FCC Shouldn't Judge Indecency
Public Knowledge, the Cato Institute and a collection of technology policy groups have called on the Supreme Court to overturn the 1978 FCC vs. Pacifica decision and give broadcasters the same First Amendment freedom to program to their audiences as other media including print, cable and the Internet.
That urging came in a friend of the court brief supporting Fox and ABC. The Supreme Court is currently deciding whether to uphold Federal Communications Commission indecency decisions against those two broadcasters after the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that those decisions -- and the FCC's underlying indecency-enforcement policy -- were unconstitutionally vague and chilling. The FCC and DOJ appealed those rulings. "Pacifica is based on an archaic and unrealistic conception of broadcast television," they argued. In the 1978 Pacifica decision, the high court voted 5-4 to uphold an FCC decision to reprimand Pacifica-owned New York radio station WBAI for airing comedian George Carlin's "Filthy Words" routine, establishing the current standard of "indecent but not obscene" material. The groups go further than the National Association of Broadcasters in asking for the FCC to get out of the content-regulation business. Given the way the tech companies frame their support of broadcasting, it is not a surprise they are not exactly on the same page. The groups, which include TechFreedom, the Center for Democracy & Technology and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, essentially argue that broadcasting should be free of content regulations because technology has rendered it "rare," rather than pervasive, with only a small and dwindling percentage of people receiving content over the air.
FCC Shouldn't Judge Indecency http://www.broadcastingcable.com/article/476688-Tech_Policy_Groups_Call_on_Supreme_Court_to_Overturn_Pacifica_Decision.php?rssid=20065