A Blog In Review

I found this course to be by far the most intriguing course that I have taken in college thus far. It will be extremely difficult, probably impossible, to top this course.

To me, this course was more than just “the porn course.” It educated me on the mechanics of the porn industry, exposing me to an industry that I had always perceived as low-brow to even ponder the business side of it.

As a person who has a keen interest in television programming, I especially found the lectures pertaining to obscenity and indecency interesting – I blogged several times about these topics.  Several of my entries discuss stories pertaining to obscenity and indecency in news events, such as the recent Volkswagen billboard and TV ads.

Additionally, I truly enjoyed taking an online course in general, for it allowed me to “learn at my own pace.” Not only could I watch the lectures at any point in the week (although it was usually earlier in the week), but I could pause the lectures and replay certain portions of them to ensure that I taken sufficient notes on a given topic.

Dr. Halavais – thanks for a great course. We will miss you here at UB!

“The FCC’s Bizarre Indecency Crusade”

Upon reading KiPs' blog, I found myself sharing the same sentiments about the issues discussed in his/her blog. The writer discussed the FCC’s obscenity and indecency standards, in reference to the material covered in lecture 28 (“Indecency”). KiPs stated that he/she thought that “the FCC was right when they created the parental guide viewing system, some of the movies/shows that they rated suffered greatly when their main points were removed or cut-out for T.V. viewing.”

Several weeks ago, I also blogged about the FCC and their “fine-happy” ways. I referred to this article that my father, an audio engineer at a local TV station, had shared with me from one of his TV-trade journals. The article discussed the FCC’s unfair grounds for doling out fines for TV broadcast stations.

Several days ago, my father also pointed out this article (also from TV Technology) to me. The article discusses one of the threats to TV broadcast stations – “the FCC’s bizarre indecency crusade.” One of solutions to beating the FCC in the indecency battle presented in the article involved streaming a commercial-free uncensored version of a given TV show that the FCC would find indecent on the respective TV network’s website, while airing the “second-rate show already viewed on the Internet by anyone who cared” at a later point in time.

As mentioned in the “Broadcasters Engulfed In 'Perfect Storm'” article, this strategy worked for the WB network, which, several months ago, found itself between the proverbial rock and a hard place as far as indecency and the FCC are concerned. The WB network was not sure if the March 28th premiere of its new series, “The Bedford Diaries,” would “set off… fines from some of the prudish FCC members.” When the chairman of the WB network asked the creative consultants for “The Bedford Diaries” to make some edits which would make the show more palatable for the FCC, they responded with “an emphatic ‘NO.’”

The creator of the show, Tom Fontana, whose credits in his 20-plus years in the TV business include “St. Elsewhere” and “Oz,” told The New York Times that he found the FCC ruling against his show “‘incomprehensible’ and ‘the most chilling thing I’ve ever faced in more than 20 years in the television business.’”
Fontana added that this ruling will send TV viewers the message “that they'll be forced to go to alternative ways of looking at shows if they want to see the real thing. It's like they're telling people that broadcast television now has much less interesting stuff than you see on the Web or cable."

The WB network responded to this situation by streaming a commercial-free version of the uncensored program on its website, and then it aired the censored version on its “100-plus WB affiliate stations” one week later.

Another issue which was briefly discussed in the same article was the “future viability of stations.” If the FCC continues on its censorship rampage “for broadcasters to air only mindless, sanitized fluff,” then this could have a negative impact on broadcast stations. Although the article didn’t discuss what the negative impacts of the FCC’s censorship efforts could be, I can only assume that it would involve smaller broadcast stations having to shut down (or severely cut back their operations) due to the FCC’s fines for indecent programming – repeated fines from the FCC could potentially bankrupt a smaller broadcast station.

Like KiPs, I also believe that the FCC made a good decision when they established the parental control guidelines, which allows parents to have more control over the TV programs that their children watch. However, I also believe that the FCC has gone too far in its efforts to cleanse the broadcast airways.

Oops! She Did It Again.

A former Tennessee physical education teacher was arrested again and is being held without bail “for allegedly sending naked photos and sexually explicit messages” to a 13-year-old student that she had sex with last year.

Pamela Rogers, 28, was arrested for violating the terms of her probation, which stated that she couldn’t contact the teen.  

In August 2005, Rogers received a jail sentence of six months for the three-month affair that she had had with the student. However, she was released from prison in February due to good behavior.

Earlier this month, Rogers was arrested for violating her probation terms for creating a website and blog on Myspace.com and posting messages to the boy. Upon pleading not guilty to the charges, Rogers was released on bond with a July hearing pending for those charges.

