censorship

censorship,

official prohibition or restriction of any type of expression believed to threaten the political, social, or moral order. It may be imposed by governmental authority, local or national, by a religious body, or occasionally by a powerful private group. It may be applied to the mails, speech, the press, the theater, dance, art, literature, photography, the cinema, radio, television, or computer networks. Censorship may be either preventive or punitive, according to whether it is exercised before or after the expression has been made public. In use since antiquity, the practice has been particularly thoroughgoing under autocratic and heavily centralized governments, from the Roman Empire to the totalitarian states of the 20th cent.

In the United States

Censorship has existed in the United States since colonial times; its emphasis has gradually shifted from the political to the sexual.

Political Censorship

Attempts to suppress political freedom of the press in the American colonies were recurrent; one victory against censorship was the trial of John Peter ZengerZenger, John Peter
, 1697–1746, American journalist, b. Germany. He emigrated to America in 1710 and was trained in the printing trade by the pioneer printer William Bradford.
..... Click the link for more information. . The Bill of Rights in the U.S. Constitution guarantees freedom of the press, speech, and religion. Nevertheless, there have been examples of official political censorship, notably in the actions taken under the Sedition Act of 1798 (see Alien and Sedition ActsAlien and Sedition Acts,
1798, four laws enacted by the Federalist-controlled U.S. Congress, allegedly in response to the hostile actions of the French Revolutionary government on the seas and in the councils of diplomacy (see XYZ Affair), but actually designed to destroy Thomas
..... Click the link for more information. ), suppression of abolitionist literature in the antebellum South, and local attempts in the 19th and 20th cent. to repress publications considered radical. During the cold warcold war,
term used to describe the shifting struggle for power and prestige between the Western powers and the Communist bloc from the end of World War II until 1989. Of worldwide proportions, the conflict was tacit in the ideological differences between communism and
..... Click the link for more information. many Americans worked to keep textbooks and teaching that they considered deleterious to "the American form of government" out of schools and colleges; many others opposed this effort (see academic freedomacademic freedom,
right of scholars to pursue research, to teach, and to publish without control or restraint from the institutions that employ them. It is a civil right that is enjoyed, at least in statute, by all citizens of democratic countries.
..... Click the link for more information. ).

The issue of government secrecy was dealt with in the Freedom of Information ActFreedom of Information Act
(1966), law requiring that U.S. government agencies release their records to the public on request, unless the information sought falls into a category specifically exempted, such as national security, an individual's right to privacy, or internal
..... Click the link for more information. of 1966, which stated that, with some exceptions, people have the right of access to government records. The issue was challenged in 1971, when a secret government study that came to be known as the Pentagon PapersPentagon Papers,
government study of U.S. involvement in Southeast Asia. Commissioned by Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara in June, 1967, the 47-volume, top secret study covered the period from World War II to May, 1968.
..... Click the link for more information. was published by major newspapers. The government sued to stop publication, but the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the newspapers (see press, freedom of thepress, freedom of the,
liberty to print or to otherwise disseminate information, as in print, by broadcasting, or through electronic media, without prior restraints such as licensing requirements or content review and without subsequent punishment for what is said.
..... Click the link for more information. ).

Cultural Censorship

Long before World War I there were vigilante attacks, such as those by Anthony ComstockComstock, Anthony
, 1844–1915, American morals crusader, b. New Canaan, Conn. He served with the Union army in the Civil War and was later active as an antiabortionist and in advocating the suppression of obscene literature.
..... Click the link for more information. , on what was reckoned obscene literature, and the U.S. Post Office expanded (1873) its ban on the shipment of obscene literature and art, but it was after World War I that public controversy over censorship raged most fiercely. Until the Tariff Act was amended in 1930, many literary classics were not allowed entry into the United States on grounds of obscenity. Even after the act's amendment censorship attempts persisted, and James Joyce's Ulysses was not allowed into the country until 1933, after a court fight. Noted works of literature involved in obscenity cases included Lady Chatterley's Lover by D. H. Lawrence, Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller, and Fanny Hill by John Cleland. Over a 15-year period beginning in 1957, a series of Supreme Court decisions relaxed restrictions on so-called obscene materials, although not all obscenity prosecutions during this time were dismissed; in a famous case in the 1960s publisher Ralph Ginzburg was convicted of advertising in an obscene manner.

As Supreme Court decisions struck down many obscenity statutes, states responded by enacting laws prohibiting the sale of obscene materials to minors, and these were upheld (1968) by the Supreme Court. In decisions handed down in 1973 and 1987, the Court ruled that local governments could restrict works if they were without "serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value" and were at the same time seen, by local standards, to appeal to prurient interest. From the 1960s, the issue of sex education in schools was highly controversial; more recently, the question of AIDS education has stirred debate. In the 1980s, some feminists attempted to ban pornography as injurious to women. Other activists, concerned with racism and other forms of bigotry, lobbied for the suppression of what came to be called hate speech.

The producers of motion pictures, dependent for success on widespread public approval, somewhat reluctantly adopted a self-regulatory code of morals in the 1920s (see Hays, Will H.Hays, Will H.,
1879–1954, American politician and motion-picture executive, b. Sullivan, Ind.; his original name was William Harrison Hays. Hays became active in Indiana political affairs, was chairman of the Republican state committee, and served (1918–21) as
..... Click the link for more information. ). This was replaced after 1966 by a voluntary rating system under the supervision of the Motion Picture Producers Association; the need to tailor a movie to fit a ratings category has acted as a form of censorship.

