Will the FCC Crackdown Defang the FCC?

That's the optimistic scenario probed by The Volokh Conspiracy's Stuart Benjamin.

Comments

[Hydroman]

Bono is good , Janet is bad , and i`ve got .7 seconds of Janet`s titty hung in my V-Chip.
I need help from the Govimmit!

[Dick]

Alas, Volokh is way too optimistic about our high court. I think the present make-up, which has little respect for the First Amendment on either side, would be more than willing to allow the FCC to crack down much further than they've been allowed to already.

[Dan]

It doesn't seem to me that Benjamin's argument will apply to radio. However, I would be very surprised if the court held that the government has a right to regulate "indecency" in opt-in mediums like cable.

[John Byrne]

Hey. Great blog! Sorry to post this here but I couldn't find contact info -- and I thot you readers would enjoy the site.

I just wanted to alert you to a freshly-minted liberal media site you might enjoy/link to called The Raw Story, http://www.rawstory.com, which culls and composes progressive news, arts and business reporting from around the world. Similar to Buzzflash, but with a much more user-friendly design and updated far more frequently. But what we say doesn?t matter -- check us out and decide for yourself.

[Julie]

Actually, it is very easy to locate contact info:

http://reason.com/Bio/mtstaff.shtml

The "But what WE say doesn't matter -- check US out and decide for yourself." reeks of mass threadspamming.

[dj of raleigh]

The FCC could start financing the government!
The sin tax proposed by the Texas Governor,
which is $5 to get into a titty bar,
a dollar on a pack of smokes,
and so forth on drinks, porn etc,
well, that tax added to the FCC
could give people the sin & smut they want,
the profit of it guarranteeing availability,
so the people get what they really want,
cheap government and plenty of sin,
instead of the other way around.

[Douglas Fletcher]

I can't wait to look at a freshly minted liberal media site. Ooo, I'm getting tingly just thinking about it.

[Jim Walsh]

Calling Pat Boone a "musical icon." Now THAT'S obscene.

[kevrob]

Hey, Pat Boone owed his career to "censorship.*" Would anyone have cared about his recording of "Blueberry Hill" if the stations who played him had had the guts to play Fats Domino's version, instead?

Kevin

*Yes, I know if the government didn't require them to not play "race music" it wasn't really censorship. But a station that programmed black r&b alongside of white rock & rollers might have had a bunch of angry letters placed in its renewal file. Much safer to just play the covers.

[garym]

rawstory.com "composes progressive news." How is that different from manufacturing skewed facts?

[Rick Barton]

Does the freshly minted liberal media site have a blog, so we can bug the Hell out of them?

[zorel]

I don't know much about this guy, but this was in the WaPo -

"Censorship in arts 'healthy,' Boone says"

By Steve Miller
THE WASHINGTON TIMES

A healthy society needs censorship to survive, 1950s musical icon Pat Boone said yesterday. He added that he would welcome strong content restrictions governing movies and other artistic works.

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disclaimer: I don't share this opinion 🙂

[Rick Barton]

The bottom line is that the government?s new regulatory aggressiveness is likely to produce judicial review of such regulation ? which review will likely invalidate the regulation on First Amendment grounds.

Sounds great! When might the litigation start?