because people don't regularly interpret those signals. The FCC does regulate your DVD player and computer. But they don't regulate what language gets transmitted by them, because the transmission of language is unintentional.
Even ignoring the TEMPEST issue, if XM can and should be regulated as strictly as FM then why shouldn't the internet be regulated that way as well.
Because the internet is a private resource. The cables carrying the content are privately owned (I suppose there are some public portions, and to that extent the government could presumably regulate the communications going over them, but if that happened it would be trivial to route around them).
I don't know how wide the band is for XM/Sirius, so maybe there's enough to go around. There certainly isn't very much contention for the band compared to FM, which in many cities is essentially full, and that's probably why the FCC hasn't regulated it as strictly.
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Oh, well I see now how wrong I am. Good thing you were here to point that out to me.
I don't care to prove you wrong. Read the court cases.
You could have tried to explain why you feel the supreme court is right in their decision to allow censorship
You haven't explained why you feel the Supreme Court is wrong. Any attempt for me to prove you wrong would be a strawman argument. The government clearly has the right to regulate the broadcasts of these companies, as they are engaged in interstate commerce. You claim this regulation violates the First Amendment, but you haven't explained why. I don't see it.
Use of the public airwaves is a privilege, not a right.
Use of public property (which, by definition, everyone owns) is a privlege?
In this case, yes. Though I wouldn't say everyone owns it, I'd say no one owns it.
1) The frequencies being used by the satellite companies are not very useful for terrestial broadcast, and therefore most of the general public.
2) Satellite frequencies are not public, they were bought by the companies which broadcast them for millions of dollars. To call them public would be like calling your backyard public.
I see, so any small special intrest group or large mob gets to decide by complaining endlessly to the FCC.
Complaining certainly is within your First Amendment rights.
Why is it that setting strict guidelines violates the First amendment, but knowing that you could possibly be fined if you cross some aribtrary lines isn't considered a restriction?
One is a prior restraint, the other isn't.
Many people have compared FCC fines to speed limits, but then turn around and say FCC fines dont restrict speech, even though thats the purpose of fining for speeding.
I think you're taking two different comments out of context. FCC fines are similar to speed limits, in that they are a regulation over use of a public good. They do restrict speech, I suppose, but they don't violate the First Amendment.
You don't hear the speech over the airwaves that you don't want to hear.
I don't care about whether or not I hear the speech.
Oh, and they aren't your airwaves. If they belong to anyone they belong to the public at large.
Then the public at large has a right to determine what is done with them.
And you're right..my whole point was that the content broadcast over the airwavs doesn't hinder in any way your using them for other purposes.
Yes it does. It's called interference.
There are other frequencies available.
Not frequencies which propagate well for certain types of purposes. And all of those frequencies are equally regulated anyway. The only one you can use for pretty much anything is MURS, and that is a very narrow band.
Does it matter if a station plays audio of hardcore sex or the teachings of jesus?
Of course it matters. If it didn't matter, then broadcasters would have no problems broadcasting what the government wants them to broadcast.
Either way, YOU won't be using that band.
If someone else is using that band for something that benefits the public, then I'm OK with not using the band myself.
Your nonsense about the public good is your way of saying 'i want to censor what is on the airwaves.' Censoring never serves the public good.
Clearly I disagree.
You could use ANOTHER part of the band if you really wanted your own FM station. You have other bands for setting up point to point internet. Use those.
The licensing fees for those bands are actually more than those for FM radio.
What exactly is your arguement?
My argument is that the radio broadcasters have taken a public resource away from the public by promising to use it for the public good and then they complain whenever the FCC tries to enforce that promise. They can't have it both ways. Either auction off the bands to the highest bidders and let them do whatever they want with them (i.e., the end of free radio), keep things the way they are now (i.e. government regulation), or just leave it as a big free-for-all where whoever can yell the loudest wins (i.e. tragedy of the commons).
You think that if a station does broadcast smut YOU should get the band b/c YOU don't like it? What about the people that do? Stern is still on because he has ALOT of fans.
I myself am a Howard Stern fan, as I've said above. That's not what this is about. This is about corporations stealing things from the public with lies.
Get over yourself, if you don't like him don't listen. Either way, it won't transfer thier FM license to you.
At least it will cause them to lose their license so that a company that is working in my best interests can get it.
And unfortunalty sometimes the Supreme Court is wrong.
True, but this isn't an example of it.
I'd think that the airwaves would be a great place to exersice free speech, but I guess there's only room for speech that matches majority opinion.
Use of the public airwaves is a privilege, not a right.
