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Indecency rules enter digital age
Frank Rose in Wired magazine: In a world of unlimited spectrum, shackling the First Amendment is obscene.
Couldn't agree more. It's all about politics. Excerpt:
Until now, the government's censorship powers have been limited to the airwaves, on the grounds that they alone use spectrum. But with politicians left and right in a mad scramble for "decency," the increasingly flimsy technological rationale that allows the government to intrude on broadcast content is being conveniently forgotten. ...If spectrum isn't scarce, why set aside the First Amendment as if it were? Politics. In January 2003, when Bono blurted out "Fucking brilliant!" before 20 million viewers while accepting a Golden Globe award, the FCC received fewer than 250 complaints. But Washington knows a crowd-pleaser when it sees one. In its latest annual survey of Americans, the First Amendment Center found that 65 percent thought the government should restrict sexual references on broadcast TV; 55 percent thought it ought to do the same with cable. After an FCC staff ruling that Bono's fleeting remark didn't warrant punishment, Congress rose up as one.
October 12, 2004 at 12:34 PM in Current Affairs | Permalink
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Comments
The problem is deeply, and profoundly, metaphorical. The first amendment ends where the shipping system we call "media" begins. Speech is protected, by clear inference, in public *places". The media have from the beginning been conceived not as places, but rather as shipping systems for "programs" and other forms of what we now generically call "content," which is the equivalent of container cargo. That's why the FCC sees no contradiction between the first amendment on one hand and huge fines for "indecency" on the other. The former protects "speech." The latter protects sensitive "consumers" from receiving the wrong "content" from a shipping system.
We can only win this one if we characterize the Net as a *place*, as a commons (literally), and most pointedly *not* as a "medium."
I explained this recently here.
Posted by: Doc Searls at Oct 12, 2004 12:49:06 PM
