US News

From CNET News

At a hearing before the House of Representatives' Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, politicians served up a dizzying slew of suggestions about what kind of new federal laws should be enacted.

The ideas were all over the map, and most were new. Only one or two have actually been turned into formal legislation so far, but politicians are vowing to take action in the very near future.

The following is a roundup of some of the proposals for new federal laws, rules or regulations that would target Americans in the name of child protection, if various members of Congress get their way.

• Forcibly blocking Web sites: Rep. Bart Stupak, a Michigan Democrat, lauded a U.K. approach that involves compiling a list of illicit Web sites and using it to cordon off access to them.
   
• Eavesdropping on what Americans are doing online: Rep. Marsha Blackburn, a Tennessee Republican, suggested surveillance might do the trick. One issue that keeps recurring is how these companies are monitoring communications that might reveal the contents are child pornography, she suggested.
   
• Making certain hyperlinks illegal: One antigambling bill in Congress a few years ago would have required companies to delete hyperlinks to offshore gambling sites. Now the idea is resurfacing. Who's able to link to which site...and how we filter that out is key, said Rep. Greg Walden, an Oregon Republican.
   
• Recording which customer is assigned which Internet Protocol address: Rep. Ed Whitfield, a Kentucky Republican said he wanted to learn about ISP's retention policies for IP addresses in particular.
   
• Dispatching "search and destroy" bots: The idea of disrupting peer-to-peer networks surfaced in 2002 in the House of Representatives, and Sen. Orrin Hatch said a year later that copyright holders should be allowed to remotely destroy the computers of music pirates. Now Rep. Walden has revived that idea, proposing that search and destroy bots be launched to scour the Internet for illicit content.
   
• Restricting naughty Webcams: Rep. Cliff Stearns, a Florida Republican cited a New York Times article about an adolescent boy who charged customers to watch him perform erotic acts in front of his Web cam. We've heard about one Web site that had 140,000 images of adolescents from their Web cam.
   
• Recording e-mail correspondents and Web pages visited: Amazingly, even though we require telephone companies to keep records of telephone calls for 18 months...there is no federal law for Internet communications and there is no industry standard, said DeGette, the Colorado Democrat. DeGette has been a leading proponent in the House of Representatives of data retention and already drafted legislation making it mandatory for Internet providers and Web sites.
   
• Taking aim at search engines: Search engines were accused of selling sponsored links that relate to sex and minors. I have serious concerns about the adequacy of efforts by the search engine providers, said Tammy Baldwin, a Wisconsin Democrat.
   
• Letting government bureaucrats rate chat rooms: Video games and movies have ratings, so why not chat rooms, Rep. Stearns proposed.
   
• Permitting the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children to send subpoenas to Internet providers: This idea came from Gerard Lewis, Comcast's deputy general counsel and chief privacy officer. A 1996 federal law called the Electronic Communication Transactional Records Act currently requires Internet providers to retain any "record" in their possession for 90 days "upon the request of a governmental entity."
   
• Targeting peer-to-peer networks: Politicians have been talking about enacting new laws targeting P2P networks since early 2003. Now it may happen. Government reports have talked about finding child pornography on P2P networks, and Stupak said he wants to find a way to pull the plug: We have to find a way to block the peer to peer from person to person.
  
  Granting Internet censorship power to federal bureaucrats: Under the current U.S. legal system, only a judge can decide what's legally obscene or pornographic. Barton said the judicial process takes too long to rule in prosecutions of child pornography. Why is it not possible to immediately terminate that site? You have to have some agency of the government definitively say that is child pornography. Once that's established, why can't we immediately cut off that site? (That would avoid) waiting for a court to go out and convict the people operating the site.

From Twin Cities

A DVD featuring violent pit bull fights has unleashed protests against the distributor as well as several online merchants that had been selling the video, which may break federal laws against animal cruelty.

Amazon.com, Circuit City and Best Buy said they would pull the video, Hood Fights, Vol. 2, The Art of The Pit from their Web sites as soon as possible.

