After Five Years, the End of the Road
As 2008 comes to a close, the Federal Communications Commission is finally trying to close the book on the case of the half-naked halftime show by going to the U.S. Supreme Court and trying to reinstate the fine it imposed on CBS for Janet Jackson's nip-slip.
Back in July, the Third Circuit Court of Appeals overturned the FCC’s $550,000 fine, dealing a major blow in the battle for prime time nudity.
From AVN.com:
In [CBS corp. v. FCC], the Court pointed to the FCC's Feb. 21, 2006 omnibus order, referred to as the "Golden Globes rule" after singer Bono's "fucking brilliant" exclamation during the 2003 Golden Globes telecast, which supposedly changed fleeting expletives from legally benign to actionable.
"[T]he FCC urges another reading of Golden Globes, perhaps less obvious yet still plausible," the Court wrote, "which interprets Golden Globes as addressing only the broadcast of fleeting expletives, not other fleeting material such as brief images of nudity. Further, the Commission contends its fleeting material policy, as initially adopted, was limited to fleeting words and did not extend to fleeting images."
While the Third Circuit, however, didn't buy that alleged distinction, it spent more time dealing with the procedural issues, as noted in our earlier article , as well as the question of whether the technology which now allows broadcasters to impose a several-second delay on live video broadcasts was capable of preventing the tit exposure back on 2004.
"We hope the Supreme Court will recognize there are rare instances, particularly during live programming, when it may not be possible to block unfortunate fleeting material, despite best efforts," a CBS spokesperson said in response to the FCC's petition filing. "Doing so would help to restore the policy of restrained indecency enforcement the FCC followed for decades."
