In Dahlia Lithwick's
report on FCC v. Fox (about the FCC's TV indecency
policy), she writes:
Justice Stephen Breyer raises a question about why the ABC ass case is
being heard together with the fleeting-expletives case. Justice
Ginsburg asks whether Hair could be broadcast on network television
(Verrilli: "Serious questions") and then whether the opera Metropolis
could be broadcast (Verrilli: "Context-based approach"). Then Justice
Anthony Kennedy interrupts the parade of naked horrible to clarify:
"What you're saying is that there is a public value in having a
particular segment of the media with different standards than other
segments." Verrilli replies that, yes, this is about preserving "a
safe haven where if parents want to put their kids down in front of
the television at 8:00 p.m. they're not going to have to worry about
whether the kids are going to get bombarded with curse words or
nudity."
Because if you want that, you can find it in the back seat of my car,
at rush hour when we're late for Kung Fu. Just ask my children.
Kennedy replies that the V-chip is available and that "you ask your
15-year-old, or your 10-year-old, how to turn off the chip. They're
the only ones that know how to do it."
I'm not saying this isn't true--though I rather suspect it's
more likely that parents don't know how to turn on the
V-chip [explanation here,
in case you don't know] than that they don't know how to turn it
off. However, I think discussion illustrates pretty clearly
the confusion over the problem that people are trying to solve.
(The terminology "threat model" as applied to children probably
sounds funny to non-parents.)
In any case, there are two different things one might be trying
to accomplish with respect to potentially objectionable content:
- Prevent children from inadvertantly accessing objectionable content.
- Prevent children from intentionally accessing objectionable content.
If your objective is the former, then the V-chip works fine (except
for the horrible UI); you just configure your device to suppress
objectionable content. The sort of content-based regulation the FCC is engaging
in works as well, assuming you don't let your kids watch TV except
in the "safe" period, but it's a very inefficient mechanism
compared to the V-chip, being both overbroad (affecting everyone,
including people who don't have children) and not very effective,
as it applies only to broadcast TV.
On the other hand, if your model is to prevent children from intentionally
accessing objectionable content, and you further expect them to attempt
to bypass content controls, then restrictions on broadcast TV don't
do very much given that (a) if you have cable your kids can just
tune to unrestricted channels and (b) large number of other sources of such content
exist on the Internet. Blocking the tiny sliver of such content you still
get through broadcast TV mostly looks silly and anachronistic. Though
I guess it's less silly if you get hit with a huge fine for breaching
the rather unclear rules.
