http://money.cnn.com/2005/03/01/technology....reut/index.htm
Alaska's Stevens says he'll push to apply public broadcast standards to satellite, too.
March 1, 2005: 2:20 PM EST
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Ted Stevens said Tuesday he would push to apply broadcast decency standards to subscription television and radio services like cable and satellite.
"Cable is a much greater violator in the indecency area," the Alaska Republican told the National Association of Broadcasters, which represents most local television affiliates. "I think we have the same power to deal with cable as over-the-air" broadcasters.
"There has to be some standard of decency," he said.
Stevens told reporters afterward that he would push legislation to apply the standards to cable and satellite radio and television.
Federal regulations bar broadcast television and radio stations from airing obscene material and restrict indecent material, such as sexually explicit discussions or profanity, to late-night hours when children are less likely to be watching or listening.
But so far those restrictions have not applied to subscription television and radio services offered by companies like Comcast Corp. (up $0.28 to $32.74, Research) or Sirius Satellite Radio Inc. (up $0.38 to $5.95, Research), which recently signed shock jock Howard Stern.
Stevens said he disagreed "violently" with assertions by the cable industry that Congress does not have the authority to impose limits on what they air.
"If that's the issue they want to take on, we'll take it on and let the Supreme Court decide," he said.
The House of Representatives has approved legislation to raise fines to $500,000 from $32,500 on television and radio broadcasters that violate indecency limits. The Senate has legislation pending to increase fines as well.
But neither bill has provisions that would extend indecency restrictions to cable and satellite services. Top of page
Full Version: Senator fights cable 'indecency'
Common Ground Common Sense > Issues that Affect Our Lives > Civil Rights and Civil Liberties > Civil Rights and Civil Liberties Archive
This will go nowhere,and they know it, the public is allowed to buy pornography,so what's the difference on pay-for-channels on TV and radio showing and saying whatever they choose.
I need to be protected from something I have to pay $50 a month for.
They should go after all the adult mags too.
They should go after all the adult mags too.
I don't think this will go anywhere because if they can apply the indecency standards, they can also apply the fairness doctrine. And that would be death to Faux News.
They might also tune into the morally upraising pap that the Faux Channel
runs on a daily basis. <_< It always amazes me to hear Faux news spit out all their "values"
commentary, then look at their network lineup of TV shows.
Check this out ! http://www.fox.com/home.htm
Then check this out ! http://www.foxnews.com/
runs on a daily basis. <_< It always amazes me to hear Faux news spit out all their "values"
commentary, then look at their network lineup of TV shows.
Check this out ! http://www.fox.com/home.htm
Then check this out ! http://www.foxnews.com/
Well if cable is going to become indistinguishable from the three broadcast networks, I'll save my money.
QUOTE(progressivephoenix @ Mar 1 2005, 05:53 PM)
I don't think this will go anywhere because if they can apply the indecency standards, they can also apply the fairness doctrine. And that would be death to Faux News.
I don't know--I think they will push this as far as they can--and maybe with some success. They (meaning right wing extremist) are feeling very powerful since the election, and are feeling they have the "capital" that Bush keeps bragging about. Cable and Satellite TV are their next targets. It seems like they want to control the world and everyone in it. They tell Putin how to run Russia--the ME they must have democracy, and tell us what type of media and entertainment limits we will not enjoy.
This morning, on Fox and Friends, one of the anchors said they should tell the Netherlands they need to shape up their red light district, etc. He was jokingly commenting about 11 year old Dutch boys who would come to the US smoking and rolling their own cigarettes (or whatever). I didn't listen to the entire conversation, but it left me with an uneasy feeling that the right wing extremist might have an agenda to preach to the world (not only about democracy) about Christian moral values.
Is the US going to be forcing (at gunpoint) democracy on every nation around the world, and forcing those countries with different moral values from the US right wing extremist- to change their behavior according to those right wing views.
