FCC Watch: Court Rules Nip-Slip Fine Is A Legal “Wardrobe Malfunction”
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This is some very good news:
A Philadelphia appeals court Monday threw out the $550,000 indecency fine l
evied on CBS in connection with Janet Jackson’s infamous “wardrobe malfunction” at the 2004 Super Bowl.Judges said in the court ruling that one of the determining factors was that they considered Janet Jackson and Justin Timberlake “independent contractors” and CBS could not be held accountable for their actions.
It says something about how silly the whole thing was that it’s gotten so little press today. Americans are too stressed and focused on survival to care about things like whether Janet Jackson shows some boob on national television, and as the court noted, the majority of the complaints came from organized activist groups like the PTC, who have nothing better to do with their time than to ensure we stay chained to Puritanical moral standards and don’t mind our own goddamn business.
As Ars Technica’s Matthew Lasar notes, this is another blow to the FCC’s crusade to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars litigating networks to keep their content free of words and images that we can see just as easily and hear just as readily elsewhere, while abrogating their responsibility on everything from broadband policy to the DTV transition. And the rules don’t even make sense to boot. Hopefully this latest smack will get them in line and keep Kevin Martin from indulging his evangelical moralistic tendencies until at least January 20, 2009.
By the way, it was damn hard to exercise restraint and not post a pic that contained the offensive areola in question flying free. That’s an example of the love I have for all you people still at work.
This is some very good news:
A Philadelphia appeals court Monday threw out the $550,000 indecency fine l
evied on CBS in connection with Janet Jackson’s infamous “wardrobe malfunction” at the 2004 Super Bowl.Judges said in the court ruling that one of the determining factors was that they considered Janet Jackson and Justin Timberlake “independent contractors” and CBS could not be held accountable for their actions.
It says something about how silly the whole thing was that it’s gotten so little press today. Americans are too stressed and focused on survival to care about things like whether Janet Jackson shows some boob on national television, and as the court noted, the majority of the complaints came from organized activist groups like the PTC, who have nothing better to do with their time than to ensure we stay chained to Puritanical moral standards and don’t mind our own goddamn business.
As Ars Technica’s Matthew Lasar notes, this is another blow to the FCC’s crusade to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars litigating networks to keep their content free of words and images that we can see just as easily and hear just as readily elsewhere, while abrogating their responsibility on everything from broadband policy to the DTV transition. And the rules don’t even make sense to boot. Hopefully this latest smack will get them in line and keep Kevin Martin from indulging his evangelical moralistic tendencies until at least January 20, 2009.
By the way, it was damn hard to exercise restraint and not post a pic that contained the offensive areola in question flying free. That’s an example of the love I have for all you people still at work.