Fed Censorship is Coming

[HenryBHough]

And so we have seen, again, that liberals love censorship whilst denying it exits.

This is not news.

 

[Pogo]

Horseshit. There's no such thing. Link it.



Still waiting on this one too....

Google. For someone who spends so much time on political talk boards you sure are ill informed.
Google

Wow, a link to Google, a site I've never heard of.

Articulate your point or concede that you don't have one.

No...he is not ill-informed. He is dishonest.

Haven't seen yours either, Elmer.

You obviously didnt open the link.
It offers pages of what you claim doesnt exist.
You ever hear of The Fairness Doctrine? Of course you have...

Yup. I worked under it, ensured we were compliant, and then continued working after it was abolished -- and went on working exactly the same way.

You have a question about how it worked then? I got answers.

Linking to "pages" is not what I asked. I asked for support of YOUR point. Not Google's.

And google supports MY point.

No, Google is a search engine. If you can't articulate your point, you don't have one.

I'm hearing crickets.
You lose.

 

[PaintMyHouse]

And so we have seen, again, that liberals love censorship whilst denying it exits.

This is not news.

There is no censorship in this case.

 

[longknife]

I will repeat what I've said time and time again - let government get a foot in the door about controlling the content of or how the internet works and it will no longer be open and free-speaking.

 

[g5000]

Fed Censorship is Coming

Yeah? When has the FCC ever done that?

They attempted to fine CBS for Janet Jackson's "wardrobe malfunction".

 

[g5000]

I don't want to make a federal case out of all of this -- but that's what the government is doing. The Federal Communications Commission in recent years has cracked down on "indecency" in general and this word specifically. The FCC's fines for indecency have risen steadily: a mere $4,000 in 1995, then $48,000 in 2000, then $440,000 in 2003 and finally a whopping $7.9 million in 2004. President Bush signed a bill last week increasing by tenfold the maximum fine for indecency on radio or TV, to $325,000.

Dropping the F-Bomb

 

[g5000]

FCC Commissioner: Feds May Come for Drudge

CNS News is a hack site.

 

[PratchettFan]

I will repeat what I've said time and time again - let government get a foot in the door about controlling the content of or how the internet works and it will no longer be open and free-speaking.

They already have and have had for years. That's why people go to jail for child porn.

 

[BlindBoo]

But then again the Feds may not come for Drudge after all, it is only one man's opinion, and that one has been spreading this particular nonsense for a while now.

 

[Uncensored2008]

No, Google is a search engine. If you can't articulate your point, you don't have one.

I'm hearing crickets.
You lose.

Poor huffer, got his ass kicked yet again. Whines about cites, get them and whines that "cites are no FAIR from Google."



What a pathetic little bitch you are.

On a serious note, have you never even considered that the reason you get your ass handed to you so often is that you're full of shit?

 

[Uncensored2008]

[

CNS News is a hack site.

Bullshit - and really STUPID bullshit, Jake.

You may only trust KOS - but CNS has a solid reputation for accuracy.

 

[Pogo]

Fed Censorship is Coming

Yeah? When has the FCC ever done that?

They attempted to fine CBS for Janet Jackson's "wardrobe malfunction".

That isn't intellectual content. And further, what FCC does in that case and all such cases is respond to complaints from the public; any reaction is in the context of whether the licensee is serving the public interest, in light of the fact that the public is complaining about it. While the reasoning in that case was stupid and puts us collectively on the intellectual level of a toddler who's just discovered poo-poos, it does reflect our prudish culture (or at least the prudish face we pretend to have because we don't collectively have the guts to stand up and say, 'so what') -- nevertheless any action taken would be in the context of the question of whether the broadcast service is "serving the public interest, convenience and necessity" -- which is and has always been the standard for having a broadcast license. But that's only for a broadcast license.

More broadly it's aimed at putting a barrier up to the prospect of some licensee putting porn on the air (which is by definition and design easily accessible to everybody). It would certainly sell but as it is it's confined to off-the-air media such as cable... and internet, which, I don't know if y'all know this, contains way way far more than Janet Jackson's nipple. But just as the airwaves are established as prudish, the internets are established as nothing of the sort, and in both cases the establishment is going to propagate what the status quo has defined.

Perhaps more to the point, FCC's mission since its inception has always been to make the media in question more accessible to more people. Fifty-ish years ago it required owners of AM/FM outlets to run different programming on each, in order to kick-start FM (i.e. if you didn't have an FM radio you were missing something); then it did required TV sets to receive the then-new UHF channels to give them a chance (and in turn, give the public access to them); in the internet age it's made efforts to get that widely distributed.

But only in the broadcast world, i.e. what is literally on the air, does it issue licenses, and that's where the requirement to "serve the public interest, convenience and necessity" is in play (which means it does not apply to, say, cable TV). The license system is in place for the same reason the Fairness Doctrine was -- because the broadcast space is finite, and only so many stations can fit on the dial before they start interfering with each other. That is the vast majority of what FCC does.