Demand for the airwaves exceeds supply.
What does this have to do with regulating WHAT is said using those airwaves?
It's why the airwaves are a public good, which in turn is why they are regulated.
We choose to let these broadcasters use the airwaves in exchange for them acting in the public interest. It's not in the public interest to hear curses and fart noises.
And you get to decide that for everyone?
Of course not. I'm not a member of the FCC.
Why not let the public decide by letting them choose which stations to listen to.
How does not listening to a station make up for the fact that these people are using my airwaves?
It is about free speech; the fact that spectrum is limited does not justify that only what YOU think is appropriate should be broadcast over that spectrum.
But it does. If you want to use my airwaves, then what I think is appropriate matters.
You can't choose what you hear in a library. You CAN choose what you hear on the radio. Don't tune into stations you don't like.
As I've said, not listening to the radio doesn't allow me to use the radio spectrum for other things. The government has given the radio stations exclusive rights to that portion of the radio spectrum. In return they have to promote the public good.
The fact is that people like you are facists and want to control what OTHER people are doing even though it causes no harm to you.
It does harm me. I can't use the FM spectrum to broadcast my radio station because of them. I can't create a point to point internet link using FM because of them. To say that Clearstation doesn't harm me by broadcasting its crap is nonsense.
Except inthis case regulation flys directly in the face of the first amendment.
Interesting thought process. Fortunately the Supreme Court disagrees with you. You have the right to speak whatever you want. You don't however have the right to use the public airwaves to promote that speech.
Cash on hand != market cap.
Thanks for the lesson. I never said it did, though.
Clearchannel owns a good chunk of the overall market by itself.
Which in itself is a big reason why it is fined so heavily.
Market capitalization is pretty meaningless with respect to fines. Fines are paid out of revenues.
Fines are paid out of cash on hand, which is part of book value, not revenue. Revenue, ie gross income, is pretty meaningless. I can have trillions of dollars in revenue and not make a penny.
Is airwaves any more of a public resource than newspapers?
Any more? One is a public resource, one isn't even a resource.
Why do they have to be regulated?
Because we can't all use the airwaves at once. Demand for the airwaves exceeds supply. We choose to let these broadcasters use the airwaves in exchange for them acting in the public interest. It's not in the public interest to hear curses and fart noises.
Regulating free speech is reason enough to hang your local conrgessmen from a lamppost in town square for not standing up for your rights.
This isn't about free speech. It's about regulation of a finite resource. Freedom of speech doesn't mean I can go into a public library and start yelling out obscenities.
Both 'pedias can suffer from bias and distortions due to the opinions and prevailing cultures of the authors. Wiki follows the whims and fads of the editing/contributing public and Britannica follows the whims of the academic elite.
I think you've hit the nail right on the head there. That said, Wikipedia admins probably have less bias than Britannica editors. Wikipedian admins tend to be strongly opposed to any bias. Perhaps this could be considered a bias toward moral relativism and skepticism, but that's probably a bias an encyclopedia is supposed to have.
Sure, there are also biases towards open source, against George Bush, even against the United States to some extent, but I just don't think it's as bad with Wikipedia. Maybe it's a fallacy that collective intelligence is better than individual intelligence when it comes to encyclopedia topics. I don't know, the audience gets the millionaire question right more than I do.
Damn, I thought someone had made a peer-to-peer version of Wikipedia. Now that would be a cool thing.
Clearchannel is worth slightly more, but I suppose the other factors are more important than how much money the company has.
I'm sorry, wrong number. The market cap of Clearchannel is 18.78 billion. The book value is 14 billion.
A 2GW nuclear site produces 48 million kilowatt hours per day; that's ultimately sold at retail for about $4 million per day, or about $1.5 billion per year.
Clearchannel had $9.4 billion in revenue last year. Of course, revenue has nothing to do with net worth. Clearchannel is worth $845 million. I'll leave looking up the net worth of the highest fined nuclear site to you.
HBO, Skinemax, et al, ALL use airwaves.
You think they run a point-to-point line from HBO to your local catv affiliate?
Of course satellite is regulated completely differently from broadcast. I suppose they technically use airwaves at some point in the process, but it's far from the same thing as broadcast stations, who use airwaves which were given to them specifically for use in the public interest.
They are both deliberate actions, and the nuclear and medical ones have far more severe consequences.