The Humane Society of United States has asked U.S. Attorney Roger Roper III in Dallas to investigate whether Hood Fights 2 violates a federal law against interstate or foreign commerce profiting from the depiction of animal cruelty. The DVD was released in April by a Texas-based Web site, streetheatdvd.com

Hood Fights 2 shows a series of staged matches in which trained fighting dogs suffer bloody, debilitating injuries for the apparent amusement of spectators, wrote the Humane Society's Ann Chynoweth.

From Silicon

Operators of commercial websites with sexually explicit content would have to post warning labels on each offending page or face imprisonment under a new proposal in the US Senate.

Caving in to earlier demands from the US Department of Justice, the proposed law focuses on a medley of new penalties related to child pornography and other sexual content on the internet.

The bill, which is called the Stop Adults' Facilitation of the Exploitation of Youth Act, or Internet Safety Act, beefs up the Justice Department's suggested penalties for negligent web labellers. It would impose up to 15 years in prison - an increase from the five years suggested in the original proposal - on any commercial site operator who fails to place "clearly identifiable marks or notices" prescribed by the federal government in either the site's code or on the pages themselves.

The bill would also create a new crime out of using misleading domain names to direct children to harmful material on the internet. Conviction would carry a prison sentence of up to 20 years. A similar sentence would apply to anyone who knowingly embeds words or images in the source code of their sites with the intention of deceiving minors into viewing "harmful" content.

The proposal drew criticism from civil liberties advocates, who said it presents enough ambiguities to prompt self-censorship of web content.

David Greene, director of a free-speech advocacy group called The First Amendment Project, said: Whether artistic works or political commentary or any type of images that may arguably come close to this category, people may not publish them for fear of being sent to jail for 15 years.

It's equally unclear how to draw the line between "commercial" websites, covered by the regulations, and "non-commercial" sites, which appear to be exempt, the bill's critics said.

The Internet Safety Act pulls its definition of sexually explicit material from existing federal law. It covers sexual intercourse of all types: bestiality, masturbation, sadistic or masochistic abuse, or lascivious exhibition of the genitals or pubic area of any person.

In practice, however, courts have interpreted those definitions quite broadly - in one case courts ruled that the "lascivious exhibition" of the pubic area could include images of clothed people wearing bikini bathing suits, leotards and underwear.

The Senate proposal grants just one reprieve: sexual depictions that constitute a "small and insignificant part" of a large website do not have to be labelled.
 

The ideas mentioned above seem to have been adopted but now appear in a slightly different legislative vehicle.

From CNET News

Web site operators posting sexually explicit information must slap warning labels on their pages or face prison terms of up to 15 years, according to a proposal adopted by a U.S. Senate committee on Tuesday.

During a day of debate on a wide-ranging communications bill, the Senate Commerce Committee approved an amendment backed by the Bush administration that proponents claim would help clean up the Internet and protect children online.

It says that commercial Web sites must not place "sexually explicit material" on their home pages upon pain of felony prosecution--and, in addition, they must rate each page or screen of the website that does contain sexually explicit material with a system to be devised by the Federal Trade Commission.

This will protect children from accidentally typing in the wrong address and immediately viewing indecent material, said Senator Conrad Burns, a Montana Republican.

Civil libertarians have opposed the mandatory labeling proposal, saying it violates the First Amendment's guarantee of freedom of speech. Also, courts have taken a dim view of mandatory rating systems: In a 1968 case called Interstate Circuit v. Dallas, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Dallas' ordinance requiring that movies be rated was unconstitutional because the criteria for rating were unclear and vague.

Burns' seven-page amendment is virtually identical to a standalone bill introduced earlier this month by Senator Jon Kyl, an Arizona Republican. Both proposals follow from a speech in April during which Attorney General Alberto Gonzales called on Congress to "promptly" enact such a law.

The entire communications bill won't become law unless it receives final approval by the committee and, later, the full Senate. It must also be reconciled with a House of Representatives version that differs in many respects, including having no Internet labeling requirements.

From AVN

Televisions stations affiliated with CBS Corp. have asked the FCC to drop a $3.3 million fine for alleged violations of federal broadcast standards for indecent content.

At issue is a fine levied by the agency against the network and its affiliates for airing a 2004 episode of the show Without a Trace which involved references to a teenage orgy and flashback sequences of young people in sexually suggestive positions, but with no nudity.

