Effects of S.314 (Communications Decency Act)

[David Mandl]

At 11:02 AM 2/8/95, strick at techwood.org wrote:
>Right now there is a "safe harbor" from around 10pm (or is it 9pm?)
>thru 6am, but this changes regularly, usually as a result of "case law"
>(someone being prosecuted under next month's rules, not this month's)

Yup, this stuff is subject to change about every week--so much so that at
WFMU, our station manager simply imposed one set of fairly "conservative"
restrictions on "obscene" language at _all_ hours, set it down on paper,
and left it at that.  Can't blame him, as the guidelines were changing
literally every few months and at one point it was very easy to be
operating based on last month's rules.  "Safe harbor" loopholes,
disclaimers, etc., are history right now as far as I know, but of course it
may have changed.

I think the important thing is for the program director to have some
"responsible" codified policy to show to the FCC if they hassle you.  They
mainly want to know that s/he's keeping an eye on things and has some
coherent house rules.  This sucks, of course, but probably makes life
easier in the long run.  I have occasionally let a naughty word on a record
slip by (accidentally, of course), and no one's going to make a big deal
about it.

For a while, we were all convinced that the FCC left all these rules
impossibly vague on purpose, just so that you didn't even know how to obey
the law if you wanted to.  Everyone a potential criminal.

   --Dave.

--
Dave Mandl
dmandl at panix.com