Now if FCC were about controlling content, it would have already been doing that with cable TV (and for that matter, with telephones). But it doesn't. Mainly what it does is ensures a level playing field for the public's benefit -- that we get FM as well as AM; that we get space set aside for public broadcasting (though hardly enough); that we get a choice of phone providers; that we get TV cable service with a range of programming including local access; that we get converters on request when they shift frequencies for digitial; that we get or approach universal access to internet. None of that is restricting content; if anything it's doing the opposite.

And Net Neutrality, as designed, is following the same pattern. Just as it doesn't dictate what your public radio station broadcasts but simply ensures you have one; just as it doesn't prescribe what has to be on your TV cable but simply ensures you have a public access channel; just as it doesn't dictate what you can say on the phone but simply ensures you don't have to get it from a monopoly -- it wouldn't dictate what can be on the internet but simply prevent ISP-X from throttling your access. It has no basis to do so in the first place. We don't need an FCC license for a phone; we don't need an FCC license to run a TV cable channel. And there's no reason we should because the technical media they use are, for practical purposes, not finite.

 

[Uncensored2008]

But then again the Feds may not come for Drudge after all, it is only one man's opinion, and that one has been spreading this particular nonsense for a while now.

They may not - but putting the Internet under the 1934 telecommunications act as a public utility means they have the power to regulate content.

Is that what you Communists mean by "neutrality?"

My question is, where are the worthless fucking Republicans? This should have be overturned the day after it was announced. If the GOP can't even protect us from the government regulating the Internet, what good are they? democrats are Stalinists at heart - we KNOW you hate freedom, but where are the Republicans who are supposed be the defenders of civil rights?

 

[Pogo]

Here's one of my favorite TV clips -- because it's so uncharacteristically real. This was recorded from live TV, in the middle of the day:

​

Far as I know there was no fine or action on the TV station. Nobody complained, or at least it didn't become any kind of controversy, nobody wrote editorials, nobody went on rival TV stations claiming to be shocked, nobody went around posing as a prude, and Chase Utley's reputation never suffered-- if anything he earned a lot of people's respect. He spoke exactly what everybody was thinking, and you can see that on the faces as the camera pans -- they look liberated. Yet this station is under the same FCC rules as everybody else.

The difference between this and Janet Jackson is public pressure. When the public puts pressure on, the FCC has to respond. When the public grows a pair and doesn't act like a toddler who's just discovered poo-poo, everything settles just fine. Bottom line -- if there's a censorial dynamic at work here, it comes from us. If we don't want the government bowdlerizing content, then we need to stop asking it to do just that.

But again, this only applies to the literal airwaves.

 

[g5000]

CNS has a solid reputation for accuracy.

 

[peach174]

Fed Censorship is Coming

Yeah? When has the FCC ever done that?

Swear words

 

[peach174]

Here's one of my favorite TV clips -- because it's so uncharacteristically real. This was recorded from live TV, in the middle of the day:

​

Far as I know there was no fine or action on the TV station. Nobody complained, or at least it didn't become any kind of controversy, nobody wrote editorials, nobody went on rival TV stations claiming to be shocked, nobody went around posing as a prude, and Chase Utley's reputation never suffered-- if anything he earned a lot of people's respect. He spoke exactly what everybody was thinking, and you can see that on the faces as the camera pans -- they look liberated. Yet this station is under the same FCC rules as everybody else.

The difference between this and Janet Jackson is public pressure. When the public puts pressure on, the FCC has to respond. When the public grows a pair and doesn't act like a toddler who's just discovered poo-poo, everything settles just fine. Bottom line -- if there's a censorial dynamic at work here, it comes from us. If we don't want the government bowdlerizing content, then we need to stop asking it to do just that.

But again, this only applies to the literal airwaves.

Live swearing gets through every once in a while but is later bleeped out.

 

[Pogo]

Fed Censorship is Coming

Yeah? When has the FCC ever done that?

Swear words

Again that's not content. That's style.
And again when they act it's because we ask them to.

 

[peach174]

Fed Censorship is Coming

Yeah? When has the FCC ever done that?

Swear words

Again that's not content. That's style.
And again when they act it's because we ask them to.

The FCC sets program standards

 

[Pogo]

Fed Censorship is Coming

Yeah? When has the FCC ever done that?

Swear words

Again that's not content. That's style.
And again when they act it's because we ask them to.

The FCC sets program standards

No, they do not. Nobody has any "programming standards" -- you broadcast what you want. If the public decides Janet Jackson's nipple is unacceptable, they react to the complaint. If the public decides Chase Utley uttering the word "fucking" is acceptable, they do nothing. Simple as that.