The affiliates said in their appeal to the agency that none of the e-mailed complaints to the FCC were from actual viewers but were instead e-mails sent by members of the conservative groups Parents for Television Council and from the American Family Association.

The stations cited the fact that the episode was a repeat airing of a show that drew no complaints when it was originally aired.

The FCC had fined each of the 103 CBS stations $32,500 for allegedly showing broadcast material graphically showing teenage boys and girls participating in a sexual orgy.”

About 8.2 million people saw the Dec. 31, 2004 episode, but complaints about the show did not begin arriving at the FCC until Jan. 12.

From X Biz

Angry over rulings by federal courts striking down anti-porn legislation on 1st Amendment ground, Republican Representative Chris Cannon, has proposed a new bill that would take jurisdiction in such cases away from the federal courts and make states the ultimate arbitrators of what constitutes obscene material.

H.R. 5528, known as the Pornography Jurisdiction Limitation Act of 2006, was introduced by Cannon in an effort to stop courts from functioning as legislatures, the congressman said: My legislation puts the power to protect families back in the hands of the states, where it rightfully belongs. If there are those who believe a state’s anti-pornography laws are too strict, they can find another state in which to live.

Cannon’s bill lays out sweeping language to institute his reform of the 1st Amendment landscape, reading in part: No court created by Act of Congress shall have jurisdiction, and the Supreme Court shall have no appellate jurisdiction, to hear or decide a question of whether a state pornography law imposes a constitutionally invalid restriction on the freedom of expression.

Whether Cannon’s dream of a balkanized litigation field for pornography issues comes to pass could be another matter, according to Tom Hymes, communications director for the Free Speech Coalition. We’re concerned about the bill, but not overly so. This kind of thing has been tried before, and it has failed. In this case, the bill just seems very problematic from a constitutional perspective.

Based on an article from  Wired

Obscenity prosecutions are taking a toll on the US porn industry as publishers embrace an every-man-for-himself approach under relentless Bush administration attacks.

The annual Cybernet Expo on Sunday here was overshadowed by a big question: Whether to stand united with producers of "extreme" material bearing the brunt of the assault in order to preempt attacks on milder content, or get some distance and hope to avoid being targeted?

Tara, webmaster of freepornstarpix.com, prefers the latter approach. It would be better to sacrifice some people … so everybody else can get on with it, said Tara, who declined to give her last name because her family doesn't know about her job. Extreme content producers, she said, need to cool it, pull back a little bit.

The focus of the debate is the 2003 obscenity prosecution of production company Extreme Associates for videos that feature urination, adults portrayed as children and simulated rape. The case, which has been bouncing around the court system for three years, is expected to go to trial in Pittsburgh next year.

Extreme Associates owner Rob Black blasted the porn industry this weekend for breaking ranks, rather than standing united. You hear all this solidarity. Bullshit. This industry except for about five people has hung me out to dry. Everybody wants to make a fucking compromise.

Pressure against the industry increased last month with a landmark lawsuit that appears to target a somewhat milder grade of porn. The Justice Department issued an obscenity indictment against JM Productions and Five Star Video over four porn DVDs, one featuring bukkake and another that reportedly simulates torturous oral sex to satirize the Abu Ghraib prison scandal. The defendants face a maximum sentence of five years for each of several obscenity counts.

In the new prosecution, the government is getting closer to the center and moving away from the most extreme content, said Connor Young, president of the porn webmaster resource site YNOT.com. He thinks all porn should be allowed except material that features children or involuntary violence.

Porn industry attorney Greg Piccionelli believes in the solidarity approach. If we don't defend the people they start with, sooner or later they'll work their way down, he told the webmasters.

Piccionelli acknowledged that industry attorneys have developed a reputation as "Chicken Littles" who always say the sky is falling. Even so, he predicted that if another Republican enters the White House: the whole industry will be in the same position as Extreme Associates four years from now.

From X Biz

The makers of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas agreed Thursday to settle Federal Trade Commission charges for failing to disclose that animated sex scenes were hidden on the game.

With the settlement, New York-based Take-Two Interactive Software Inc. and Rockstar Games Inc. face fines of up to $11,000 per violation if they violate the order, once it becomes final. The companies also must recall existing Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas games and offer a software patch.