At one time I didn't think Americans would put up with our media being controlled by right wing extremist attitudes, but I am seeing it happen--if these extremist are able to control cable and satellite TV--then we better worry.
perhaps they should get rid of the violence on TV
this will make new Sirus subscribers and Howard Stern fans go BALLISTIC!
If Bush thought he was on Howard's hit list before the election, he ain't seen nothing yet! Keep your damn hands off my Queer as Folk too!
If Bush thought he was on Howard's hit list before the election, he ain't seen nothing yet! Keep your damn hands off my Queer as Folk too!
If you don't like something, DON'T WATCH IT!!! I am sick to death of the "nanny state" attitude that lawmakers of both parties want to take. If I want to drink a bourbon, smoke a cigar and eat a Big Mac while watching the Playboy Channel, it's my own damn business 
That senator and his supporters should build and stay put in their igloos and out of the reality of the modern world. Maybe then, they won't be so shocked that the world has come a long way since the pilgrim days.
http://www.lacitybeat.com/article.php?id=1783&IssueNum=92
SADDLE UP THE BRAIN POLICE
‘Decency’ is not the only reason some lawmakers want the FCC to regulate cable
~ By MICK FARREN ~
“Money doesn’t talk, it swears.”
–Bob Dylan
To yet again paraphrase Capt. Willard in Apocalypse Now, “The bulls**t piles up so fast in the media that you need wings to stay above it.” Over the last couple of weeks, Robin Williams was censored by ABC on the same Oscar show for which Chris Rock was hired to add some edge but then put on dump-out delay. ABC News ducked reality by running a two-hour Peter Jennings special on UFOs instead of real news, while the Bush White House was caught using Armstrong Williams, the scary-weird Jeff Gannon, and at least four other phony journalists to support its own palace of illusions. The Adelphia cable company planned to run hardcore porn on pay-per-view, but then chickened out, while Clint Eastwood, of all people, was branded a soulless Blue State liberal, and a massive spoiler was handed to anyone who had yet to see Million Dollar Baby.
Meanwhile, over on Capitol Hill, Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) and Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas) started raising a well-publicized ruckus about how FCC decency enforcement should be extended to include cable and satellite programming.
As it stands, the broadcast indecency legislation that has already passed the House and is currently making its way through the Senate is simultaneously obscene and ludicrous. Once it’s signed into law by George Bush, the bottom line will be that, if you or I go on local radio and repeat the Willard line quoted above, we can be fined a half-million bucks and our property seized without ever once going in front of a judge. If the same FCC censorship power is extended to cable, we can kiss goodbye to Bill Maher, Larry Sanders, The Sopranos, Deadwood, Queer as Folk, South Park, The L Word, and whatever comes next for the Sex and the City demographic. Worse, we won’t be able to see an uncut, uncensored copy of Raging Bull, Schindler’s List, or the aforementioned Apocalypse Now except on DVD, even though we’re paying through the nose for subscription TV.
Stevens and Barton don’t even feel the need to fabricate any clear and present cable danger from which we need to be protected. (Except maybe saving Middle America from an unrestrained Howard Stern on Sirius.) They can’t invoke the Maude Flanders rationale of “What about the children?” because cable and satellite come loaded with more than enough parental shut-outs for anyone who isn’t too lazy or stupid to follow the set up window. All they have is the arbitrary concept of a single “standard of decency.” As Stevens told the National Association of Broadcasters, “Cable is a much greater violator in the indecency area. I think we have the same power to deal with cable as over-the-air. The problem is most viewers don’t differentiate between over-the-air and cable.” Thus, on the premise that the American people are too benightedly pig-ignorant to make their own choices, Ted and Joe are happy to saddle up the Brain Police, wreck the cable industry on the eve of full TV-on-demand, and march a jackboot through constitutional free expression.
