This review is terribly late, but I finally got around to watching the DVD of Kirby Dick’s documentary “This Film Is Not Yet Rated,” which goes after the MPAA’s movie rating system. Dick tries to paint the MPAA’s private, voluntary ratings board as a “star chamber” that sits in judgment of visual arts and routinely “censors” content it finds at odds with the desires of the studios, government, the military, churches, and so on. But to me, the whole film is much ado about nothing and, worse yet, it fails to adequately address the very real risk of a government censorship popping up in the absence of a private ratings system.
By way of quick background, the MPAA’s familiar ratings system was created by former MPAA president Jack Valenti back in 1968. It was partially a response to the growing pressure for film censorship. Back then – – and this is one of many things Dick’s documentary largely ignores – – there were local censor boards who sat in judgment of films and decided if they could be shown in their communities. And there were ongoing efforts by many lawmakers at all levels to impose regulation on movies or at least strong-arm movie makers into changing content in certain ways.
And so the MPAA ratings system was born. A crucial feature of the MPAA system was that those doing the ratings would be anonymous. The reason this was done was to protect them from being pressured by both those who made the films (who obviously want less restrictive ratings) and those in government or the public who critique the films (many of whom would want stricter ratings).
But keeping raters and the rating process secretive has always had one obvious downside: The system lacks transparency. Why is it that two films with very similar content get two different ratings? Sometimes it’s obvious, other times it’s not. And this is what has Kirby Dick, and the many directors or film critics he interviews in the documentary, up in arms.
Today I released a new PFF study entited “Rep. Bean’s ‘SAFER Net Act’: An Education-Based Approach to Online Child Safety.” The short paper argues that education, not increased governmental regulation, is the most effective method of ensuring online child safety going forward. Luckily, there finally exists a piece of federal legislation that embodies that philosophy.
Rep. Melissa Bean (D-IL) recently introduced H.R. 1008, the “Safeguarding America’s Families by Enhancing and Reorganizing New and Efficient Technologies (SAFER NET) Act of 2006.” The bill would create an Office of Internet Safety and Public Awareness at the Federal Trade Commission, establish federal grants to promote Internet safety programs and create a national public awareness campaigns. While I’m not usually in favor of new government programs and spending (and I’m certain that my colleagues will give me hell for doing so in this case!), I think the government can play a constructive role here in terms of informing parents and kids about how to deal with objectionable material online or other cyber-threats.
More practically, I think it is essential that we have an education-based vehicle to counter all the regulation-based approaches coming out of Congress these days. Congress always wants to do something on this front, so it is certainly better that they do something that is both constitutional and likely to have lasting impact like safety education. Read my entire paper for the details.
My former Cato Institute colleague Tom Palmer has penned an important editorial in today’s Washington Post along with Raja Kamal of the University of Chicago that illustrates how very lucky we are to live in a country that respects freedom of speech and religious differences. Palmer and Kamal tell the story of Abdelkareem Nabil Soliman, a 22 year old student who is sitting in an Egyptian prison, awaiting sentencing tomorrow. “His alleged ‘crime’: expressing his opinions on a blog. His mistake: having the courage to do so under his own name,” note Palmer and Kamal. They continue:
Soliman.. was expelled from Al-Azhar University last spring for sharply criticizing the university’s rigid curriculum and faulting religious extremism on his blog. He was ordered to appear before a public prosecutor on Nov. 7 on charges of “spreading information disruptive of public order,” “incitement to hate Muslims” and “insulting the President.” Soliman was detained pending an investigation, and the detention has been renewed four times. He has not had consistent access to lawyers or to his family.
…
Soliman has criticized Egyptian authorities as failing to protect the rights of religious minorities and women. He has expressed his views about religious extremism in very strong terms. He is the first Egyptian blogger to be prosecuted for the content of his remarks. Remarkably, the legal complaint originated with the university that had expelled him; once, it was a great center of learning in the Arab world, but it has been reduced to informing on students for their dissent from orthodoxy.
…
Whether or not we agree with the opinions that Abdelkareem Nabil Soliman expressed is not the issue. What matters is a principle: People should be free to express their opinions without fear of being imprisoned or killed. Blogging should not be a crime.
Amen. Again, it’s stories like this that should remind us how good we have it here in America.
