Hungarian media authority punishes radio for playing It's On by Ice-T

In another thread, I have already mentioned the situation in Hungary. In a nutshell, if you don't feel like reading that, the new media related law in Hungary consists of the following ridiculous regulations effective 1st January:

- News about crimes can't take up more than 20% of the total amount of news in any news program in any kind of media. Which is just ludicrous. What's next? Ministry of Happiness?

- Anything in any media can be reported by anyone on the grounds that it violated some hazy rule (the section which explains what can be regarded as a violation is deliberately ambiguous). Nationwide television and radio stations can be punished up to 200 million Hungarian Forints ($1 million ballpark) - any random person who owns a blog, writes down their opinion and gets reported by some moron can be punished up to 50 million Hungarian Forints (approx. $200.000)!

So today... today something so ludicrously insane happened I could've never thought about anything remotely this stupid.

There is a radion in Hungary, which apparently played "It's On" by Ice-T on 2nd September 2010. The newly founded Media Authority sent a warning to the radio that this song contains "offensive language" which can hurt the mental development of young (under 16) listeners.

What.

Their document cites some statistics about how many language exams people have passed in 2010 (like you know if it was relevant in any way...), so they argued that the majority of under 16 listeners can understand the lyrics of the song and this will turn them into cop-killer raging lunatics.

No, seriously.

And the funniest thing is yet to come: at the end of their document, the Authority gives the Hungarian "translation" of the lyrics, which is so ridiculously wrong half the time, that I seriously toyed with the idea that this is some elaborate hoax, possibly by the radio to raise awareness about the threats of the new media law. But no luck, this was meant to be taken seriously! And no, I don't think that this lyrics translation is that hard to do, and the translation was seriously wrong at the slang-free parts too.

The radio answered this of course with another document in which they argued that if we take all the people in Hungary, the ratio of the people who possess knowledge of the English language is so small, that it's not really a sane thing to assume that listeners under 16 will understand anything. They put some listener statistics on top of that to show that their audience only consists of 4% under 16 listeners, so in conclusion there could only be 1 or 2 under 16 listener who knew enough English to understand the lyrics of the song. Which is not significant at all of course.

But this is still not the saddest part. The editors at the radio had to explain to the veery authority, that tried to punish them that they can't do that according to the constitution.

The authority stated: "The healthy mental and moral development of youth has to be more important than any other rights granted by the constitution."

The radio answered: You can't suppress the right for life, not even if the mental development of the youth would actually be in danger. Not ever.

Summary: See? We have a Media Authority who will switch to fifth gear in 2011, but they are so stupid, they don't even know what's in the constitution of this very country they operate in. Besides, the new media law will allow them to deal punishments left and right for things that make even less sense than this.

This is just ridiculous. I wonder what Ice-T would say about this.

What more can I say? From January 1st, it's on - the new media law will be effective, and aside from protesting, we can do nothing about it. So it seems that Hungary has fallen back 20 years, right into the times between 1945 and 1989, when the USSR ruled the country and it was forbiddent to watch movies from the west, listen to songs from the west, and criticize the government and/or its actions. In 2010.

Fuck.

edited 30th Dec '10 2:14:54 AM by Sati1984

If they are out of the bounds of the constitution, surely there is a mechanism for assailing them on legal grounds?

Vote from the rooftops?

I love you Hungary.

....I-I mean that's horrible!

(Not a fan of Ice-T)

edited 30th Dec '10 4:00:48 AM by Ukonkivi

@Ukonkivi: It's not about Ice-T at all. I also don't care about his music much, but there are a few artists I like (e.g.: Korn) which have some "offensive language" in their lyrics too.

I don't listen to radio (maybe I will when I'll finally have a car...), but even the idea is ridiculous. No study has ever proved that music lyrics can push young people towards violence or something...

Yeah, I don't agree with censorship either.