The only mildly good news is that Sen. Stevens, at least, may only be saddling up the Brain Police as easy conservative pandering while opening up Alaska to the oil barons and never meeting a dollar he doesn’t like. Last Wednesday, a $5,000-a-head fundraiser was held for Washington lobbyists, with proceeds going to something called the Ted Stevens Foundation – described on the invitation as “an Alaska nonprofit corporation created by Alaskans to recognize and honor the career and public service of the state’s senior senator.” Although supposedly set up to “improve communications among Alaskans,” the TSF isn’t associated with any academic institution, and only exists as a voice mailbox at the office of Stevens’s campaign treasurer. The Washington Post described the situation as “malodorous” and “having the inevitable air of a shakedown.” Can’t add too much to that, except to reflect that Time Warner will, I hope, buy off these jackasses, so we don’t have to junk HBO as meaningless. But the combination of the bigoted control freaks and sleazy power hustlers is dangerous, volatile, and needs to be constantly watched.
Mick Farren blogs at Doc40.blogspot.com.
SADDLE UP THE BRAIN POLICE
‘Decency’ is not the only reason some lawmakers want the FCC to regulate cable
~ By MICK FARREN ~
“Money doesn’t talk, it swears.”
–Bob Dylan
To yet again paraphrase Capt. Willard in Apocalypse Now, “The bulls**t piles up so fast in the media that you need wings to stay above it.” Over the last couple of weeks, Robin Williams was censored by ABC on the same Oscar show for which Chris Rock was hired to add some edge but then put on dump-out delay. ABC News ducked reality by running a two-hour Peter Jennings special on UFOs instead of real news, while the Bush White House was caught using Armstrong Williams, the scary-weird Jeff Gannon, and at least four other phony journalists to support its own palace of illusions. The Adelphia cable company planned to run hardcore porn on pay-per-view, but then chickened out, while Clint Eastwood, of all people, was branded a soulless Blue State liberal, and a massive spoiler was handed to anyone who had yet to see Million Dollar Baby.
Meanwhile, over on Capitol Hill, Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) and Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas) started raising a well-publicized ruckus about how FCC decency enforcement should be extended to include cable and satellite programming.
As it stands, the broadcast indecency legislation that has already passed the House and is currently making its way through the Senate is simultaneously obscene and ludicrous. Once it’s signed into law by George Bush, the bottom line will be that, if you or I go on local radio and repeat the Willard line quoted above, we can be fined a half-million bucks and our property seized without ever once going in front of a judge. If the same FCC censorship power is extended to cable, we can kiss goodbye to Bill Maher, Larry Sanders, The Sopranos, Deadwood, Queer as Folk, South Park, The L Word, and whatever comes next for the Sex and the City demographic. Worse, we won’t be able to see an uncut, uncensored copy of Raging Bull, Schindler’s List, or the aforementioned Apocalypse Now except on DVD, even though we’re paying through the nose for subscription TV.
Stevens and Barton don’t even feel the need to fabricate any clear and present cable danger from which we need to be protected. (Except maybe saving Middle America from an unrestrained Howard Stern on Sirius.) They can’t invoke the Maude Flanders rationale of “What about the children?” because cable and satellite come loaded with more than enough parental shut-outs for anyone who isn’t too lazy or stupid to follow the set up window. All they have is the arbitrary concept of a single “standard of decency.” As Stevens told the National Association of Broadcasters, “Cable is a much greater violator in the indecency area. I think we have the same power to deal with cable as over-the-air. The problem is most viewers don’t differentiate between over-the-air and cable.” Thus, on the premise that the American people are too benightedly pig-ignorant to make their own choices, Ted and Joe are happy to saddle up the Brain Police, wreck the cable industry on the eve of full TV-on-demand, and march a jackboot through constitutional free expression.