Since 1934, local radio (and later, television) stations have operated under licenses granted by the Federal Communications Commission, which is expressly forbidden to exercise censorship. However, the required periodical review of a station's license invites indirect censorship. The Supreme Court ruled in 1996 that indecent material could be banned from commercial cable-television stations but not from public-access cable stations.

The rapid growth of the InternetInternet, the,
international computer network linking together thousands of individual networks at military and government agencies, educational institutions, nonprofit organizations, industrial and financial corporations of all sizes, and commercial enterprises (called gateways
..... Click the link for more information. presents another set of issues. The Communications Decency Act, passed by Congress in 1996 and signed by President Bill Clinton, was overturned by the Supreme Court for the restrictions it placed on adult access to and use of constitutionally protected material and communication on the Internet. The Child Online Protection Act (1998), which called for penalties on those offering material harmful to minors, also was successfully challenged for similar reasons. The Children's Internet Protection Act (2001), which requires libraries and schools to install antipornography filters on computers with federally financed Internet access, was upheld, however, because it was only a condition attached to the acceptance of federal funding and not a general prohibition on access.

In Other Countries

In other countries, censorship is accepted as inevitable in times of war, and it has been imposed to varying degrees even in peacetime. In the Middle Ages, attempts to silence heresy through intimidation, particularly through the establishment of the Inquisition, were examples of censorship, as are modern instances of book banning. The absolute monarchs of the 17th and 18th cent. imposed strict controls, and because the Reformation had resulted in a reshuffling of the relations between church and statechurch and state,
the relationship between the religion or religions of a nation and the civil government of that nation, especially the relationship between the Christian church and various civil governments.
..... Click the link for more information. , these controls were used to persecute opponents of the established religion of a particular state, Roman Catholic or Protestant. A form of book-banning was adopted by the Roman Catholic Church in the IndexIndex,
in the Roman Catholic Church, list of publications forbidden to be read, called Index librorum prohibitorum [list of forbidden books]. This censorship was exercised by the Holy See.
..... Click the link for more information. , a list of publications that the faithful were forbidden to read. The last edition of the Index was published in 1948; in 1966 Pope Paul VI decreed that it would be discontinued. Paradoxically, in the lands under Calvinist domination (such as Geneva, Scotland, and England of the Puritan period) where the ideals of liberty and freedom first blossomed, regulation of private conduct and individual opinion was rigorous, and censorship was strong.

Strict censorship of all forms of public expression characterized the Soviet Union throughout most of its 74-year history. Boris Pasternak's Doctor Zhivago, which won the 1958 Nobel Prize in Literature, was not permitted publication there, and the novels of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, considered by many to be masterpieces, were banned in 1966. Soviet censorship largely ended in 1986 under Mikhail Gorbachev's policy of glasnost (openness).

In Britain during the 19th and 20th cent., the object of censorship has most often been literature regarded as obscene. With the passage of the Obscene Publications Act in 1857, there followed many criminal prosecutions and seizures of books. This law remained in effect until 1959, when a new law provided that the opinion of artistic or literary experts could be submitted as evidence in deciding obscenity cases and that work alleged to be obscene had to be judged as a whole rather than in part. However, when the editors of an underground periodical, Oz, were convicted in 1971 for violating postal laws, an appeal court held that a periodical need not be judged as a whole, an apparent reversal of the 1959 act.

Bibliography

See R. B. Downs and R. E. McCoy, ed., The First Freedom Today (1984); H. M. Clor, Obscenity and Public Morality (1985).

Censorship

the control exercised by official authorities, whether secular or ecclesiastical, over the contents, publication, and circulation of printed matter, over the performance of plays and other stage works, and over fine arts and photographic exhibits, motion pictures, radio and television broadcasts, and sometimes even private correspondence for the purpose of preventing or limiting the dissemination of ideas and information deemed by such authorities to be undesirable or harmful.

Censorship may be imposed either before or after release of a given work. In the case of prior censorship, permission must be obtained before a book can be published, for example, or a play produced, whereas ex post facto censorship is exercised through the review of works that have already been published or otherwise released and through the restriction or prohibition of any work that violates the rules of censorship.

During the Middle Ages, censorship was exercised by the church authorities over theological and liturgical manuscripts in order to prevent heresies or other deviations from official church standards. The church issued book-banning decrees as well. In the 14th century, under Pope Urban VI, it was decreed that only those books could be used that were faithful copies of the originals and whose contents were not contrary to church dogma. In the early 15th century, Pope Martin V instituted a college of bishops that had control over the contents of books. Somewhat later, censorship functions were assumed by the secular state with respect to book copyists and the contents of books produced by them; such functions were usually exercised by the universities.

The invention of book printing stimulated the development of censorship. In 1471 it was decreed that books on religious subjects could be printed only with prior permission of the church authorities. In the mid-16th century the Catholic Church compiled a list of forbidden books; subsequently the list was repeatedly expanded. Beginning in the 16th century, censorship gradually passed into the hands of the secular authorities, becoming firmly established in all the Western European countries that had printing houses.

Under absolutist forms of government, censorship was one of the chief weapons used by the state and the church against ideologies that were hostile to the feudal system. Censorship bodies grew in number and were given greater responsibility over violations of the rules of censorship.