Brian Shuster, CEO of Utherverse, said all of the publicity surrounding the controversy worked economically well for the two companies. It was the greatest marketing move in the game industry. Geez, how many times were they mentioned in the press?”

Take-Two’s best-selling Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas game included the sex scene known as "Hot Coffee," which could only be unlocked and viewed with a computer download and implementing “cheat codes” on PlayStation 2 and Xbox equipment. Retailers that do not carry adult-rated games pulled the title from shelves putting a chill on an industry accustomed to self-censorship. Later, the gaming industry’s ratings board slapped an "Adults Only 18+" label on Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas.

With the FTC deal, company officials must properly notify consumers of racy content on future games. The companies also have released a patch that, if downloaded and installed on the game, disables the “Hot Coffee” program; the patch is available for download at www.nomorehotcoffee.com. The companies also will be subject to compliance reporting requirements to ensure that they meet the terms of the order.

Parents have the right to rely on the accuracy of the entertainment rating system, said Lydia Parnes, director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection. We allege that Take-Two and Rockstar’s actions undermined the industry’s own rating system and deceived consumers. This is a matter of serious concern to the commission, and if they violate this order, they can be heavily fined.

From AVN

A Missouri couple has been  arrested for allegedly making a “snuff film” in which they videotaped a woman being raped and murdered.

Richard Davis, and Dena Riley turned themselves in, claiming they were tired of evading capture over the rape and murder of 41-year-old Marsha Spicer, who shared a home with them. The couple had a 5-year-old girl with them, whom police suspect was kidnapped from her home in Pittsburg, Kan.

Authorities said a videotape stamped May 14, shows a nude Spicer with her arms bound and her eyes taped shut while the man and woman raped, beat then suffocated her. The tape is said to show the suspects clearly.

Spicer’s body was found in a shallow grave on May 15 by a fisherman. Evidence recovered later, led police to the couple’s home where they found a notebook containing sexual references and a video camera aimed at the bed.

Davis and Riley told police they didn’t know the victim and that she had never been to their apartment. After police returned with a search warrant, they discovered the couple had fled.

Davis and Riley were charged with first-degree murder, assault, kidnapping and related charges.

From News4Jax

Investigators are reviewing surveillance tapes after someone attacked a sex shop preparing to open in Waldo in what Alachua County officials are calling an act of domestic terrorism.

The Waldo Fire Department initially responded to the chemical incident, then called the Gainesville Fire Department's hazardous materials team to remove the homemade device.

Detectives said that someone over the weekend set up a homemade device that spewed a chemical throughout the building being readied to open as Café Risqué, an adult-entertainment store.

It comes under domestic terrorism, we're going to look at it as such, said Alachua County Sheriff's Office Sgt. Keith Faulk. We're going to prosecute to the fullest extent as it can. Officials said use of such a device is a first-degree felony punishable by up to 30 years in prison.

The store, which will sell adult magazines, videos and sex toys, is set to open this summer.

Cafe Risqué co-owner Jerry Sullivan said. that people around Waldo had tried everything from prayer to protest to keep him from opening the store, but he said neither those tactics nor this most recent attack will keep him away. Construction on the building will continue as planned.

From X Biz

The FCC on Friday disclosed that the number of TV and radio broadcast indecency and profanity complaints jumped more than six times the 44,109 filed in fourth quarter 2005 and more than 10 times the number filed in the third quarter.

A recent Las Vegas episode on NBC included a scene in a strip club. The American Family Association says it filed more than 170,000 complaints alone against that episode.

AFA also says it had a significant number of complaints about NBC's dysfunctional priest drama Book of Daniel.

The Parents Television Council has led the way in rallying members to flood the FCC with indecency email complaints over shows that offend its members.

From AVN

Writer-director John Cameron Mitchell presented his latest film Shortbus, which was shot in New York at the Cannes Film Festival this week. It is notable as his actors have actual sex in the scenes.

Mitchell says he wants his actors to explore sex as a cinematic language rather than as erotic or titillating. His goal is to show that sex isn't ugly or dirty, but a part of life and a small act of resistance against Bush and the America we live in because it's trying to remind people of good
things about America and New York, he says.