According to The Daily Telegraph’s website, this week’s arrest is the result of allegations which claimed that Rogers had had “extensive contact” with the boy through phone calls, e-mails, text messages. Additionally, she also sent the boy naked photos of herself and sexually explicit videos via cell phone, some which were sent after her most recent appearance in court on April 12^th.

This case is relevant to our class because in recent weeks, Dr. Halavais has discussed the profound impact that the Internet has had on children’s exposure to pornographic materials, and even to child predators.

As Dr. Halavais mentioned in lecture 31 (“Protecting Kids – Part 3”), “the Internet is almost ideally suited for child predators.” Germane to Pamela Rogers’ recent arrest, the Internet was a good setting for her to contact her 13-year-old student because as Dr. Halavais stated in lecture 31, “[children] are fairly unsupervised… parents don’t know what they’re doing online.”

Can Levi Strauss Track Its Customers?

In lecture 34, Dr. Halavais discussed issues pertaining to one’s privacy. As he mentioned in the lecture, “no where in the Constitution or the Bill of Rights do you find… the word privacy.”  

With that in mind, according to this article, Levi Strauss has recently confirmed that they are “using tiny microchips to track clothing in one undisclosed location in the U.S.” According to this article, the “tiny microchips” are utilizing radio frequency identification, or RFID, technology. RFID allows an item to be “tracked from a distance” by reading the particular microchip’s unique identification number, which “can be read silently and invisibly by radio waves.”  

As can be expected, privacy advocates aren’t too happy with this tracking program. Katherine Albrecht, a privacy advocate who co-authored the book Spychips: How Major Corporations and Government Plan to Track your Every Move with RFID, with fellow privacy advocate Liz McIntyre, noted that “companies like Levi Strauss are painting their RFID trials as [harmless.]” She added that “this [RFID] technology is extraordinarily dangerous,” and further elaborated “few things are more intimately connected with an individual than the clothes they wear.” 

However, officials for Levi Strauss said that the microchips are not embedded in the clothing, but only in the hand tag of the item, which can be removed from the article of clothing. The company also stated that the RFID tags are being used strictly for inventory management purposes – not for customer tracking.  

It will be interesting to see how this privacy-related news story plays out in the weeks to come.

Thoughts on Porn Down Under

Upon reading this blog, I was in agreement the blogger. The writer, Jackie25, comments about this blog, which is from a source outside of our class.

In Jackie25’s blog, the writer discusses the points made in the outside source’s blog by saying that the Australian government is seeking to filter out violence and pornography from ISPs; both bloggers believe that this plan “will only create black-markets” for pornography, while the outside source adds that this restriction would serve to “[attach] an even greater stigma” to pornography.

Additionally, both writers also mention that the proposed law would only be able to regulate pornographic and violent websites based in Australia, and as Jackie25 stated, “[the new law] wouldn’t be effective seeing as how the net is global.”

As far as their stances on the proposed law, both bloggers believe that it is a ridiculous idea. Jackie25 stated that “sex, and therefore porn, is basic human instinct and to regulate it seems nuts,” adding that “before this law is passed, the government needs to look at it from a broader perspective and step into reality!”

The outside source believes that “education, debate and greater parental responsibility… is the key – enforcing restrictions that would be virtually impossible to keep sealed strikes me as a pointless quest to cram the genie right back into the bottle.”

Thank Goodness For Porn!

After reading this thought-provoking blog entitled “Ten Things to Thank Porn For,” I found myself rather amused, yet at the same time, informed. Some of Sam Sugar’s statements resonated with me, such as:  

1. The development of certain technologies, including the Internet, thanks to porn. Online credit card processing and video streaming are just a couple of the technologies that pornographers have helped to develop, according to Sugar.  

2. Sexual liberation – I agree with Sugar that having pornography available on the Internet has made people more willing to experiment sexually. The Internet offers a more public forum for such experimentation and perhaps it has made people realize that others are interested in the same types of acts.   

3. The advancement of women – I suppose Sugar is right in noting that a few “ex-junkies from broken homes” are now “running business empires and buying planes” thanks to their involvement in the porn industry, although it certainly isn’t among my career goals in the future. I do agree with him that websites have allowed everyone, not only pornographers, to “bypass the establishment” in order to communicate directly with their key publics.

Questions for Mr. Lucas

Upon reading the rough draft of the “On Gay Porn” article by Michael Lucas, I had several questions for Mr. Lucas:

1) Do you think that TV networks (as well as the rest of the mainstream media) will eventually include more accurate portrayals of homosexual men?

2) In your article, “On Gay Men,” you refer to the “depressing, clownish gay characters painted by Hollywood today.” Does the portrayal of gay men in the media of other countries differ from that of the U.S.?

Swear Words and the FCC: Indecent? Or decent in context?