The French Revolution and the bourgeois revolutions elsewhere proclaimed freedom of expression and the abolition of censorship. The bourgeoisie itself, however, having gained political power, made extensive use of censorship for its own class purposes, thereby restricting the exercise of democratic freedoms by the proletariat and the workers’ progressive organizations. For a long time, workers’ publications in many countries were prohibited altogether.

Every bourgeois state today exercises ex post facto, or punitive, censorship—that is, criminal proceedings are instituted in the case of publication of “defamatory and slanderous” information; punitive measures include fines, confiscation of printed issues, and bans or attachments against publication. The laws with respect to what may be published are so vague in formulation that they can be interpreted in a variety of ways. In the USA, for example, it is prohibited “to abuse freedom of speech and freedom of the press”; in Great Britain the government can prohibit the publication of certain news items on the grounds of “national interest.” According to Anglo-Saxon law, such censorship is not deemed contrary to freedom of speech and of the press.

The bourgeois states have no formal system of prior censorship; in many countries, however—including the USA, France, and Great Britain—a functioning system of governmental measures enables a stringent censorship to be effected in practice. In addition, opportunities to disseminate progressive publications are limited by the fact that new publishing organizations must be licensed and registered by the competent state agencies and must have large sums of money at their disposal in order to be able to operate. The very fact that the mass media, including newspapers and magazines, are owned by large monopolies determines the selection of material to be published and the weeding out of information that is unfavorable to the ruling class.

The censorship of motion pictures and school textbooks, which is systematically practiced in all the bourgeois states, is particularly stringent in the USA. In most of the bourgeois countries, the observance of censorship prohibitions is under the jurisdiction of the ministry or department of justice, the public prosecutor’s office, or the ministry of internal affairs.

REFERENCE

Ideologicheskaia deiatel’nost’ sovremennogo imperialisticheskogo gosudarstva. Moscow, 1972.
In Russia. The earliest form of censorship in Russia, dating back to the 16th century, was religious censorship; its functions were assumed by the Synod in 1721. A decree of 1783, which allowed private individuals to establish printing houses, also introduced prior censorship: manuscripts could be printed only after being reviewed by the uprava blagochiniia (board of police). The outbreak of the French Revolution led to stricter censorship policies. In 1790, A. N. Radishchev’s book A Journey From St. Petersburg to Moscow was destroyed; in 1792, N. I. Novikov’s publishing house was closed down. A decree of 1796 instituted controls on the publication and importing of books into Russia and established censorship commissions in St. Petersburg, Moscow, and other cities.
Censorship in the 19th century was regulated by special statutes. The first censorship statute, adopted in 1804, entrusted the supervision of publishing to the central board for school administration of the Ministry of Public Education. The statute prohibited the publication of works that were “inimical to the Orthodox religion and to the autocratic order.” A second statute, adopted in 1826 and known by its contemporaries as “the iron statute,” introduced a great number of petty restrictions that gave censors the right to ban any work at all. Under the statute of 1828, which was formally less restrictive, no new periodical could be published without permission of the emperor Nicholas I. The supervision of publishing was assumed by the central board for censorship under the Ministry of Public Education; local censorship commissions were subordinate to the central board. In practice the functions of censorship were exercised by the Third Section, to which censors had to report instances of “freethinking works” and their authors’ names. The works of A. S. Pushkin, M. Iu. Lermontov, and N. V. Gogol were subjected to severe censorship; N. A. Polevoi’s journal Moskovskii telegraf was closed down in 1834, and N. I. Nadezhdin’s Teleskop in 1836.
The period from 1848 to 1855 went down in the history of Russian literature as the age of terror in censorship. Frightened by the Revolution of 1848–49 in Western Europe, the tsarist regime stiffened its controls over periodicals and literary works, which it regarded as the chief vehicles of revolutionary ideas. A secret committee was established by order of Nicholas I on Apr. 2, 1848, to examine all publications that were already in print; anything that was deemed “contrary to the government’s views” was reported to the tsar. (D. P. Buturlin headed the committee until 1849; N. N. Annenkov, until 1853; and M. A. Korf, until 1856.) Thus punitive censorship was added to the prior censorship system that was already in effect. On the basis of reports by the Buturlin Committee, M. E. Saltykov was deported to Viatka in 1848,1. S. Turgenev was arrested and exiled to Spasskoe-Lutovi-novo in 1852, and the Slavophiles were subjected to persecutions.
The censorship terror reached its apogee after the trial of the Petrashevskii Circle. The Pocket Dictionary of Foreign Words, published by members of the circle, was destroyed. Special circulars were issued prohibiting the publication of research works on such subjects as folklore or the history of popular movements; the number of books, journals, and newspapers published in Russia was drastically reduced.
After Russia’s defeat in the Crimean War of 1853–56 and the death of Nicholas I, the government was led to change its policy by the general quickening of social life, the extensive circulation of uncensored literature in manuscript form, and the establishment abroad of the Free Russian Printing House. The abolition of the Buturlin Committee on Dec. 6, 1855, marked the beginning of censorship reform. A set of temporary regulations on censorship and publishing, issued on Apr. 6, 1865, assigned censorship functions to a central administrative board for publishing; the board was under the Ministry of Internal Affairs, which also had jurisdiction over book trade matters, libraries, and printing houses. Prior censorship was no longer required for original works of a length of more than ten printer’s sheets, translated works of more than 20 printer’s sheets, periodicals published in the capital cities by permission of the minister of internal affairs, and works published by the academies and universities. Judicial liability was established for censorship violations; moreover, the confiscation of published material was to be effected by court order. The minister of internal affairs could issue “warnings” to journals and newspapers for “harmful tendencies.” After the third such warning the Senate could order the publication to be suspended for six months or be banned.
The censorship reform of 1865 was one of the least consistent of the bourgeois reforms of the 1860’s and 1870’s. Even so, it was soon reduced to naught by various amendments. In 1868 the minister of internal affairs was given the right to prohibit the retail sale of periodicals. In 1872 the confiscation of published material was made subject to administrative order by the Committee of Ministers. In 1882 the right to prohibit the publication of periodicals was vested in a joint conference of the chief procurator of the Synod and the ministers of internal affairs, justice, and public education.
The censors’ persecutions forced the closure of many newspapers and journals—for example, of Sovremennik and Russkoe slovo in 1866, and of Otechestvennye zapiski in 1884. The press was not allowed to report on political trials, strikes, or peasants’ agitations. In 1895 the censors destroyed the collection Material for a Characterization of Our Economic Development, which contained V. I. Lenin’s article The Economic Content of Narodni-chestvo and the Criticism of It in Mr. Struve’s Book. Between 1865 and 1904, a total of 218 books was destroyed, 173 periodicals were given 282 warnings, 218 orders were issued prohibiting retail sales, and 27 publications were suspended. Between 1865 and 1901, ten different journals and 205 books were banned from public libraries and reading rooms; authors whose works were banned included N. G. Chernyshevskii, N. A. Dobroliubov, A. I. Herzen, D. I. Pisarev, L. N. Tolstoy, and N. S. Leskov.
Under pressure of the revolutionary movement, the government issued “temporary regulations” on Nov. 24, 1905, and on Apr. 26, 1906, abolishing the system of prior censorship and again making authors and publishers responsible to the law courts. Nevertheless, the special security system providing for “increased protection” and “emergency protection,” which had been put into effect almost everywhere after the suppression of the December Armed Uprisings of 1905, gave broad scope to arbitrary administrative measures: between October 1905 and January 1907, 361 books were seized, 371 periodicals were closed, and 607 authors and editors were imprisoned or fined. Censorship was continuously used as a weapon of the tsarist regime in the latter’s struggle against the revolutionary movement and against democratic literature and journalism.
The Constitution of the USSR, in accordance with the people’s interests and in order to strengthen and develop the socialist system, guarantees freedom of the press to all citizens. State control has been established in order to prevent the publication of certain news items in the public press and their dissemination through the mass media—namely, news items that reveal state secrets or that may be harmful to the interests of the working people.

