[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 76 (Wednesday, May 29, 1996)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E931]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                BLOCKING CABLE PORN IS EVERYONE'S FIGHT

                                 ______


                          HON. MARTIN R. HOKE

                                of ohio

                    in the house of representatives

                        Wednesday, May 29, 1996

  Mr. HOKE. Mr. Speaker, last year in a Maryland suburb of Washington 
as the House and Senate were conferencing on the telecommunications 
bill, a 10-year-old boy was arrested for raping a 5-year-old girl. The 
incident shocked and deeply disturbed the people of the D.C. area. How, 
everyone wanted to know, could this possibly have happened? What on 
earth could have motivated it?
  As it turns out, the boy said he got the idea by watching a 
pornographic cable channel on the television set in his own home, a 
channel that was supposed to be scrambled. However, the boy discovered 
that if watched long enough, it would unscramble and he could see and 
hear adults having sex.
  As many of my constituents know only too well, cable subscribers in 
parts of the 10th District also receive the audio and video portion of 
pornographic channels in a manner that is intermittently clear. As a 
result, impressionable children can be exposed to the most graphic 
pornography and obscene programming and advertising.
  At the time this story was breaking, I had been appointed a conferee 
on the telecommunications bill, and was in the midst of convincing my 
fellow conferees to make sure there was a provision that would require 
cable operators to completely block from non-subscribers both the audio 
and video portion of all channels showing sexually explicit 
programming. In the end, this provision--requiring the total 
elimination of all sight and sound--was agreed to and the bill became 
law. It was a great victory for families across America.
  Predictably, before the president's signature was even dry on the new 
law, a pornographic cable channel, Playboy Enterprises, was in court 
challenging it, claiming that it unfairly discriminates against their 
right to broadcast pornographic programming to people who aren't even 
subscribers. However the real reason the pornography channels are 
fighting this provision is that they use partial scrambling as a 
marketing tool--to lure channel surfers into subscribing to their 
channels. The price we pay as a community is the pollution of our 
culture and trashing of Judeo-Christian values, as well as the exposure 
of innocents of the tenderest and most impressionable years to explicit 
sexual material.
  The case will probably take several months to decide. In the 
meantime, there are steps that parents can take to protect their 
children.
  If my fellow Americans agree that this new law makes sense and that 
cable companies should honor it irrespective of what the courts say, I 
urge them to contact their cable company, as I have, and tell them that 
you know about the new law--section 641 of the Telecommunications Act 
of 1996--and would like to know what steps they are taking to comply. 
If enough customers write in, the cable companies will have to respond.

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