I was just taking a cheap shot at a musician I didn't like. Kind of like would be expected if somebody banned Justin Bieber(which admittedly, wouldn't happen in something like this. As Justin Bieber, and a lot of what annoys people about him, is how inoffensive and lacking in subject-matter he is. Or at least that's why The Amazing Atheist does).

edited 30th Dec '10 4:40:41 AM by Ukonkivi

I love The Distressed Watcher 's works too.

I hope You Tube will not be banned in Hungary...

- News about crimes can't take up more than 20% of the total amount of news in any news program in any kind of media. Which is just ludicrous. What's next? Ministry of Happiness?

That actually sounds pretty sensible. News about crimes does more to keep people unreasonably paranoid than meaningfully informed, because the crimes that are interesting enough to report on are quite rare in the grand scheme of things.

The Amazing Atheist

Yeah but that guy's a fucking idiot. I'd rather listen to J-Beebs.

edited 30th Dec '10 8:11:18 AM by Scrye

I never thought I'd hear someone say that. The Justin Bieber hatedom is reaching terrifying proportions in recent year.

As for The Amazing Atheist, I agree with him on some things, but disagree with him on others. Really half of his show is his own arrogance. And it's often a bit misogynistic or the like. We disagree radically on Sociobiology.

I liked Korn years ago as a teenager, when there wasn't much music to get a hold of. I was on dial-up and most stores in my area didn't sell much of a variety of music. Korn's creepy sort of "disturbed child" sound was rather fascinating. However, as I've grown older, and have the internet, I haven't much listened to most of the . A lot of it I've found to be better suited to my tastes. I don't dislike Korn or anything, from what I'm aware. I've just moved on to other music, for the most part. With the roughly 3,000 artists or so I listen to each year, it's rare that I find a particular mood to go back to listening to any nu-metal band. And even overall, I find Deathcore more appealing than Nu-Metal. If Deathcore were prominent during my childhood, I would have listened to it.

Cool stories bros...

Sorry, but where is this supposed to go?

*headdesks*

^ ^^

Agreed. As interesting as it is to talk about Scrye having Bieber Fever...

edited 30th Dec '10 9:27:22 AM by Barkey

Don't look at me! I didn't expect a paragraph about Korn!

Back on topic, we do have regulations here in the US about what can be played on the radio. How is this different? (I am asking honestly.)

The law is a sucky pile of suck overall, no question.

edited 30th Dec '10 7:06:50 PM by jewelleddragon

I don't think the US has that kind of laws. There are regulations regarding content of TV shows during certain time slots, though.

Which I think are also borderline, yeah. This, though? Jumps so far over the line it's now approaching it from the other direction.

Well, I know there eventually has to be a regulating body for radio because of broadcast physics. Same as somebody has to say which side of the road you drive on, which side isn't important, but you have to pick one or everything implodes.

any random person who owns a blog, writes down their opinion and gets reported by some moron can be punished up to 50 million Hungarian Forints

wat

It's the fucking internet. That shouldn't be possible.

@jewelleddragon: If a radio station plays It's On by Ice-T in the US in the afternoon will it get punished by some bullshit authority for doing so...?

@Deboss: The ridiculous argument that the mental development of the youth can be placed before constitutional rights has nothing to do with broadcast physics.

@Matrix: I honestly don't know what they are planning, how will this look like in practice... But I think (and I hope) they will not be able to do it. It's the internet, it's too big for them. Unless they start to ban sites left and right...

I was referring to the fact that people need to use different channels, constitutional rights had nothing to do with it, that's correct.

I love the title of the song they B& as i'd think that'd be symbolic. What Do You Mean, It's Not Symbolic? in hindsight!

edited 31st Dec '10 1:26:19 AM by BalloonFleet

@Balloon Fleet: If I was in charge of the radio station, I would open the new year with the song Freedom of Speech by Ice-T. Now that would be a Take That!...

American radio stations have to fudge out the swearing because of the Moral Guardians, no? And I assume there would be penalties of some kind if they didn't?

Still, the comparsion with the new hungarian laws doesn't hold water unless the american moral guardians also have the power to do the same to private blogs.