REFERENCES

Skabichevskii, A. M. Ocherki istorii russkoi tsenzury (1700–1863). St. Petersburg, 1892.
Lemke, M. K. Epokha tsenzurnykh reform, 1859–1865 gg. St. Petersburg, 1904.
Lemke, M. K. Ocherkipo istorii russkoi tsenzury i zhurnalistiki XIX st. St. Petersburg, 1904.
Rozenberg, V., and V. Iakushkin. Russkaia pechat’ i tsenzura v ee proshlom i nastoiashchem. Moscow, 1905.
Nikitenko, A. V. Dnevnik, vols. 1–3. Moscow, 1955–56.
Feoktistov, E. M. Vospominaniia: Za kulisami politiki i literatury, 1848–18%. Leningrad, 1929.
Berezhnoi, A. F. Tsarskaia tsenzura i bor’ba bol’shevikov za svobodu pechati (1895–1914). Leningrad, 1967.
Baluev, B. P. Politicheskaia reaktsiia 80-kh godov XIX v. i russkaia zhurnalistika. Moscow, 1971.
Svodnyi katalog russkoi nelegal’noi i zapreshchennoi pechati XIX v., parts 1–9. Moscow, 1971.

B. M. LAZAREVand B. IU. IVANOV

Censorship

blue lawsrestrict personal action to improve community morality. [Am. Hist.: Hart, 87]Bostonarbiter of Puritanical taste as reflected in phrase “banned in Boston.” [Am. Usage: Misc.]Bowdler, Thomas(1754–1825) expurgated Shakespeare and Gibbon for family editions. [Br. Hist.: Wallechinsky, 164]Comstock, Anthony(1844–1915) in comstockery, immortalized advocate of blue-nosed censorship. [Am. Hist.: Espy, 135]Fahrenheit 451describes a future America in which books are prohibited and burned. [Am. Lit.: Bradbury Fahrenheit 451 in Weiss, 289]Hays, Will(1879–1954) clean-minded arbiter of 1930s Holly-wood tastes. [Am. Cinema: Griffith, 182]imprimaturlicense given by Roman Catholic Church to publish a book. [Christian Hist.: Misc.]Index librorum prohibitorumlist of forbidden books compiled by Roman Catholic Church. [Christian Hist.: NCE, 1323]nihil obstatRoman Catholic Church’s inscription in books denoting no objection to literary content. [Christian Hist.: Misc.]Tropic of Cancernovel noted for its sexual frankness and use of obscenity, long banned in the U.S. [Am. Lit.: Henry Miller Tropic of Cancer]UlyssesJoyce novel long banned in U.S. for its sexual frankness. [Irish Lit.: Benét, 1037]Unigenituspapal bull condemning Quesnel’s Jansenist book (1713). [Christian Hist.: Brewer Dictionary, 1115]

censorship

Psychoanal the activity of the mind in regulating impulses, etc., from the unconscious so that they are modified before reaching the conscious mind

Censorship

The suppression or proscription of speech or writing that is deemed obscene, indecent, or unduly controversial.

