quote:
Originally posted by elinterventor01:
Of course, this only applies to broadcast stations, not cable. The FCC has no authority over those.
The FCC can only do what Congress allows. The agency does have some authority over cable, and the sound act applies there and satellite but it's been ruled that applying decency restrictions to it similar to broadcast would violate the first amendment since you could always ask the cable company to block the channels or you simply can opt to not have cable at all.
For instance, ever wondered why cable boxes black out scrambled channels now entirely? Because it was requested in section 505 of the Communications Decency act of 1996 due to complaints the FCC was getting over signal bleed (sound or images getting through the scramble)