The only mildly good news is that Sen. Stevens, at least, may only be saddling up the Brain Police as easy conservative pandering while opening up Alaska to the oil barons and never meeting a dollar he doesn’t like. Last Wednesday, a $5,000-a-head fundraiser was held for Washington lobbyists, with proceeds going to something called the Ted Stevens Foundation – described on the invitation as “an Alaska nonprofit corporation created by Alaskans to recognize and honor the career and public service of the state’s senior senator.” Although supposedly set up to “improve communications among Alaskans,” the TSF isn’t associated with any academic institution, and only exists as a voice mailbox at the office of Stevens’s campaign treasurer. The Washington Post described the situation as “malodorous” and “having the inevitable air of a shakedown.” Can’t add too much to that, except to reflect that Time Warner will, I hope, buy off these jackasses, so we don’t have to junk HBO as meaningless. But the combination of the bigoted control freaks and sleazy power hustlers is dangerous, volatile, and needs to be constantly watched.
Mick Farren blogs at Doc40.blogspot.com.
I'm waiting to see which show will be the first victim. HBO's "Deadwood", where the F-bomb is dropped so often that it's the equivalent of Tokyo or Dresden? Or "Carnivale", with the cooch show and a evangelical preacher who is really the Devil? Or, if you want to go to "regular" cable, you have all of the booty-shaking on MTV; Sci-Fi's new "Battlestar Galactica" with the sexy fembot; "Nip/Tuck", "The Shield" and "Rescue Me" on the Murdoch-owned F/X channel (lots of sex and profanity there, too); a lot of the anime on Cartoon Network's "Adult Swim" and the Action Channel; lots of tribal women's boobs showing on the National Geographic Channel; and animals mating on Animal Planet. And that's just for starters! :D
http://www.laweekly.com/ink/05/18/news-ireland.php
QUOTE
Censor Alert
Congress considers controls for cable TV and the Internet
by DOUG IRELAND
MARCH 24 - 31, 2005
Just as a TIME magazine poll out this week shows Americans want more TV censorship, a brace of Republican initiatives threatens to extend federal control of what you can see and hear and read to both cable TV and the Internet.
Hollywood better wake up. Remember the Hays Office, which imposed family-values censorship on the movies in the 1920s — a ham-fisted squelching of “indecency” that cramped and crippled scriptwriters and moviemakers for decades thereafter? Well, what one of the most powerful Republicans in the U.S. Senate is now talking about sounds very much like the same thing, except now it’s about cable TV and the Net.
The latest assault on cable TV’s creative freedom comes from octogenarian Republican Senator Ted Stevens, chairman of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation. Stevens and his committee are considering a censorious House-passed “indecency” bill regulating radio and TV broadcasters — legislation cooked up in the wake of the furor over Janet Jackson’s boob flash during the Super Bowl. And now, the weighty senator wants to extend its provisions — including a draconian new government-imposed ratings system. With an ironclad Republican Senate majority, Stevens usually gets what he wants.
The effect on cable-TV programming would be enormous. The Republican-controlled FCC has, in the Bush years, already been heavy-handed in targeting what it deems broadcast speech too impure for you to hear. Its rulings go way beyond the traditional “Seven Words You Can Never Say on TV” made famous by George Carlin’s uproarious comic riff. That’s why Howard Stern — after getting a $495,000 spanking from the FCC — chose to exile himself from broadcast radio to his upcoming new home on Sirius Satellite Radio. But if Stevens has his way, Howard will be subjected anew to the same censorship on the Net. And so will cable.
From the ACLU to libertarian conservatives, predictions of what the Stevens proposals mean are dire. “I think Stevens is probably laying the groundwork for another assault on speech online,” Adam Thierer, a senior fellow at the libertarian, free-market Progress & Freedom Foundation, told CNET, the online magazine about the Internet. “He’s obviously pointing the way to other members of Congress, saying that if they want to control the media, they have to start at cable and satellite first, and then target the Internet . . . This foreshadows the coming debate we’ll have over IP-enabled services in the video space.”