The term censorship derives from the official duties of the Roman censor who, beginning in 443 b.c., conducted the census by counting, assessing, and evaluating the populace. Originally neutral in tone, the term has come to mean the suppression of ideas or images by the government or others with authority.

Throughout history, societies practiced various forms of censorship in the belief that the community, as represented by the government, was responsible for molding the individual. For example, the ancient Greek philosopher Plato advocated various degrees of censorship in The Republic; the content of important texts and the dissemination of knowledge were tightly controlled in ancient Chinese society as is much information in modern China; and for centuries the Roman Catholic Church's Index Librorum Prohibitorum proscribed much literature as contrary to the church's teachings.

The English-speaking world began wrestling with issues of censorship in the seventeenth century. In his Areopagitica (1644), John Milton argued in favor of the right to publish, free from government restraint. In the United States, the First Amendment to the Constitution (1787) guarantees Freedom of Speech and Freedom of the Press. When a U.S. government agency attempts to prohibit speech or writing, the party being censored frequently raises these First Amendment rights. Such cases usually involve communication that the government perceives as harmful to itself or the public.

Abortion

In some cases, the government can constitutionally censor the speech of those who receive federal funding. For example, the Supreme Court ruled in Rust v. Sullivan, 500 U.S. 173, 111 S. Ct. 1759, 114 L. Ed. 2d 233 (1991), that, without restricting First Amendment rights, the government can ban Abortion counseling in federally funded health clinics.

Prisoners' Mail

If the government's interest is penological it also has broader rights to censor speech. Prisoners' outgoing mail can be censored in order to thwart escape plans, shield the recipients from obscene or menacing letters, or circumvent inaccurate or adverse reports about prison conditions. Under the Supreme Court ruling in Procunier v. Martinez, 416 U.S. 396, 94 S. Ct. 1800, 40 L. Ed. 2d 224 (1974), prison administrators can censor prisoners' personal correspondence only if it is necessary to maintain security, order, or rehabilitation efforts. Such censorship can be neither random nor excessively troublesome.

Entertainment

Perhaps the most visible form of censorship is that affecting the entertainment industry. Theater and film, as types of public entertainment, affect the common interest and can hence be subjected to certain types of governmental regulation. But attempts to regulate or censor often risk obstructing the free speech rights of playwrights, screenwriters, filmmakers, performers, and distributors.

The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that it is lawful to censor obscene entertainment to safeguard children from Pornography and to protect adults from unknowingly or involuntarily viewing indecent materials (Ginsberg v. New York, 390 U.S. 629, 88 S. Ct. 1274, 20 L. Ed. 2d 195 [1968]). Although Supreme Court interpretation permits individuals to view Obscenity in the privacy of their homes (Stanley v. Georgia, 394 U.S. 557, 89 S. Ct. 1243, 22 L. Ed. 2d 542 [1969]), theaters and movie houses are public places and therefore subject to regulation (Paris Adult Theatre I v. Slaton, 413 U.S. 49, 93 S. Ct. 2628, 37 L. Ed. 2d 446 [1973]). The difficulty with such censorship is in trying to determine what is "obscene."

In miller v. california, 413 U.S. 15, 93 S. Ct. 2607, 37 L. Ed. 2d 419 (1973), the Supreme Court concluded that a work is obscene and can be regulated if it appeals to a viewer's prurient interest; portrays sexual conduct in a patently offensive way; and lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value. The Court further ruled that interpretations of this definition may vary across the United States and that communities may apply their own local standards to determine obscenity.

To avoid government censorship, the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) regulates itself through a voluntary rating system. The system does not have statutory authority but is used to help the industry conform with statutes designed to protect children. Recognizing a 1968 Supreme Court decision that favored limited censorship for minors (Ginsberg v. New York, 390 U.S. 629, 88 S. Ct. 1274, 20 L. Ed. 2d 195), the MPAA devised a rating system based on the viewer's age. A G rating signals that subject matter is suitable for general audiences; PG stands for Parental Guidance Suggested; PG-13 strongly advises guidance for children under age 13 because of possibly inappropriate material; R requires accompaniment by an adult for children under age 17, or 18 in some states; and NC-17 or X prohibit anyone under age 17, or 18 in some states, from entering the theater.

Radio and television have also met with governmental pressure to control the content of their broadcasts. Spurred by the belief that violence on television adversely affects children's behavior and attitudes, Congress has attempted several times to encourage the media to adopt voluntary guidelines in the hope that less violence on television will lead to a less violent society. Although none of Congress's acts have been deemed outright censorship, government intrusion into broadcasting to discourage certain types of speech has not been welcomed by all. The various pieces of legislation raise questions about media self-censorship and the role of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in regulating freedom of expression.

In response to congressional pressure the National Association of Broadcasters adopted the Family Viewing Policy in 1974 to limit the first hour of prime-time programming to material suitable for families. The policy was found unconstitutional in 1976 (Writers Guild of America, West, Inc. v. F.C.C., 423 F. Supp. 1064 [C.D. Cal., 1976]).