Several days ago, my father, an audio engineer at a local TV station, shared an article with me that he found in one of his TV-trade journals.  

The article, which was in the April 12, 2006 edition of TV Technology, was titled “Dirty Words Cost: FCC Levels Sweeping Indecency Fines.” The story reviewed a recent Federal Communication Commission decision against a PBS station in
San Mateo that aired a profanity-laced documentary about blues musicians containing the “F-word” and the “S-word.” The TV station had to pay a $15,000 fine. However, actors playing soldiers in the movie “Saving Private Ryan” were allowed to use those same words without financial penalty. 

What’s the difference between a movie and a documentary about blues musicians, you may wonder? According to the FCC, in “Saving Private Ryan,” deleting the profanity would have “altered the nature of the artistic work and diminished the power, realism and immediacy of the film experience for viewers.” In contrast, the FCC felt that in “The Blues” documentary, “viewpoints (could have been) expressed without the repeated broadcast of expletives” while containing to educate viewers about the lives of blues musicians. 

It’s a fine line for broadcasters to walk, as far as I am concerned. The FCC decision leaves many gray areas. As Andrew Schwartzman, president and CEO of the Media Access Project in Washington, DC, said, “For somebody trying to program a radio or television station, or trying to advise a programmer, the world is much less certain today….what the FCC put out is fraught with contradictions.” I agree with Schwartzman on this issue.

Oops! Volkswagen did it again.

Upon viewing this blog, I was reminded of a recent anecdote from my father, an audio engineer at a Buffalo television station, about profanity on television. My dad’s responsibilities include serving as the master control operator for the station during the 7:30-8:30 p.m. timeslot. On Friday, he aired a TV commercial for Volkswagen Jetta that ended in what sounded like “Holy Shit,” except that the actor supposedly said “Holy Shh.” According to Dad, the “shit” was audible on the air, which is a violation of the Federal Communication Commission’s regulations about indecent language. Dad had to make note of the indecent words on the station’s log, which is turned in to the traffic director for further action by the station’s management.

It is interesting that this is the second time within a month that Volkswagen is in hot water for indecent advertising. Just a couple of weeks ago, I blogged about Volkswagen’s “Turbo Cojones” billboard created by a Miami ad agency that thought its young, bilingual Hispanic audience would think “Cojones” meant “bold” and “daring.” However, they took “Cojones” for its literal meaning – “testicles” – and the billboards were removed not only in Miami, but also in New York and Los Angeles.

Four TV Networks Take the FCC to Court

Upon reading this news story on MSNBC’s website, I felt that it was rather pertinent to our class – especially given the subject of the article.

The article discusses how the four major TV networks (ABC, CBS, NBC, and Fox), along with the Hearst-Argyle-Television group of TV station, filed appeals in several federal courts regarding a ruling on March 15th by the Federal Communications Commission.

As Dr. Halavais discussed in lecture 28, the Federal Communications Commission enforces time, place, and manner restrictions, and has been regulating the content of broadcast media for about 70 years.

The March 15th ruling by the FCC declared that several programs aired by the major networks in question were "indecent" due to language. Programs cited by the FCC for profane language included CBS's The Early Show (in 2004), incidents at the Billboard Music Awards shows broadcast by Fox which involved Cher and Nicole Richie (in 2002 and 2003), and several episodes of ABC's NYPD Blue that aired in 2003. 

It is worth noting that these programs did not air during the "safe harbor" period of time, which as Dr. Halavais discussed in lecture 28, is from 10 p.m. until 6 a.m.

However, since the indecent incidents occurred before a 2004 FCC ruling which stated that the almost all uses of certain expletive words would be considered profane and indecent, the FCC did not fine the networks which aired the indecent programs.

According to the article, the filing of the appeal to the March 15th ruling by the networks and the Hearst-Argyle Television group of stations is considered to be a "protest against the aggressive enforcement of federal indecency rules that broadcasters have complained are vague and inconsistently applied. Millions of dollars in fines have been levied based on those rules."

Additionally, as previously mentioned, the appeal is being filed jointly by the four major networks and affiliate groups, which is a rare occurrence in television. They issued a joint statement today, calling the March 15th FCC ruling “unconstitutional and inconsistent with two decades of previous FCC decisions.” Their statement also said that they “are seeking to overturn the FCC decisions that the broadcast of fleeting, isolated – and in some cases unintentional – words rendered these programs indecent.”

The group added that they were opposed to the “growing government control over what viewers should and shouldn’t see on television,” adding that “parents already have the ability to block certain programs by using the V-chip and various other parental controls.”

I think that it will be interesting to see how this case turns out, for it could have significant implications on the power of the FCC in the years to come.