Keeping politicians' hands off the Net & everything else related to technology
“Bush says he doesn’t favor censorship, but does think government should set limits.”
From an interview on C-Span, reported today on WALB.com
To his credit, Bush did stress that the first line of defense for children is parents, saying “They put an off button on the TV for a reason.” An important point. Parental limits are the best way to control what children see. Government limits are, er, well, censorship.
I’m going to disagree with co-blogger Tom Bell’s prediction that a decision by the Times to charge for content would trigger the blogosphere apocalypse. As I understand it, the right to quote excerpts from copyrighted material has been firmly established in law for decades. So much so that the Times probably wouldn’t waste time trying to get it overturned. In particular, it’s clearly legal to quote relatively brief snippets of a copyrighted source, and clearly illegal to reprint entire works without the permission of the copyright holder.
I don’t know where the exact line lies, but I don’t think it matters too much. Legitimate bloggers engaged in genuine criticism won’t need to excerpt entire articles, and the Times which knows this sort of law better than anyone, likely won’t waste their time on them. Indeed, I think the law is so clear on this issue that the judge would probably dismiss it almost immediately. Unless there’s some novel aspect to this that makes it different from the print realm, a single EFF or ACLU lawyer who knows how to write a motion to dismiss would probably be sufficient to keep the Times at bay indefinitely.
On the other hand, bloggers who excerpt entire articles are clearly stealing content from the Times and hence will likely get sued. But it’s hard to see how that’s a bad thing– the blogger in question can either shorten the quote to an excerpt, or remove it entirely. Here, it’s unlikely that any blogger will be stupid enough to try to defend blatant copyright infringement.
I’m a little puzzled about the supposed great temptation to excerpt. Yes, I like getting traffic to my blog, and so I’ll post things that I think will get me readers. But the benefits of increased traffic aren’t so substantial that it would be worth breaking the law and risking the wrath of Times lawyers. Given that the Times is available on newsstands around the country, the market value of any given article is pretty trivial. And certainly being known as the guy who steals New York Times content won’t make me famous or popular.
So personally, I think the Times will be shooting itself in the foot if it starts charging for content, but I don’t think its decision to do so will have any particular impact on the future of blogging, copyright law, or the fair use doctrine.
The state of Illinois wants to regulate the sale of video games to minors. I have written about this issue elsewhere, but in general, the problem with measures such as these is that it requires someone in government to define what constitutes “violent” or “sexually explicit” games. Thus, there will certainly be an element of censorship involved here.
Previous enactments such as this have already been tested in the courts and found to be unconstitutional. But without getting into the legal issues, I think the real question here is whether government or parents should be primarily responsible for what children watch or play. I grew up playing hundreds of video games on several different platforms (starting with Atari 2600 back in the late 70s). And I am now am a parent myself of two small children, one of which has already started playing some interactive computer games. As with anything else in this world, the answer here lies in moderation and parental guidance. When my kids are confronted by troubling themes or images, I will talk to them about it just as my parents talked to me. I will explain the difference between fantasy and reality. In some cases I might restrict their access to some of these games, or prohibit them from being in my house altogether. And, most of all, I will encourage my kids to do something more with their free time than sit on their butts in front of the television all day! I’ll give them good books, read to them, take them to the park, throw a ball with them, etc., etc.,…
Regardless, this is my business and the business of the millions of other parents out there–not the government. Quit telling me how to raise my children and quit acting as if I’m not capable enough to do this job myself. And shame on any parent out there who is lazy and runs to the government asking them to play the role of surrogate parent for them. If you just hand you kid $50 bucks and let them go buy any game they want and then let them play it without any supervision whatsover, then that’s your own damn problem. That video game console didn’t just walk into your house uninvited after all. Someone had to shell out the $200 bucks to put it there.
ABCnews.com posted an interesting piece on Saturday questioning how strong public support really is for the FCC crackdown on indecency. The piece is keyed off numbers obtained by Jeff Jarvis for his buzzmachine.com blog. Last month, you may remember, the FCC fined Fox $1.2 million for a raunchy scene on its (quite unsuccessful) reality show “Married in America.” At the time, the FCC said it had received 159 complaints about the show. But a FOIA request by Jarvis found that there were only 90 complaints, written by only 23 individuals. And 21 of those were copies of the same form letter.
Its not clear whether this case is typical–there were certainly more complaints about the Janet Jackson exposure, for instance. But in a related story, Mediaweek is reporting today that 99.8 percent of FCC complaints in 2003 were filed by one organization–the Parents Television Council. PTC has been responsible for a similar proportion so far this year, when complaints related to Janet’s expose are excluded.
All this reminds us that broad brush statements that the FCC is flooded with complaints should be taken with giant shakers of salt.
It also indicates that the FCC can be pressured quite easily even by a few complaints. The ABC report memorably quotes Chris Sterling of George Washington University as saying “the FCC is a leaning tower of Jello” on such things,” easily pushed one way or the other.
Last week, I posted a comment on the Monday Night Football/Desperate Housewives tempest, arguing that rather than have the FCC censor broadcasts, Americans should tune out offensive material the old fashioned way, with our thumbs on the remote control.