Congress addressed the content of children's television with the Children's Television Act of 1990 (47 U.S.C.A. §§ 303a–303b [Supp. III 1991]), which limits the amount of advertising on children's television and compels broadcasters to air educational programs. Failure to comply with the act could jeopardize renewal of a station's license. Critics point out that the act has not improved children's programming because of its vague standards and the FCC's disinclination to enforce it.

The Television Violence Act (47 U.S.C.A. § 303c [Supp. III 1991]), proposed in 1986 by Senator Paul Simon (D-Ill.), was signed into law by President george h.w. bush in December 1990. This act, which expired in 1993, was intended to prompt the networks, cable industry, and independent stations to decrease the amount of violence shown on television. Although it did not constitute direct government regulation, the act was criticized as a governmental attempt to impose its values on society by discouraging, if not suppressing, unpopular ideas.The Telecommunications Act of 1996, 110 Stat. 56, required television manufacturers to create a chip, known as the V-chip, which allows users, presumably parents, to block out programs based on their sexual or violent content. The chip, which has been installed in television sets manufactured since 1999, operates in conjunction with a voluntary rating system implemented by TV broadcasters that rates programs for violence and sexual content.

Radio broadcasts have also come under scrutiny. In FCC v. Pacifica Foundation, 438 U.S. 726, 98 S. Ct. 3026, 57 L. Ed. 2d 1073 (1978), the Supreme Court ruled that a daytime broadcast of George Carlin's "Seven Dirty Words" monologue violated the prohibition of indecency in 18 U.S.C.A. § 1464 (1948) and was therefore subject to regulation. To many, this ruling gave the FCC further authority to censor speech and dictate values.

Music

Just as the entertainment industry has faced regulation or censorship for allegedly violent, obscene, or indecent material, so has the recording industry. Claiming that some popular music erodes morals by encouraging violence, drug abuse, and sexual promiscuity, the Parents' Music Resource Center, founded in 1985 by Tipper Gore, the wife of the future vice president, albert gore, successfully lobbied the music industry to place warning labels on records that may feature lyrics inappropriate for children.

Concerned about the rising rate of violent crime against law enforcement officers, the assistant director of public affairs for the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) sent a letter in August 1989 to Priority Records to protest a rap group's lyrics. N.W.A., a Los Angeles-based rap group, recorded on its album Straight Outta Compton the song "Fuck tha Police," which violently protested police brutality. Although the letter from the FBI was a protest, not an attempt at regulation, many in the music industry interpreted it as an example of indirect censorship through intimidation.

Perhaps the most famous legal proceedings to censor music involved the rap group 2 Live Crew. In early 1990, a Florida circuit judge banned all sales of the group's album As Nasty As They Wanna Be on the grounds that the lyrics of several of its songs, including "Me So Horny," violated community standards for obscenity. The group brought suit to have the ban lifted in Skyywalker Records v. Navarro, 742 F. Supp. 638 (S.D. Fla. 1990), but the judge upheld the obscenity ruling. A record store owner was arrested for continuing to sell the album and two members of 2 Live Crew were arrested on obscenity charges after a performance. The band members were acquitted of all charges in October 1990, but the debate continues between those demanding free expression in music and those seeking to censor allegedly obscene material.

Art

For almost as long as artists have been creating art, governments have both supported and censored artists' work. Ancient Athens, the Roman Empire, and the medieval Catholic Church financed many projects, whereas totalitarian regimes, for example, banned many works and repressed artists. The U.S. Congress was reluctant to fund art that might subsequently be construed as national art, or as government-approved art until 1960s activism encouraged it to do so. In 1965, the National Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities was established to foster excellence in the arts. It is composed of two divisions, the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) and the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). Among its many interests, the NEA provides stipends to deserving artists.

Controversy over the role of government support of the arts arose in the late 1980s with two artists who received NEA funding. In 1988, the photographer Andres Serrano received harsh condemnation for his photograph titled Piss Christ, which depicted a plastic crucifix floating in a jar of Serrano's urine. Numerous senators sent letters of protest to the NEA, insisting that the agency cease underwriting vulgar art. A second furor arose in 1989 over the work of another photographer, Robert Mapplethorpe, who received NEA support for his work, which depicted flowers, nude children, and homosexuality and sadomasochism.

Senator jesse helms (R-N.C.) argued the most vociferously against the NEA's choices and introduced legislation to ban funding of "obscene or indecent art" (1989 H.R. 2788 [codified at 20 U.S.C.A. § 953 et seq. (1989)]). The Helms Amendment, adopted in October 1989, gave the NEA great power and latitude to define obscenity and quash alternative artistic visions. To enforce the new amendment, the NEA established an "obscenity pledge," which required artists to promise they would not use government money to create works of an obscene nature. The art world strongly resisted this measure: many museum directors resigned in protest and several well-known artists returned their NEA grants.

Two important cases tested the power of the NEA to censor artistic production. In Bella Lewitsky Dance Foundation v. Frohnmayer, 754 F. Supp. 774 (C.D. Cal. 1991), a dance company refused to sign the obscenity pledge and sued on the ground that the pledge was unconstitutional. A California district court agreed that the pledge violated the First Amendment right to free speech and that its vagueness denied the dance company due process under the Fifth Amendment.