While other such movies have used actual sex, they involved dramatic themes as opposed to Mitchell's feature film comedy which deals with characters who meet weekly in an underground salon for food, talk and sex.  Mitchell says: it's kind of a Woody Allen movie, but sex is involved.

Although the film has only been shown to investors, friends and others, Mitchell says he's gotten mixed responses. Some were disturbed by the emotional relationships while others were nonplussed by the sex scenes.

From AVN

The Broadcast Decency Enforcement Act of 2005 (S. 193) passed by unanimous consent in the Senate on Thursday.

The legislation raises fines from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) for broadcast decency violators from $32,500 to $325,000.

Republican Senator Sam Brownback introduced the bill last January: I am glad the Senate took action and increased fines for broadcasters who show indecent material. Radio and television waves are public property, and the companies who profit from using the public airwaves should face meaningful fines for broadcasting indecent material.

I urge the House to take action on increasing indecency fines so we can send a bill to the White House. It's time that broadcast indecency fines represent a real economic penalty and not just a slap on the wrist.
 

Based on an article from Mlive

Two years after Janet Jackson's "wardrobe malfunction", Congress has approved heavy fines for broadcasters airing indecent material.

The U.S. House Wednesday passed the Broadcast Decency Enforcement Act, which would boost the maximum fines for indecency from $32,000 to $325,000. The Senate bill, approved 275-35, moves next to the president, who is expected to sign it.

Most broadcasters are responsible, and many recently have taken steps to redouble their commitment to keeping indecency off the public airwaves, said nutter Representative. Fred Upton, who sponsored the House version. But for those broadcasters who are less than responsible, the FCC needs to have the teeth to enforce the law, and this bill ... will give the FCC that teeth.

From AVN

President Bush toady signed a bill calling for an increase in fines for broadcasters who violate indecency regulations from $32,500 to $325,000.

We must ensure that decency standards for broadcasters are effectively enforced, Bush told a crowd during a bill signing ceremony at the White House. That’s the duty of the FCC. That’s why we’ve got the chairman standing right here.

By law, radio stations and over-the-air television channels are prohibited from airing obscene material at any time. They also may not air indecent material between 6 a.m. and 10 p.m. which is considered a period when children may be watching or listening.  Cable and satellite broadcasts are exempt from such rules.

According to the FCC, indecent material is defined as that which contains sexual or excretory material that is not deemed obscene.

From the Monterey Herald See also PlanCensored

Locals artists have sued the city after an art show at a local park was closed when the city dismantled an art exhibit it deemed “too racy.”

Officials with the Department of Parks and Recreation shut down an art exhibit created by local art students because it included representations of male genitalia.

The show was held at the city-owned Brooklyn War Memorial by students at Brooklyn College, which is part of the City University of New York system.

Norman Siegel said he was representing 18 students in a freedom-of-expression lawsuit against the city, the parks department and Brooklyn College.

A parks department official said the city and college have an agreement that any artwork displayed at the public park facility must be deemed “appropriate for families.”

Siegel said that although a real estate developer offered to move the exhibit elsewhere, that students still planned to pursue the suit against the city.

The faculty of Brooklyn College issued a resolution yesterday deploring the Department of Parks and Recreation's decision to close an exhibition of students' artwork. The resolution was also directed to the college's administration, which on Monday sent trucks to remove several of the pieces of artwork, and to Mayor Bloomberg. The resolution was passed 58 votes to 10, according to a statement issued by one artist involved. It stated, in part: We deplore this act of censorship of artwork on the part of the Parks Department, and we affirm students' rights to be involved in any decisions or actions related to their art work.

More than a resolution is expected to come out of the controversy that began when the Brooklyn Parks Commissioner, Julius Spiegel, closed the exhibit and changed the locks on the space, explaining that not all the artwork was appropriate for families to view.

The pieces include a sculpture of a penis, and one that includes words describing an imaginary homosexual encounter involving someone named Dick Cheney.
 

From Associated Press

A group of Brooklyn College students, claiming censorship, sued the school and the city Thursday over last month's closing of an exhibit containing their sexually explicit artwork.

The exhibit at the city-owned Brooklyn War Memorial featured watercolor paintings depicting gay sex and sculpted male genitalia illuminated in a box. City Parks Department officials closed down the exhibit one day after it opened, and it was relocated to the college campus.

