Stripping cable: the war on "indecency".

• Author: Sanchez, Julian
• Position: Jay Rockefeller proposes a bill to be incorporated into a telecom bill - Indecent, Gratuitous, and Excessively Violent Programming Protection Act

FREED FROM the fetters that bind broadcasters using "the public airwaves," cable and satellite providers are able to pipe into our homes the indecent, gratuitous, excessively violent programming that all right-thinking Americans demand. Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.V.) wants to change that.

Rockefeller hopes to incorporate portions of his Indecent, Gratuitous, and Excessively Violent Programming Protection Act, co-sponsored last year by Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchinson (R-Tex.), into a broad telecommunications bill the Senate Commerce Committee is considering. His bill would, among other things, increase fines for broadcasters who run afoul of indecency rules, expand the Federal Communications Commission's regulatory authority to cover "gratuitous violence," and, most radically, subject "basic" and "enhanced basic" cable and satellite programming to the same content rules broadcasters must follow.

Adam Thierer, director of the Progress and Freedom Foundation's Center for Digital Media Freedom, calls Rockefeller's proposal "the most aggressive censorship measure that could come out of Congress since the...