Increased Indecency Fines Effective July 20th
As we reported earlier, even though it has been almost a year since President Bush signed legislation raising the fines for broadcast indecency to $325,000 per occurrence, the FCC only recently adopted rules to officially implement the increased fines. The rule to implement the statutory mandate was published in the Federal Register today, setting July 20th as the effective date for the new higher fines. A copy of the Federal Register publice notice is available here (just below the list of millet and soybeans). Once the increased fines become effective, the Commission's stick for discouraging speech that it might deem to be indecent will be a whole lot bigger. It will be interesting to see if the Commission elects to impose a substantial forfeiture using the larger fines while various aspects of its indecency regime remain under review.