The already-passed House bill calls for sharply increased new fines for violators — the whopping $1.18 million FCC fine imposed on the Fox network for airing a wild guys’ night out on Married by America would be doubled under the new law. These new “indecency” regs — if extended to cable TV and the Net, as the Republican powerhouse senator intends to make happen — would mean, for example, that HBO’s Angels in America, which swept the Emmys, would most likely never have been aired in the unadulterated version that the distinguished playwright Tony Kushner wrote. And the host of cable-TV shows with less literary merit but a higher “smut” content would certainly come under federal attack. So would song lyrics, and the many cable broadcasts of rock concerts. Cable TV has up until now been mercifully free from the arbitrary Savonarolas of the broadcast nets’ infamous “standards and practices” departments, which exact oh-so-cautious compliance with FCC regs. But, threatened with huge fines and the opprobrium of being labeled “indecent” by the federal government, cable execs with their eye on the bottom line of profit won’t risk being dropped by cable operators in the American heartland in a country drowning in religion-driven bowdlerization.
That’s all the more true given the public’s demand for more censorship, revealed in a new Time magazine poll out this week: 68 percent of Americans say the entertainment industry has lost touch with viewers’ “moral standards,” 53 percent want stricter FCC censorship of sex and violence on TV, and 49 percent want to extend FCC regs to cover basic cable, including MTV and the E! channel on most cable systems. That’s just what Stevens’ proposals would do.
And he’d throw in the Internet for good measure. Thunders the senator: “We ought to find some way to say, here is a block of channels, whether it’s delivered by broadband, by VoIP, by whatever it is, to a home, that is clear of the stuff you don’t want your children to see . . . I take the position that at the time the Supreme Court made its decision about cable, cable was just one of the ways for public access to television products. Today 85 percent of the television that is brought to American homes is brought by cable, and I believe that the playing field should be leveled.”
Extending those FCC “indecency” standards from broadcast to the Net and cable TV would drastically change the audio-visual landscape. If it’s too risqué to be seen by a 10-year-old, fuhgeddaboutit. To take just one Net example, explicit sex education, or safe-sex videos on the Web featuring graphic instruction on how to use a condom, could potentially be covered by this new “indecency” bill. So could the streaming videos of frank-talk conferences on AIDS education offered by the Kaiser Family Foundation on the Net. And the list goes on . . .
There appears to be little opposition in Congress at the moment to Stevens’ new censorship drive. Stevens himself says, “I think the Congress means business now. I have not received many complaints from, I can’t think of any real complaints from members of Congress about what I have been saying.” Watch the GOP make this an election-year issue next year — as the Democrats scamper.
At the same time, the Federal Elections Commission (FEC) is considering a crackdown on political blogging under the provisions of the McCain-Feingold campaign-finance law. According to Republican FEC member Brad Smith, including the Net under McCain-Feingold “would strike deep into the heart of the Internet and the bloggers who are writing out there today.”
Commissioner Smith told CNET two weeks ago, “We’re talking about any decision by an individual to put a link [to a political candidate] on their home page, set up a blog, send out mass e-mails, any kind of activity that can be done on the Internet. Again, blogging could also get us into issues about online journals and non-online journals . . . Why should Salon or Slate get an exemption? Should Nytimes.com and Opinionjournal.com get an exemption but not online sites, just because the newspapers have a print edition as well?” Blogging a press release from a campaign, or promoting a politician’s views on issues — let alone a blogger’s recommending a financial contribution to a candidate — would all fall under the McCain-Feingold law under the proposals.
In Monday’s Washington Post, another Republican FEC commissioner, David Mason, spelled it out: “We are almost certainly going to move from an environment in which the Internet was per se not regulated to where it is going to be regulated in some part,” Mason said, adding: “That shift has huge significance.”
In response to this threat, leading bloggers formed an ad hoc committee called OnlineCoalition.com, to petition the FEC to “grant blogs and online publications the same consideration and protection as broadcast media, newspapers, or periodicals by clearly including them under the Federal Election Commission’s ‘media exemption’ rule.” In just two weeks, the petition has already harvested the signatures of more than 2,500 bloggers and journalists, myself among them.