No, they're not both deliberate actions. One is deliberate, the other is caused by negligence. To say they are both the same is like saying unintentional killing is the same as first degree murder. There is a whole array of degrees of mens rea. Something might be accidental, caused by negligence, caused by gross negligence (or recklessness), committed intentionally, or committed knowingly (both intentional and committed with knowledge that the act was criminal). To compare Howard Sterns actions (certainly intentionally and arguably committed knowingly), with a nuclear accident (at worst caused by gross negligence but more likely by simple negligence) is not at all fair.
Right. XM is the name of the company, not the band. The term I was looking for was "S Band".
Violating decency rules can occur accidentally.
And much lower fines (if any) are given in these situations.
The major problem isn't the language, the psychotic religious right being in charge, who are trying to legislate morality.
They're regulating a public resource. When FM and television broadcasters start paying me money to use my airwaves to broadcast their crap then the government can stop regulating it. That said, I'd rather the FCC focus on banning Who Wants To Marry My Dad? rather than Howard Stern.
Just looked it up. Sirius payed $83.4 million for its slice of the radio network. XM payed $89.9 million. For all intents and purposes, it is a private resource, not a public one (just like your backyard).
That might be one factor, but you can't ignore two other big ones. Nuclear power plants have less money, and what they are fined for is accidental, whereas what Howard Stern does is intentional.
The broadcast is open only those those who tune it in.
There's a difference, but I agree it shouldn't make a difference on the regulation. I suspect the real reason for the difference in regulation is that Sirius/XM are paying a lot more in licensing fees than FM broadcasters. I just looked it up and FM broadcasters only have to pay $500/year. Still haven't found how much Sirius is paying, but if it's anything like the cell phone companies (who also carry private communications), it's a lot more than $500/year.
It's not like he's standing on your front step shouting cuss words, you have to explictly choose to listen.
No more than I have to explicitly choose to download and read spam.
They can't "regulate" Sirius/XM for the same reason they can't "regular" HBO/Skinamax and a bunch of porn channels on cable TV.
Cable TV uses cables, not airwaves. That's why the FCC can't regulate it. Sirius/XM on the other hand, they are regulated by the FCC.
The broadcasting companies and the on-air personalities are not necessarily intentionally breaking FCC rules. Now there are people like Howard Stern who push the limit and go over knowingly, but in their defense the FCC does not clearly define what is allowed and disallowed.
In the two biggest examples, Stern and Jackson/Timberlake, both are alleged to have acted knowingly. In any case, even if they didn't know they were breaking the rules (and at the least Stern acts in careless disregard for the rules), they still were acting with a higher level of mens rea than something which would be completely accidental. They said/did what they said/did on purpose (in the Jackson/Timberlake they are allegeged to have done it on purpose though they deny it). There are many levels of mens rea, from negligence to recklessness to intentional to knowingly. In the vast majority of cases the broadcasting companies are acting at least recklessly.
The FCC should come down and make a very clear ruling on what they consider offensive and what is finable and what is not.
I believe they don't because this would be a "prior restraint" of free speech and thus unconstitutional. As long as they do it afterwards it isn't a prior restraint. See FCC v. Pacifica Foundation.
Also the broadcasting companies are also fined if the callers use inappropriate language or say something offensive on the air. (Yes there is a delay button, but if the caller is persistent then they can get around the delay because it has to reset.)
A call should be cut off if the station even runs out of delay. In any case, a station wouldn't be fined the maximum for such a simple mistake. We're talking about the maximum fines here.
Make sure the FCC knows you want them to keep their grubby paws of satellite radio.
The terresterial broadcasters are now saying that they won't be able to compete against satellite unless the FCC levies the same restrictions against satellite that they do on regular radio.
I don't know enough about the technical (and financial) details to say for sure. Maybe the satellite companies are using relatively little of the bandwidth and paying a hefty enough fee that it's worth it. AFAIK television stations get to use the airwaves for free, is it the same way with FM radio stations?
DVD players and computers giving off radio signals don't significantly impair our radio waves. And even then, regulating language wouldn't make any sense, because people don't regularly interpret those signals. The FCC does regulate your DVD player and computer. But they don't regulate what language gets transmitted by them, because the transmission of language is unintentional.
Even ignoring the TEMPEST issue, if XM can and should be regulated as strictly as FM then why shouldn't the internet be regulated that way as well.
Because the internet is a private resource. The cables carrying the content are privately owned (I suppose there are some public portions, and to that extent the government could presumably regulate the communications going over them, but if that happened it would be trivial to route around them).
I don't know how wide the band is for XM/Sirius, so maybe there's enough to go around. There certainly isn't very much contention for the band compared to FM, which in many cities is essentially full, and that's probably why the FCC hasn't regulated it as strictly.