What do the 老澳门开奖结果 and Nicole Richie have in common? We both have problems with the FCC鈥檚 鈥�
And we鈥檙e notalone! Todaythe 老澳门开奖结果 was joined by 10 wide-ranging organizations, from the First Amendment Project to the Directors Guild of America, on a friend-of-the-court-brief filed with the Supreme Court.
In the brief, we criticize the FCC鈥檚 regulation of "indecent speech" as arbitrary, inconsistent and irreconcilable with core First Amendment values and urge the Supreme Court to uphold a (PDF) in striking down the recent FCC attempts at censorship.
Here鈥檚 an excerpt:
The FCC鈥檚 conduct in the thirty years since Federal Communications Commission v. Pacifica Foundation, 438 U.S. 726 (1978), narrowly permitted censorship of 鈥渋ndecency鈥� has been unpredictable, at times sweeping, and highly subjective. The problem intensified in 2004 after the Commission announced that even one 鈥渇leeting expletive鈥� was now, in most circumstances, barred from the airwaves; then applied that new rule to reverse its previous decision that the rock star Bono鈥檚 single exclamation (鈥渇ucking brilliant!鈥�) was enough to make a Golden Globe Awards program unlawfully indecent and profane. In the next two years, the agency made additional arbitrary judgments, finding no indecency in the movie Saving Private Ryan" with its many expletives, but condemning the Martin Scorsese documentary, "The Blues" because of vulgar words used by musicians and their music industry colleagues. Thirty years of such discretionary and inconsistent decision-making compels the conclusion that the entire indecency regime is vague, arbitrary, capricious, and overbroad. The fleeting expletives rule in particular has had a widespread chilling effect on valuable programming. And the unconstitutionality of the present system is not remedied by the existence of a late-night 鈥渟afe harbor鈥� for possibly indecent programs.
More info at www.aclu.org/bleep
