Congress using Super Bowl flap to impose content controls

Lauren Weinstein, co-founder of the Privacy Forum and one of the folks I interviewed for my upcoming book on the personal media revolution, had an interesting posting on Dave Farber's mailing list today:

It is now utterly apparent that there are those in the administration and Congress attempting to use the recent Super Bowl "incident" as an excuse for massive controls over all forms of TV and radio -- including cable and satellite (the Internet they've already been attacking with laws currently before the courts, of course). ...

Some of the new "indecency" measures being proposed in Congress:

- massive increases in maximum fines

- making networks pay 90% of affiliate violation fines

- basing fines on the wealth of the broadcaster, e.g. allow a *single* fine to reach 10% of a station's yearly revenue

- extending indecency bans to cover "gratuitous violence that is detrimental to the health and safety of children"

- extending indecency bans to *all* forms of TV and radio, including broadcast, satellite, and cable

- allow license revocations to occur after three indecency violations

and on and on, with both Democrats and Republicans spewing forth various draconian content-control gems of dubious constitutionality.

I'm not an apologist for obscenity or the other garbage that makes up so much of today's broadcasting scene. But I am very concerned to see Congress in the process of pandering to those who would happily reestablish the Hayes Office (look it up, kids!) -- and worse -- if they could.

Lauren's remarks may be a bit overheated, given some of the legislation proposed, but he's right that we need to keep this incident in perspective.