Show a tit on cable? Go directly to Jail. Do not pass go, do not collect $200

Well now they are after cable TV and they don't just want to fine them for obscenity, they want to put them in jail! So if you liked The "Soprano's, Carnivale, Deadwood, Queer as Folk or even the benign "The L Word", Fuget about it.

One year after adopting this it will all be gone. If SL is down and you are forced to watch television, hope ya like re-runs of The Andy Griffith show. Opie lives.

Wonder when they will start on the internet, streaming radio and places like SL?


Key lawmaker calls for criminalizing TV indecency

SAN FRANCISCO (Hollywood Reporter) - The chairman of one of the entertainment industry's most important congressional committees says he wants to take the enforcement of broadcast decency standards into the realm of criminal prosecution.

Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner III, R-Wis., told cable industry executives attending the National Cable & Telecommunications Assn. conference here on Monday that criminal prosecution would be a more efficient way to enforce the indecency regulations.

"I'd prefer using the criminal process rather than the regulatory process," Sensenbrenner told the executives.

The current system -- in which the FCC fines a licensee for violating the regulations -- casts too wide a net, he said, trapping those who are attempting to reign in smut on TV and those who are not.

"People who are in flagrant disregard should face a criminal process rather than a regulator process," Sensenbrenner said. "That is the way to go. Aim the cannon specifically at the people committing the offenses, rather than the blunderbuss approach that gets the good actors.

"The people who are trying to do the right thing end up being penalized the same way as the people who are doing the wrong thing."

It was unclear exactly how he would go about criminalizing violations of the indecency statutes. Typically, the Federal Communications Commission notifies the alleged offender and, if no settlement is reached, issues a fine.

When asked how he intended to criminalize the violations, Sensenbrenner repeated his assertion that it was the best way to penalize people who violate the statute but avoid "penalizing people who are not violating the law."

While he expressed a wish to criminalize the indecency violations, he also applauded the cable industry for its actions. Cable companies allow customers to block channels they find offensive but still require the customers to pay for it.

"I think the industry is doing what it should be doing," he said. "I think this is the way it should go."

Although the indecency issue was put on the front burner last year after Janet Jackson's breast was bared during the Super Bowl halftime show, it has remained a concern for Congress.

The House of Representatives overwhelmingly approved legislation this year that directs the FCC to fine broadcasters and individuals up to $500,000 for airing smutty programming on TV and radio.

Obscene speech is not protected by the First Amendment and cannot be broadcast at any time, but indecent speech can be aired safely between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m. because the courts and the FCC have determined that children are not a large part of the audience in those hours.

Although cable and satellite TV are not covered by the indecency statutes, Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, and Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, have said they want to bring multichannel programmers into the legal mix.

Stevens attended the convention Sunday, when he met with top cable industry executives, sources said. The executives hoped to persuade Stevens to back off, the sources said.

During the meeting, the cable operators demonstrated their blocking technology, but it was unclear whether Stevens was swayed by their arguments.

Reuters/Hollywood Reporter

But dont pepole pay for those channels. I mean you dont get them, UNLESS you pay. Isnt it just like paying for p0rn on the web? I mean if it was on channels where children could easily acess them then yea im for that. But dont most places have the option to block channels with a password? And if its an adult complaining, do they not know how to operate the remote to turn it off or change the channel?

How idiotic. I have no hope for the human race.

If they want to fuck up broadcast tv..oh well. But trying to censor subscriber channels is so stupid. You wouldn't PAY for the friggin channel if you didn't want to watch it.

Let's burn some books and be a year or two advanced on our current path..

well the good thing is that most of the internet is not in the USA so they can't do jack about it. and porn is such a gigantic industry in the usa, that pays a lot of political units, including hypocrital republicans, it will not be outlawed. If anything it will become more available. My guess is this is either another shallow attempt (like claiming to love life after napalming falluja) to appease the right wing OR the cable industry wants a way to separate porn from regular cable so people can pay more.

*Grabs gasoline and joins David in a verifiable hootenanny*

I'm not worried. As the article pointed out, cable and sat. channels are excluded at present. I'll put their lawyers and pork monies over any Congressmen's quazi-moralistic intentions. The congressmen will put forward a bill....which will get no confidence from any other congressman or senator once the industry gets into their pockets. Even as "values" and "morals" are becoming the new fashion for the U.S., at the country's heart is pure capitalism. Morals are great and fine, as long as the bottom line is not affected.
God Ble$$ Ame®i¢a

I'm not so sure. The habit of hiding what would normally be unpopular legislation in other "defense" bills is becoming quite the thing to do. They recently passed a bill that allows them to fine broadcasters incredible amounts of money without any guidelines or notification. It was hidden within another bill and speed-pushed through congress. They don't even give examples of what they consider abscene or improper and it is totally at the discretion of the FCC, and the fines can be retroactive for an unspecified amount of time. They can basically fine a broadcaster up to, I think, $300,000 per offense, and not notify them until up to 90 days after the occurence. There can be multiple offenses per day as well....

This legislation is hurting the pocket books of both the Television industry and radio.

Maybe. Then again, what it might boil down to are factions of the corporate media attacking each other. In fact, I think this may have been predicated on Network TV pointing at Cable/Satellite TV and crying "Hey No Fair".

My guess is that they will spin this as an opportunity to make cable TV safe for "The Children" but that the real motive will be to cripple cable and satellite TV so that it is on a more equal footing with Network TV, which is presently bleeding from all orifices right now as their viewers move to cable and satellite.

It would also give politicians more control over renagade media's because if they run something unfavorable about a particular politician or policy, the regulatory agency will have a lot less mercy when something is sited as a violation against them.

This is done with Network TV already. The politicians (both sides) are already going ape shit about political blogs and independent organizations on the internet that raise money like moveon.org. The fact that satellite and cable are running things like "Supersize Me" and many of Michael Moore's films incites them further.

Since the moral temperature of the country is on the high side, commerical interests and politicians will use morality as an excuse to curtail the major viewer migration away from Network TV and captive advertisment. There is a Tom Delay around every political corner who can easily be convinced that they are America's moral savior and if not, there is always some politicial that can be bought to act like this is what they are doing.

.

I'd support just this much regulation of cable TV, and no more:

1) Require cafeteria-style channel offerings: buy access to individual channels, and leave out what you think is unacceptable.

2) If a cable network advertises itself as family-friendly, hold them to it.

This would effectively eliminate the one remaining excuse they have for regulation: that by buying, say, Nickelodeon and Discovery, you are required to buy Comedy Central as well. With cafeteria-style subscription, you buy, or leave out, whatever content you want.

Personally, I'd love this for another reason: not having to pay for all those friggin' sports and home-shopping channels.

But they'll take away my South Park and Adult Swim when they pry my remote from my cold, dead hands.

I think his attidude is more indecent than anything I've seen on cable.

I've been following the censorship on tv issue, and I feel assured that supply and demand will win out.

When millions of people drop their premium cable packages because they can't watch what they pay for, big cable companies will be whistling another tune.