Credit where credit is due: The stories about both these new censorship drives were broken by CNET’s Washington bureau chief, Declan McCullagh, who for a decade has chronicled threats to Internet freedom on his invaluable Politechbot.com (for “Politics and Technology”) Web site — which you can check out for regular updates on both the Stevens- and FEC-proposed crackdowns on untrammeled free speech.
Congress considers controls for cable TV and the Internet
by DOUG IRELAND
MARCH 24 - 31, 2005
Just as a TIME magazine poll out this week shows Americans want more TV censorship, a brace of Republican initiatives threatens to extend federal control of what you can see and hear and read to both cable TV and the Internet.
Hollywood better wake up. Remember the Hays Office, which imposed family-values censorship on the movies in the 1920s — a ham-fisted squelching of “indecency” that cramped and crippled scriptwriters and moviemakers for decades thereafter? Well, what one of the most powerful Republicans in the U.S. Senate is now talking about sounds very much like the same thing, except now it’s about cable TV and the Net.
The latest assault on cable TV’s creative freedom comes from octogenarian Republican Senator Ted Stevens, chairman of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation. Stevens and his committee are considering a censorious House-passed “indecency” bill regulating radio and TV broadcasters — legislation cooked up in the wake of the furor over Janet Jackson’s boob flash during the Super Bowl. And now, the weighty senator wants to extend its provisions — including a draconian new government-imposed ratings system. With an ironclad Republican Senate majority, Stevens usually gets what he wants.
The effect on cable-TV programming would be enormous. The Republican-controlled FCC has, in the Bush years, already been heavy-handed in targeting what it deems broadcast speech too impure for you to hear. Its rulings go way beyond the traditional “Seven Words You Can Never Say on TV” made famous by George Carlin’s uproarious comic riff. That’s why Howard Stern — after getting a $495,000 spanking from the FCC — chose to exile himself from broadcast radio to his upcoming new home on Sirius Satellite Radio. But if Stevens has his way, Howard will be subjected anew to the same censorship on the Net. And so will cable.
From the ACLU to libertarian conservatives, predictions of what the Stevens proposals mean are dire. “I think Stevens is probably laying the groundwork for another assault on speech online,” Adam Thierer, a senior fellow at the libertarian, free-market Progress & Freedom Foundation, told CNET, the online magazine about the Internet. “He’s obviously pointing the way to other members of Congress, saying that if they want to control the media, they have to start at cable and satellite first, and then target the Internet . . . This foreshadows the coming debate we’ll have over IP-enabled services in the video space.”
The already-passed House bill calls for sharply increased new fines for violators — the whopping $1.18 million FCC fine imposed on the Fox network for airing a wild guys’ night out on Married by America would be doubled under the new law. These new “indecency” regs — if extended to cable TV and the Net, as the Republican powerhouse senator intends to make happen — would mean, for example, that HBO’s Angels in America, which swept the Emmys, would most likely never have been aired in the unadulterated version that the distinguished playwright Tony Kushner wrote. And the host of cable-TV shows with less literary merit but a higher “smut” content would certainly come under federal attack. So would song lyrics, and the many cable broadcasts of rock concerts. Cable TV has up until now been mercifully free from the arbitrary Savonarolas of the broadcast nets’ infamous “standards and practices” departments, which exact oh-so-cautious compliance with FCC regs. But, threatened with huge fines and the opprobrium of being labeled “indecent” by the federal government, cable execs with their eye on the bottom line of profit won’t risk being dropped by cable operators in the American heartland in a country drowning in religion-driven bowdlerization.
That’s all the more true given the public’s demand for more censorship, revealed in a new Time magazine poll out this week: 68 percent of Americans say the entertainment industry has lost touch with viewers’ “moral standards,” 53 percent want stricter FCC censorship of sex and violence on TV, and 49 percent want to extend FCC regs to cover basic cable, including MTV and the E! channel on most cable systems. That’s just what Stevens’ proposals would do.