But the 21-page lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Brooklyn, claims that city officials acted arbitrarily in shutting down the exhibit May 4 and censoring the works created by the 18 students in the college Master of Fine Arts Program. It also claims that several of the pieces, which also included one with a live rat, were damaged when the show was dismantled.

None of the artwork was obscene, the lawsuit says. In displaying their artwork, the students did not violate any laws, park rules or terms in the special events permit.

The suit asks for unspecified compensation for damage to the artwork and emotional distress, along with a judgment protecting the constitutional rights of art students in the future.

We hope this case will set a precedent, especially within the city of New York, which is supposed to be an international center of the arts, said one of the students, Marni Kotak. Censorship cannot be allowed to thrive in New York City.

From the Monterey Herald

A federal judge has barred the Bush administration from requiring nonprofit AIDS groups to sign a pledge opposing prostitution and sex trafficking in exchange for federal dollars.

U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan said a law passed by Congress in 2003 violates the free-speech rights of groups such as DKT International Inc., which provides family planning and HIV/AIDS prevention programs in 11 countries.

Sullivan said the law goes too far because it insists that DKT "parrot" the U.S. government's position on prostitution and bars the group from taking and putting in place a different viewpoint on the issue in the way it spends privately obtained funds: By mandating that DKT adopt an organization-wide policy against prostitution, the government exceeds its ability to limit the use of government funds.

In 2003, Congress created a $15 billion program for fighting AIDS worldwide. Under the law, groups that do not adopt a policy explicitly opposing prostitution and sex trafficking cannot receive federal money.

The group's representatives refused to sign the pledge because they are involved in a program to distribute condoms to prostitutes and other sex workers in Vietnam. Signing the pledge, they argued, would stigmatize and alienate many of the people they are trying to help.

From Independent Mail

South Carolina’s Legislature is considering outlawing sex toys. The banning the sale of sex toys is actually quite common in some Southern states.

The South Carolina bill, proposed by Republican Rep. Ralph Davenport, would make it a felony to sell devices used primarily for sexual stimulation and allow law enforcement to seize sex toys from raided businesses.

Ms. Gillespie, an employee at an Anderson shop said: We are supposed to be in a free country, and we’re supposed to be adults who can decide what want to do and don’t want to do in the privacy of our own homes.

The measure would add sex toys to the state’s obscenity laws, which already prohibit the dissemination and advertisement of obscene materials. People convicted under obscenity laws face up to five years in prison and a $10,000 fine.

South Carolina law borrows from a 1973 U.S. Supreme Court ruling to define obscene as something "contemporary community standards" determine as "patently offensive" sexual conduct, which "lacks serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value."

Other states that ban the sell of sex toys include Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi and Texas, said Mark Lopez, an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union.

Alabama’s law banning the sale of sex toys has been circulating through the courts since its passage in 1998. U.S. District Judge Lynwood Smith Jr. twice ruled against the law, holding that it violated the constitutional right to privacy, but the state won both times on appeal. In February 2005, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear the case, which is back in the lower courts.

The ACLU got involved in the case, he said, to "keep the government out of the bedroom."

From Calendar Live

In a move that seems certain to force a showdown over what constitutes indecency on the airwaves, four TV broadcast networks and their affiliates announced Friday that they had united to challenge a Federal Communications Commission (FCC) ruling that deemed language used in several of their shows indecent.

CBS, Fox, ABC and Hearst-Argyle Television Inc. filed notices of appeal in federal court. They are seeking to overturn a March 15 ruling that found some broadcasts of the CBS News program The Early Show, Billboard Music Awards on Fox and ABC's drama NYPD Blue to be indecent because they contained variations on two obscenities: 'fuck' and 'shit'.

Of the offending incidents, which all aired between 2002 and 2004, those on CBS and Fox involved words that the networks said were blurted out spontaneously. Those on ABC were scripted.

None of the incidents involved NBC, but the network filed a petition to intervene on behalf of the three other networks and their affiliates. NBC is waiting to resolve its own FCC complaints, including one involving U2 lead singer Bono, who uttered an obscenity while accepting an award at the 2003 Golden Globes.