By the way, a website has been set up to petition for his freedom: www.FreeKareem.org
University of Chicago Professor Geoffrey Stone, one of America’s leading experts on First Amendment law, has an editorial in today’s New York Times calling for the passage of a federal journalist-source priviledge law, or “shield law.” Such a law would, in Stone’s words, “protect journalists from compelled disclosure of their sources’ confidential communications in the same way psychiatrists and lawyers are protected.”
Prof. Stone notes that 49 states already have such a shield law and that 13 of those states provide journalist-source confidentiality absolutely. In the 36 other states the right is qualified but still provides a great deal of protection. Stone argues that the same protections need to be granted at the federal level because:
Well, here we go again. Politicians in Washington are talking about regulating “excessive violence” on television, and this time around they plan to sanitize cable and satellite TV while they’re at it. I’ll have more to say about this issue in coming days and weeks as the debate unfolds. For now, I thought I’d just pass along some recommended reading for policy makers who haven’t given enough consideration to the sensibility or constitutionality of this quixotic endevour:
Celebrities and artists defending the First Amendment is nothing new. After all, they have the most to lose if speech and artistic expression are censored. But when I hear most celebs defend the First Amendment these days, it just makes me cringe. They typically come off sounding like complete morons.
That’s why I miss Frank Zappa so much. When he was with us, he was one of the most passionate and articulate defenders of freedom of speech–not just in the entertainment industry–but in all of America. And this man knew his history. He understood why the First Amendment was so important to America’s founding and why it remains one of the cornerstones upon which all other human liberties rest.
Just check out this amazing performance of his on CNN’s “Crossfire” back in 1986 defending the music industry from would-be censors. He truly was in the crossfire here as all three of the other clowns on the show ganged up on him. But in the end, he blew them away.
(And how about those old “Crossfire” sets! Looks like this was shot in someone’s basement).
Yesterday I testified before a joint House/Senate Science & Technology committee of the Georgia General Assembly. SB 59 would make it illegal for a social networking site like MySpace to give minor children access without permission from a parent. It would also give parents surreptitious access to their children’s pages.
My testimony mirrors that of Adam’s recent post detailing how industry is responding to online safety concerns. Parents and children both need to use existing resources and tools and educate themselves about online safety.
We don’t need to government to enact “regulation 2.0” to keep up with web 2.0. There are serious authentication and privacy issues implicated by the Georgia bill. We can stay safe online without new legislation.
Unsurprisingly, there’s a lot of talk in Washington again about regulating the Internet and online content. A proposal demanding extensive data retention requirements was reintroduced yesterday in the House. And the Deleting Online Predators Act (DOPA), which would ban social networking sites in schools in libraries, was reintroduced in the Senate (S. 49) in mid-January. Additional regulatory proposals are certain to follow, including the inevitable bills on mandatory website labeling and age verification that seem to get floated every session.
Beyond the many First Amendment and privacy-related concerns these legislative efforts raise, it’s important to realize that they aren’t even necessary. There are plenty of ways for parents to handle this job themselves thanks the many excellent tools that industry and others have put at their disposal.
For example, just this week a coalition of companies and associations have launched “Project Online Safety” (www.projectonlinesafety.com) to highlight the many excellent steps they are taking to empower parents to protect their children online.
In Part 1 of this series, I argued that the Democratic Party seems to be gradually abandoning whatever claim it once had to being the party of the First Amendment. Regrettably, examples of Democrats selling out the First Amendment are becoming more prevalent and the few champions of freedom of speech and expression left in the party are getting more difficult to find.
For example, in my previous essay, I documented how Democratic politicians were leading the charge to reinstitute the so-called Fairness Doctrine. In today’s entry I will discuss how Democrats are now working hand-in-hand with Republicans to orchestrate what would constitute the most significant expansion of content regulation in decades–the regulation of “excessive violence” on television.
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology. Learn more about TLF →
This review is terribly late, but I finally got around to watching the DVD of Kirby Dick’s documentary “This Film Is Not Yet Rated,” which goes after the MPAA’s movie rating system. Dick tries to paint the MPAA’s private, voluntary ratings board as a “star chamber” that sits in judgment of visual arts and routinely “censors” content it finds at odds with the desires of the studios, government, the military, churches, and so on. But to me, the whole film is much ado about nothing and, worse yet, it fails to adequately address the very real risk of a government censorship popping up in the absence of a private ratings system.
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.