And he’d throw in the Internet for good measure. Thunders the senator: “We ought to find some way to say, here is a block of channels, whether it’s delivered by broadband, by VoIP, by whatever it is, to a home, that is clear of the stuff you don’t want your children to see . . . I take the position that at the time the Supreme Court made its decision about cable, cable was just one of the ways for public access to television products. Today 85 percent of the television that is brought to American homes is brought by cable, and I believe that the playing field should be leveled.”
Extending those FCC “indecency” standards from broadcast to the Net and cable TV would drastically change the audio-visual landscape. If it’s too risqué to be seen by a 10-year-old, fuhgeddaboutit. To take just one Net example, explicit sex education, or safe-sex videos on the Web featuring graphic instruction on how to use a condom, could potentially be covered by this new “indecency” bill. So could the streaming videos of frank-talk conferences on AIDS education offered by the Kaiser Family Foundation on the Net. And the list goes on . . .
There appears to be little opposition in Congress at the moment to Stevens’ new censorship drive. Stevens himself says, “I think the Congress means business now. I have not received many complaints from, I can’t think of any real complaints from members of Congress about what I have been saying.” Watch the GOP make this an election-year issue next year — as the Democrats scamper.
At the same time, the Federal Elections Commission (FEC) is considering a crackdown on political blogging under the provisions of the McCain-Feingold campaign-finance law. According to Republican FEC member Brad Smith, including the Net under McCain-Feingold “would strike deep into the heart of the Internet and the bloggers who are writing out there today.”
Commissioner Smith told CNET two weeks ago, “We’re talking about any decision by an individual to put a link [to a political candidate] on their home page, set up a blog, send out mass e-mails, any kind of activity that can be done on the Internet. Again, blogging could also get us into issues about online journals and non-online journals . . . Why should Salon or Slate get an exemption? Should Nytimes.com and Opinionjournal.com get an exemption but not online sites, just because the newspapers have a print edition as well?” Blogging a press release from a campaign, or promoting a politician’s views on issues — let alone a blogger’s recommending a financial contribution to a candidate — would all fall under the McCain-Feingold law under the proposals.
In Monday’s Washington Post, another Republican FEC commissioner, David Mason, spelled it out: “We are almost certainly going to move from an environment in which the Internet was per se not regulated to where it is going to be regulated in some part,” Mason said, adding: “That shift has huge significance.”
In response to this threat, leading bloggers formed an ad hoc committee called OnlineCoalition.com, to petition the FEC to “grant blogs and online publications the same consideration and protection as broadcast media, newspapers, or periodicals by clearly including them under the Federal Election Commission’s ‘media exemption’ rule.” In just two weeks, the petition has already harvested the signatures of more than 2,500 bloggers and journalists, myself among them.
Credit where credit is due: The stories about both these new censorship drives were broken by CNET’s Washington bureau chief, Declan McCullagh, who for a decade has chronicled threats to Internet freedom on his invaluable Politechbot.com (for “Politics and Technology”) Web site — which you can check out for regular updates on both the Stevens- and FEC-proposed crackdowns on untrammeled free speech.
The very first time that cable TV is regulated I'm cancelling. Not that I watch anything out of the ordinary and, in fact, have passwords guarding pay-for-view and adult channels because of my grandchildren. But.........just because I don't want to watch certain programming doesn't mean that the couple down the street can't watch as well is ludicrous.
I have no right to infringe my preferences on anyone, any more than I can tell the same couple that they have to attend my church rather than their own. Or that their daughter cannot wear blue-jeans. Or that their son is forbidden to wear an earring. Get real.........
IMO, this is another red herring to divert public attention from other things the Bushies are doing.
I have no right to infringe my preferences on anyone, any more than I can tell the same couple that they have to attend my church rather than their own. Or that their daughter cannot wear blue-jeans. Or that their son is forbidden to wear an earring. Get real.........
IMO, this is another red herring to divert public attention from other things the Bushies are doing.
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