The post garnered a sprited dissent from a reader who argued that because broadcasting is so pervasive, viewers don’t really have a choice. I suggested that he should get out of the house more. Uh oh. The reader really launched on me after that one, writing:
“Yeah, you’ve got a point James. Let’s let all the shit in the world over the public airwaves. Hardcore porn in primetime. Anybody who doesn’t like it doesn’t have to own a tv. Or go to stores with tv’s. Or own cars with radios. Or let your kids have friends with either. How about a little full frontal nudity on the nightly news? It’s my fault for watching tv at all. “Get out more?” You’re basically telling me that it’s a parent’s responsibility to shield their kids from anything they don’t want them to see, but the only way to do that is to become Amish. Tell me, do you support having ANY decency standards on tv or radio at all? If so, what is that line?”
Wow. I really got him mad, which is probably my fault for being so flip. (And it’s not like we have so many readers here we can afford to offend any of them!) And he does raise points which deserve an answer.
Information wants to be free, and thanks to the decision of a federal court, online real estate listings will be unencumbered by California licensing requirements. Congratulations to the Institute for Justice, who represented ForSaleByOwner.com, a company that runs a classified advertising website that allows individuals to buy and sell homes. California’s demand that websites obtain a real estate broker’s license to publish real estate advertising and information was held a violation of the First Amendment. California law exempted newspapers, and the California Department of Real Estate argued that a listing in a newspaper is somehow different than on a website – the court labeled this as “wholly arbitrary.”
This case exemplifies the disparities in laws that favor brick-and-mortar companies over e-commerce. I wrote this NRO article about a similarly situated company in New York City that provides online real estate listings. LaLa Wang, owner of MLX.com, ran into the powerful New York state regulators (who are just as bad as their California brethren) and against a bad license requirement to be an apartment information vendor. The circa-1974 law requires anyone providing real estate rental or sale information to save paper copies of transactions and correspondence – not particularly applicable to a 24/7 website. This open letter to the NY Secretary of State on her behalf was a principled gesture from which I received no response.
The puritans over at the Parents Television Council are at it again. They have issued a new report entitled “Basic Cable Awash in Raunch” which documents what they believe to be immoral language or behavior on basic cable. They want the government to start regulating “indecency” on basic cable, or at least force cable operators to just sell subscribers they few stations they want.
I’ve addressed the problems with such “a la carte” regulatory schemes elsewhere, so I won’t discuss that again. Rather, I want to specifically address the question of whether the government has any business regulating cable television, a subscription-based service. The PTC thinks so, of course, arguing that: “Children are watching these programs and are being exposed to content that is far more explicit and potentially far more damaging than what they are seeing on broadcast television.”
But why are they letting their children watch these programs if they find them so offensive? Oh, wait, I get it… They’re saying OTHER PEOPLE’S children might be watching these shows, and for God’s sake–and they do mean GOD’S SAKE–we can’t possible let other people’s kids watch these shows, right? We have to make these decisions for all the stupid parents out there who might not understand the ungodly nature of this programming. Parents are just stupid, stupid, stupid! They’re not doing their job! The Almighty State must do their job for them and censor basic cable!
Should Michael Powell be the next NFL commissioner? It might make sense, given the amount of time the FCC has spent looking at football broadcasts lately. Only weeks after the commission fined CBS over showing a bit too much of Janet Jackson at the Super Bowl, ABC is now under the microscope for a somewhat tawdry segment aired at the beginning of Monday Night Football this week.
The video–which more people probably saw on cable news than on the actual show–featured a woman from the hit show “Desperate Housewives” dressed in only a towel in the locker room before the game, propositioning a Philadelphia Eagle. The towel drops at the end of the segment, definitely indicating some hanky-panky, although there’s no nudity.
The segment provoked outrage among many–including many conservatives, who found it out of bounds for prime time. Michael Powell dutifully tsked-tsked the segment, saying he found the segment “very disappointing,” adding “I wonder whether Walt Disney would be proud.” A better question might be whether Thomas Jefferson would be proud that federal bureaucrats increasingly decide what Americans get to see and hear.
Troubling times could lie ahead for free speech and the First Amendment in the wake of Tuesday’s election. With so many political analysts saying that “values” played a major role in getting Bush re-elected and giving the GOP more seats in Congress, I think there’s a good chance that the pro-censorship crowd will come knocking asking for a payoff. Various Christian conservative and “pro-family” groups will lobby for increased indecency / obscenity enforcement efforts. Here’s how that might play out by branch of government:
The FCC has just fined Nickelodeon and ABC Family for the heinous crime of showing too many commercials during kids’ programming.
Apparently FCC regulations say that children’s programming may contain no more than 10 1/2 minutes of advertising per hour on weekends and 12 minutes per hour on weekdays. And apparently Nickelodeon and ABC Family exceeded those limits quite a few times. In promulgating the new fines, the FCC gave them a tongue-lashing and warned all media outlets that the agency, “will continue to take swift and appropriate enforcement action to protect the interests of children.”
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.
