Previous Politech messages on Sen. Stevens's latest scheme, which also seems to include an Internet component: http://www.politechbot.com/2005/03/15/senator-wants-indecency/ http://www.politechbot.com/2005/03/01/indecency-rules-must/ http://www.politechbot.com/2005/03/18/more-on-sen/ -Declan -------- Original Message -------- Subject: Ted Stevens wants to regulate premium cable content Date: Sun, 03 Apr 2005 19:13:51 -0700 From: Bill Stewart <bill.stewart@private> To: declan@private Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska strongly objects to obscenity on TV, though he's strongly in favor of obscenities done to the Arctic ecosystem. His latest attack has been to meet with a bunch of cable executives to bully them into enacting "voluntary" standards and threatening legislation if they don't comply. http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=politicsNews&storyID=8071121 Perhaps Stevens has forgotten, but TV sets sold in the US are required to be equipped with a "V-Chip" to allow parents to censor which programs can be viewed and require a password to view programs marked with levels they block. The regulations for exactly which networks and programs are required to be rated are somewhat complex, but they're described at the FCC's website http://www.fcc.gov/vchip/ . So parents already have the tools they need to restrict what their children watch - all they need to do is Read The Family-Friendly Manual. There are big problems with the V-Chip rating system; instead of separate ratings for Sex, Violence, Dialogue, etc., it lumps ratings into one specific value system for age appropriateness, which discriminates against parents who think that violence is a much more serious problem than sex, and it doesn't apply to commercials, which may bother parents whose view of the Seven Deadly Sins lists greed and envy as bad things (or who simply want to skip over commercials.) Regulation enthusiasts also disapprove of Gluttony when it's advertising high-sugar products on children's programming, but the V-Chip doesn't do much to help them.) And a few channels get around it by categorizing themselves as news (the FCC web page indicates that Court TV does this, but that may be out of date, and they may now be rating their more gory crime-scene programs.) But imperfect as it is, the V-Chip system of quasi-mandatory labelling is better than Senator Stevens's preference for censorship. _______________________________________________ Politech mailing list Archived at http://www.politechbot.com/ Moderated by Declan McCullagh (http://www.mccullagh.org/)
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