Will FCC crackdown backfire?
Volokh conspirator Stuart Benjamin makes a strong case that the puritans in the US FCC are probably shooting themselves in the foot with the current crackdown on broadcast "indencency," at least in the long term.
Earlier, fines from the FCC were managable, and broadcasters didn't find it worthwhile to fight them in court. Now, after Janet Jackson's "costume malfunction", the FCC fines are huge, and it may make sense to fight them to the Supreme Court as a free speech issue.
This is significant, because the Supreme Court probably would – and in my view should – find these indecency regulations unconstitutional. With respect to newspapers and magazines, telephones, and cable television, the Supreme Court has held that the government may not reduce the adult population to viewing only what is fit for children. As the Supreme Court noted in the 2000 Playboy case on cable indecency, a core principle of the First Amendment is that “The citizen is entitled to seek out or reject certain ideas or influences without Government influence or control.”
Broadcast has been the glaring exception in the Supreme Court’s jurisprudence, but its special status is no longer tenable.
He also speculates that some in the FCC and/or Congress are actually bringing this confrontation about because they secretly want to see broadcast puritanism broken.
At any rate, so-called social conservatives who support this crackdown and at the same time whine about "big government" intervention in people's lives deserve to be tarred and feathered.
1:03:02 AM 
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