From: TURTLE              
To: SAAVIK              
Subject: beliefs        
Date & Time: 05/27/91 23:58:52
Message Number 17157

>I certainly think they should put some kind of rating label on certain
>music...
 
Well, getting that to work would be very difficult. The agency that
rates movies is voluntary and industry-wide; producers don't have to
submit their films to be rated if they don't want to, and in any event
setting up an organization like the CARA in the music industry would be
very, very difficult. Prohibiting people under a certain age from buying
certain albums simply wouldn't work. It would be intellectually danger-
ous, as it would make producors unwilling to produce or distribute music
that might not be easily marketable (and what would such a law be based
on? Sexual content? imagery? certain words?). It would be an essentially
unenforcable law. It would not serve society in any clearly-defined way.
It would not serve the function of keeping objectionable albums out of
circulation--do you /really/ think 2Live Crew's last album would have
been so popular if nobody had attempted to censor it? No chance. And
would you seriously suggest that the record store clerk who sells Jimmy
a copy of a naughty album and thereby breaks the law should be jailed?
Finally,. it'd have the same problem laws based on movie ratings do:
they would certainly be struck down on an appeal. A fact few people are
aware of is that it is /not/ legal to pass a law that makes reference
to the Motion Picture Association's ratings, because those ratings are
(a) voluntarily and (b) given by an organizationm that is not a legal
entity and has no legal oversight. Finally, of course, it's just good
old-fashioned censorship, which is morally wrong.