Court overturns FCC's Janet Jackson nip-slip fine

This is a good ruling because the next time there's a high-profile nipple slip, we'll have some basis for determining whether Ms. Jackson's nipple was really worth US$550,000.

...very early in the court's 102-page ruling, the justices also note that in the last three decades since the Supreme Court's Pacifica vs. FCC ruling, the agency has showed a great deal of restraint in punishing broadcasters. "Throughout this period, the Commission consistently explained that isolated or fleeting material did not fall within the scope of actionable indecency," the court observed, with said policy in effect up to and including the Jackson breast-exposure scene, which the Opinion's very first paragraph notes lasted "nine-sixteenths" of a second.

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