In New School v. Frohnmayer, No. 90-3510 (S.D.N.Y. 1990), the New School for Social Research, in New York City, turned down a grant, claiming that the obscenity pledge acted as Prior Restraint and therefore breached the school's First Amendment rights. Before the constitutionality of the prior restraint argument was decided, the NEA released the school from its obligation to sign the pledge.

The NEA abolished the obscenity pledge in November 1990, but in its place instituted a "decency clause" (1990 Amendments, Pub. L. No. 101-512, § 103(b), 104 Stat. 1963 [codified at 20 U.S.C.A. § 954(d)(1990)]), which required award recipients to ensure that their works met certain standards of decency. Failure to comply with this demand could mean suspension of grant payments.

Again the art world protested. In Finley v. NEA, 795 F. Supp. 1457 (C.D. Cal. 1992), artists known as the NEA Four—Karen Finley, John Fleck, Holly Hughes, and Tim Miller—sued the NEA over the decency clause. A California district court agreed with the artists. The Finley court held that the decency clause, like the obscenity pledge, was unconstitutional because its vagueness denied the artists the due process guaranteed by the Fifth Amendment and because its too-general restriction suppressed speech.

Books

U.S. parents send their children to public schools to receive an education and to learn the fundamental values on which their democratic society is based. Conflict ensues when parents believe that certain schoolbooks contain material that is objectionable on political, moral, or religious grounds and should be banned in order to protect their children from exposure to allegedly harmful ideas. In some instances school boards have responded by physically removing books from school library shelves. In general, advocates of book banning maintain that censorship is warranted to redress social ills, whereas critics believe that freedom of speech is more important and useful to society than imposing values through censorship.

Book banning as a way to remedy social problems was first tested by the Supreme Court in Board of Education v. Pico, 457 U.S. 853, 102 S. Ct. 2799, 73 L. Ed. 2d 435 (1982). In Pico, parents objected to nine books in the high school library, most of which were subsequently removed by the school board. The nine books were Slaughterhouse Five, by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.; Naked Ape, by Desmond Morris; Down These Mean Streets, by Piri Thomas; Best Short Stories of Negro Writers, edited by Langston Hughes; Laughing Boy, by Oliver LaFarge; Black Boy, by Richard Wright; A Hero Ain't Nothin' But a Sandwich, by Alice Childress; Soul on Ice, by eldridge cleaver; and Go Ask Alice, by an anonymous author.

Pico debated the authority of local school boards to censor material in the interest of protecting students. The case reached the Supreme Court because lower courts were unable to devise standards for testing the constitutionality of book removal. The Supreme Court ruled that it is unconstitutional for public school boards to abridge students' First Amendment rights by banning books. Although school boards have the power to determine which books should sit on library shelves, they do not have the authority to censor.

Books published by commercial presses for sale to the general public sometimes meet with harsh condemnation and subsequent action that could be tantamount to censorship. In November 1990, Simon and Schuster canceled its contract with author Bret E. Ellis to publish his novel American Psycho, citing the work's graphic violence and sexual brutality. The National Writers Union decried the cancellation as contrary to free speech and artistic expression and as censorship. The publishing house defended its editorial judgment by claiming it did not want to put its imprint on a book of questionable taste and value. Vintage Books, a division of Random House, soon acquired the novel, and published it in March 1991.

Students' Speech

Students' free speech rights sometimes clash with schools' interest in maintaining control of public education. Students' First Amendment liberties were affirmed by the landmark tinker v. des moines independent community school district, 393 U.S. 503, 89 S. Ct. 733, 21 L. Ed. 2d 731 (1969), which ruled that public school students could not be penalized for wearing symbols, such as black armbands, to protest the Vietnam War.

Two subsequent cases dealing with issues of censorship in school newspapers pointed to a more restrictive judicial view of students' right to free expression. In Hazelwood School District v. Kuhlmeier, 484 U.S. 260, 108 S. Ct. 562, 98 L. Ed. 2d 592 (1988), the Supreme Court ruled in favor of a Hazelwood, Missouri, school principal who removed several articles from a student newspaper. The articles dealt with teen pregnancy and a student's feelings about her parents' Divorce. The court in Hazelwood held that a school newspaper is not a public forum, and thus granted school officials the right to determine what type of student speech is appropriate and to regulate such speech.

Three years later, the ruling in Planned Parenthood v. Clark County School District, 941 F.2d 817 (9th Cir. 1991), was based on Hazelwood. In Planned Parenthood, a public high school newspaper solicited advertisements from local businesses, including Planned Parenthood. The principal refused to allow Planned Parenthood to place an advertisement in school publications and Planned Parenthood sued the school district. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a district court decision that a public high school publication is not a public forum and that the school could therefore accept or reject advertisements. Both Hazelwood and Planned Parenthood concluded that because public high schools are nonpublic forums, school districts can apply a limited degree of censorship.

Hundreds of public universities in the United States have speech codes to regulate students' choice of words. Speech can be constitutionally curtailed in some circumstances. For example, public Colleges and Universities can forbid threats of violence, prohibit obscene language and conduct (although it is extremely difficult to define or prove obscenity), and punish students for using defamatory speech against each other, all without violating the First Amendment. Numerous cases have successfully contested free speech limitations on campus, suggesting that a majority of these codes are unconstitutional.

