[quote]ZEB wrote:
More interesting information for those who feel their “rights” are being trampled on by the weight of the FCC:
“The reason the government can regulate broadcast TV and radio at all is that it owns the air. The FCC licenses frequencies on the airwaves, a public resource. In return, broadcasters must meet public-service requirements and obey decency rules, which ban “language or material that, in context, depicts or describes, in terms patently offensive as measured by contemporary community standards for the broadcast medium, sexual or excretory activities or organs.” That’s why the FCC can police four-letter words on NBC but not in a movie or this magazine. (Pornography is different, because the law distinguishes “obscenity” from “indecency.”)”
There is more to it, however you get the idea. When the hammer comes down on the networks (and it has already begun) you will know from where they get their power. [/quote]
Zeb,
As I was saying before, this is a tenuous rationale because it is based on the idea that spectrum is a scarce resource – this basically goes back to the days when there were 3 channels. The USSC created an exception to the First Amendment based on this scarcity rationale. Technology has made this extremely questionable, at best – I think if a case wound up before the USSC again that challenged the basic premise that this was important enough for regulating Free Speech the Court would either have to overturn its prior precedent or make up some new rationale.
