806
Opinion of the Court
Assistant Attorney General Schultz, Deputy Solicitor General Kneedler, Jacob M. Lewis, Edward Himmelfarb, and Christopher J. Wright.
Robert Corn-Revere argued the cause for appellees. With him on the brief were Jean S. Moore and Burton Joseph.*
Justice Kennedy delivered the opinion of the Court. This case presents a challenge to § 505 of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, Pub. L. 104-104, 110 Stat. 136, 47 U. S. C. § 561 (1994 ed., Supp. III). Section 505 requires cable television operators who provide channels "primarily dedicated to sexually-oriented programming" either to "fully scramble or otherwise fully block" those channels or to limit their transmission to hours when children are unlikely to be viewing, set by administrative regulation as the time between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m. 47 U. S. C. § 561(a) (1994 ed., Supp. III); 47 CFR § 76.227 (1999). Even before enactment of the statute, signal scrambling was already in use. Cable operators used scrambling in the regular course of business, so that only paying customers had access to certain programs. Scrambling could be imprecise, however; and either or both audio and visual portions of the scrambled programs might be heard or seen, a phenomenon known as "signal bleed." The purpose of § 505 is to shield children from hearing or seeing images resulting from signal bleed.
To comply with the statute, the majority of cable operators adopted the second, or "time channeling," approach. The effect of the widespread adoption of time channeling was to
*Janet M. LaRue, Paul J. McGeady, and Bruce Taylor filed a brief for the Family Research Council et al. as amici curiae urging reversal.
Briefs of amici curiae urging affirmance were filed for the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression et al. by Michael A. Bamberger; for the Media Institute by Laurence H. Winer; for the National Cable Television Association by Daniel L. Brenner and Michael S. Schooler; for Sexuality Scholars, Researchers, Educators, and Therapists by Marjorie Heins and Joan E. Bertin; and for the Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression by J. Joshua Wheeler.
Page: Index Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 NextLast modified: October 4, 2007