The networks want the FCC to not only reverse its ruling but also to establish clearer guidelines about what is indecent.

In addition to going to court, the networks and affiliate groups representing more than 800 of the nation's TV stations issued an unusual joint statement Friday, calling the ruling unconstitutional and arguing that any obscenities contained in the programs were fleeting, isolated — and in some cases unintentional. The FCC overstepped its authority in an attempt to regulate content protected by the 1st Amendment, acted arbitrarily and failed to provide broadcasters with a clear and consistent standard for determining what content the government intends to penalize.

Privately, network executives vowed that this week's filings were the first of what will be many challenges they intend to file against the FCC in the coming months.

From the BBC

The duo behind South Park have used the cartoon's latest episode to attack their network for banning them from using an image of the Prophet Muhammad.

Comedy Central prevented Matt Stone and Trey Parker from using the image after the furore caused by a Danish newspaper publishing caricatures of Muhammad.

Instead, Wednesday's episode showed an image of Jesus Christ defecating on President George Bush and the US flag.

Comedy Central said in a statement that it stood by its decision: In light of recent world events, we feel we made the right decision.

From The Digital Divide, See also www.DearAOL.com

AOL was caught red-handed today censoring email to AOL customers that included a link to an AOL opposition site.

Over 300 people reported that they had tried sending AOL subscribers messages that contained a link to www.DearAOL.com but received a bounceback message informing them that their email "failed permanently."

After the DearAOL.com Coalition (600 organizations convened by Free Press, MoveOn and EFF to protest AOL's pay-to-send email plan) notified the press of this blocking, AOL quickly cleared the opposition URL from their filters, alleging a "software glitch."

Today’s events prove the DearAOL.com Coalition’s point entirely: Left to their own devices, AOL will always put its own self interest ahead of the public interest. AOL wants us to believe they won’t hurt free email when their pay-to-send system is up and running. But if AOL is willing to censor the flow of information to silence their critics, today, how could anyone trust that they will preserve the free and open internet down the road?

According to EFF's Danny O'Brien, ISPs like AOL can silently ban huge swathes of legitimate mail for the flimsiest of reasons. The problem is that no-one hears about it. It's only when DearAOL users cried foul, that this censorship came to light. This begs the question: how many other emails with important information have been barred by AOL?

AOL's actions today should put everyone on alert against network giants promising to be good stewards of a free and open Internet.

From Oh My News

President George W. Bush and the Justice Department are among the winners of the 2006 Jefferson Muzzle awards, given by a free-speech group to those it considers the worst violators of constitutional rights in the past year.

Bush led the list, compiled by the Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression, for authorizing the National Security Agency to tap the phones of U.S. citizens who make calls overseas. The wiretaps were conducted without authorization from a federal court. The White House predictably defended the warrantless wiretapping program as necessary to fight terrorism.

The Justice Department earned a Muzzle for demanding that Google turn over thousands of Internet records, prompting concerns that more invasive requests could follow if the government prevails.

If individuals are fearful that their communications will be intercepted by the government, such fears are likely to chill their speech, the Jefferson center said.

Other winners of the 15th annual awards include the Department of Homeland Security for barring an air marshal from expressing concerns about public safety; the Yelm, Washington state, City Council for banning the words ''Wal-Mart'' and ''big-box stores'' at public hearings; and students at the University of Connecticut who heckled conservative columnist Ann Coulter.

The center, based in Charlottesville, Virginia, awards the Muzzles each year to mark the April 13 birthday of Thomas Jefferson, the third president and a First Amendment advocate. The First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution guarantees such basic rights as freedom of speech and the press.

From AVN

Just before moving to the post, Secretary of State, Condoleeza Rice barred porn magazines from the U.S. State Department, according to U.S. News & World Report.

The news magazine is reporting that Rice was alerted by an aide last year about porn magazines encased in plain brown paper were placed along with other magazines on newsstands.

Once she was confirmed by the Senate to her new post, Rice had the magazines removed and permanently barred from the public building. An aide said that Rice didn’t understand how her department could stand for women’s rights around the world while selling pornography that supposedly degrades women.

Rice reportedly said such magazines added to a “hostile work environment.”