Hacker News Reader

Comment by dogleash | Hacker News Reader

MPAA ratings are not government censorship, they're cartel censorship.

The reason corporations follow the cartel's rules are financial agreements and the fear of PR backlash for not letting parents outsource parenting.

View on HN

So there's literally no government involvement in what content can be shown in broadcast material in the US? Even for FTA TV? In Australia the ratings system is administered by the commonwealth government, so I incorrectly assumed the same was true in the US.

Obscenity is one of the (very few) exceptions to the First Amendment. What exactly makes something “obscene” is somewhat unclear (see the Miller test), but in practice explicit pornography, for example, is not legally considered obscene, in part because the definition is somewhat dependent on community standards and porn is very, very popular.

The FCC can and does regulate over‐the‐air broadcasts to a stricter standard, thanks to its exclusive authority over the inherently limited wireless spectrum. It restricts not just obscenity, but indecency (explicit sex) and profanity (bad language). However, this power does not extend to (e.g.) cable TV, which is not broadcast over the publicly owned airwaves.

The US really does generally have stronger free speech protection than the rest of the developed world. There is no equivalent in the US to a work being “refused classification” as seen in Commonwealth countries. The First Amendment would prohibit it. Some retailers won’t sell unrated or X‐rated films or AO‐rated games, but others can, because the ratings systems are formed by industry groups and are not compulsory.

When the Christchurch shooting happened, the New Zealand government banned both the shooter’s manifesto and the livestreamed video, making them illegal to possess or distribute. I doubt such a thing could happen in the US. (I remember my surprise that NZ actually has a government office named “Chief Censor.”)

We have law that restricts indecent/obscene content, and it applies exclusively to FTA TV and radio. But it's completely unrelated to the ratings system for tv and movies.

Most channels not restricted by those rules (subscription cable & satellite) set in-house standards on content for commercial reasons. And of the broadcasters that are covered by the regulation, they are the old stodgy networks and never choose to get near the boundaries.

The interesting thing is that end result seems to be a proliferation of extreme views in the US vs other similar countries, which is arguably the opposite of what you might reasonably expect from the opportunity to allow freer discussion of ideas.

FWIW, neo-Nazi marches in Europe have way more people attending them than anything that American fash have tried to cobble up to date (including the particularly infamous one in Charlottesville). Radical nationalist parties seem rather popular in Europe lately as well, to the point where they already run some countries (Hungary, Poland).

Interesting, though not necessarily indicative of anything in its own right. I'd always expect a culture of free expression of ideas and a willingness to discuss fringe viewpoints would help reduce the proliferation of violent or socially destabilising behaviour, but I'm less convinced the degree of constitutionality guaranteed free speech matters all that much.

Is that the case, though? The US has problems of religious and political extremism, but is Muslim violence worse in magnitude than in France with its restrictions on religious expression, or anti‐semitism than in the European countries that ban Holocaust denial?

Good question. At best it would seem that such censorship doesn't seem to have all that significant impact on beliefs and behaviours.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com