Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!qt.cs.utexas.edu!yale.edu!think.com!snorkelwacker.mit.edu!stanford.edu!neon.Stanford.EDU!umunhum!paulf From: paulf@umunhum.stanford.edu (Paul Flaherty) Newsgroups: comp.org.eff.talk Subject: Re: Cable Censorship Message-ID: <1991Jun28.002632.27854@neon.Stanford.EDU> Date: 28 Jun 91 00:26:32 GMT References: <2153@tamsun.TAMU.EDU> <1991Jun26.235525.2474@athena.cs.uga.edu> Sender: news@neon.Stanford.EDU (USENET News System) Organization: The Three Packeteers Lines: 26 In article muffy@remarque.berkeley.edu (Muffy Barkocy) writes: >An outside authority *is* imposing a restriction. The cable company is >restricting what the viewers can see (see my point about no alternate >providers). By your definition, every information provider is a censor, since they select how best to use their (limited) bandwidth. CATV (which stands for Community Access TeleVision, commonly distorted to CAble TV) is just that; and by the existing laws and interpretations of the First Amendment, are subject to Community Standards. So frankly, if you don't like the communtity resource, go buy a dish -- it's cheaper in the long run, and you have access to anything you can pay for. On a related note, a far more insidious act of censorship occurred last year with American Exxxtasy. AE broadcast NC-17 type material using a satellite transponder to home dish owners. The channel was of course encrypted using the GI VideoCipher II. However, the existence of said channel offended religious officials in a Bible Belt state, who then filed suit against AE and the uplink company, which proptly stopped uplinking AE. The suit was settled after six months of haggling, in which AE agreed never to operate in the NC-17 domain ever again. -- -=Paul Flaherty, N9FZX | "Gentlemen do not read each other's mail." ->paulf@shasta.Stanford.EDU | - Henry L. Stimson (1929)