[ninty]

[quote:98328] In March, the House passed legislation to dramatically raise "indecency" fines for broadcast television imposed by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to $500,000. Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas), chairman of the House Commerce Committee, heralded the high fines, saying, "This legislation makes great strides in making it safe for families to come back into their living room."

Emboldened by this success, conservative leaders like Barton and Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) are threatening to go even further. For the first time, they want to apply indecency standards to cable, to satellite and even to the Internet.

"We put restrictions on the over-the-air signals," Stevens, chair of the Senate Commerce Committee, said in March, while speaking to the National Association of Broadcasters annual state leadership conference. "Cable is a greater violator in the indecency arena. … I think we can put restrictions on cable itself. At least I intend to do my best to push that."

And Barton told reporters, "In the foreseeable future, you are going to see a convergence [of standards]. I stand by that. … The impact [of indecency programming] is going to be the same in the home. It's irrelevant what the ownership or the origination of it is."[/quote:98328]

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/051005L.shtml