In Doe v. University of Michigan, 721 F. Supp. 852 (E.D. Mich. 1989), a biopsychology student maintained that the university's speech code prevented him from freely discussing controversial ideas about biologically based differences between the sexes and races. A district court ruled that the university's code proscribed too great a range of speech and therefore was an unconstitutional infringement on the plaintiff's First Amendment rights. The court also held that the overbroad nature of the code denied his due process rights.

A University of Wisconsin student was accused of violating the university's speech codes by yelling rude comments at a woman. In U.W.M. Post, Inc. v. Board of Regents, 774 F. Supp. 1163 (E.D. Wis. 1991), the university's speech code was also struck down as overbroad. Two years later school officials punished fraternity brothers at George Mason University for dressing in drag and staging an "ugly woman contest." In Iota X Chapter v. George Mason University, 993 F.2d 386 (1993), the Fourth Circuit found that the university had violated the First Amendment because it did not sanction the fraternity merely for its conduct, but rather for the message conveyed by the "ugly woman contest," which ran counter to the views the university sought to foster.

Internet

Computer-mediated communication grows explosively every year and in some ways outpaces and obviates current legal principles. The prevailing concept of law applies to real-world events and transactions, and, as those in the legal field are realizing, may unravel when exercised in cyberspace. As more and more people transmit widely divergent messages on the electronic highway, issues of free speech and censorship become increasingly complicated and regulations difficult to enforce.

The first case of criminal prosecution of electronic communication involved the distribution of pornography over an electronic bulletin board system (BBS). In United States v. Thomas, No. CR-94-20019-G (W.D. Tenn. 1994), Robert Thomas and Carleen Thomas were found guilty of disseminating obscene materials by interstate telephone lines and computer. From their home in California, the Thomases ran an adults-only private BBS from which subscribers could download computer graphics files and order sexually explicit photo-graphs and videotapes while on-line. To gather evidence against the couple, a Memphis postal inspector, under an assumed name, downloaded to his computer many of the pornographic electronic files and ordered tapes.

The Thomases were charged with, among other things, transporting obscene materials across state lines. The couple attempted to transfer their case to the Northern District of California, so that their materials would be measured against that community's standards of obscenity, rather than the obscenity standards of the Western District of Tennessee. The district judge denied their request, noting that in obscenity prosecutions the trial can be held either in the district from which the material was sent or where it was received.

The "virtual" nature of cyberspace poses a number of problems for courts and legislatures on the issue of obscenity. Among the most difficult of these is the issue of community standards. Because the Internet brings together people from all over the United States and all over the world, it defies identification with any particular community. Other difficulties are the criminal element of knowledge and the issue of dissemination. Persons may post and receive information on Internet bulletin boards without the knowledge of those who maintain the BBS, making it difficult to determine whether the BBS operators "knowingly disseminated" obscene materials.

In 1996, Congress passed the Communications Decency Act (CDA), which punished disseminating "indecent" material over the Internet. The Supreme Court struck down the law in Reno v. ACLU, 521 U.S. 844, 117 S.Ct. 2329, 138 L.Ed.2d 874 (1997). Although the Court recognized the "legitimacy and importance of the congressional goal of protecting children from harmful materials," it ruled that the CDA abridged freedom of speech and therefore was unconstitutional. The Court also noted that its previous decisions limiting free speech out of concern for the protection of children were inapplicable in this case, and that the CDA differed from the laws and orders upheld in previous cases in significant ways. For example, the CDA did not allow parents to consent to their children's use of restricted materials; it was not limited to commercial transactions; it failed to provide a definition of "indecent"; and its broad prohibitions were not limited to particular times of the day. Finally, the act's restrictions could not be analyzed as a form of time, place, and manner regulation because it was a content-based blanket restriction on speech.

Congress lost little time in responding to this decision. In 1998, it quickly passed the Child Online Protection Act (COPA), which would make it illegal to use the World Wide Web to communicate "for commercial purposes" any material considered to be "harmful to minors." The law also incorporated the three-part obscenity test that the Supreme Court formulated in Miller v. California. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and a group of on-line website operators challenged the constitutionality of COPA, arguing that it was over-broad. In addition, the plaintiffs contended that the use of the community standards test would give any community in the United States the ability to file civil and criminal lawsuits under COPA. This meant that the most conservative community in the country could dictate the content of the Internet. A federal appeals court in Philadelphia agreed with these arguments and the government appealed again to the Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court, in Ashcroft v. American Civil Liberties Union, 535 U.S. 564, 122 S.Ct. 1700, 152 L.Ed.2d 771 (2002), produced a decision that failed to give a clear direction. The use of community standards did not by itself make the statute overbroad and unconstitutional under the First Amendment. Apart from that conclusion, the Court could not agree, with five of the justices producing separate opinions. A majority, however, had reservations about the COPA. A number of the justices expressed concern that without a national standard it would be difficult for operators of Internet services to know when they had crossed a line and had subjected themselves to liability. The case was remanded to the lower courts for a full examination of the law on all issues. The fate of COPA is likely to be decided by the Court in a future decision.

As the popularity of the Internet continues to grow, more issues involving censorship are likely to appear. And with the advancement of high-speed Internet access, movies, videos, text, and pictures can now be downloaded with greater ease, creating even more opportunities for legal debate.

Cross-references

Art Law; Entertainment Law; Movie Rating; Schools and School Districts.

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noun expurgation

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noun counterintelligence achieved by banning or deleting any information of value to the enemy

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noun deleting parts of publications or correspondence or theatrical performances

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