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Comment by maxerickson | Hacker News Reader

Can you explain more about how the explicit content warnings force people to do anything?

I guess they make it easier for parents to control some of the circumstances where their children listen to music but I don't see how it affects others.

Worse than government laws about little notifications are things like Walmart demanding watered down versions of the music.

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Actually, the point of organizations like PMRC and MADD are for outright bans. As in, MADD espouses prohibition now as a goal (nobody can have alcohol because some people make bad decisions). PMRC wanted / wants all obscene material to simply not exist in music, and if they can't get that, then burnish them with a SCARLET LETTER (or sticker) so those who wish to live the Pure, Unstained Life of High Virtue should never have to engage with Low Class Expressions like Rap or Comic Books.

So the theory is that if you give an inch they'll take a mile?

Hasn't really worked out that way.

I agree that trying to force a change in the actual music is worse than requiring the parental advisory sticker, but they are both forms of censorship.

One problem is that the interpretation of lyrics is subjective, as this FBI investigation so well illustrates. Albums that sound sufficiently pop/clean/bubblegum go without the sticker when there are clearly songs explicitly about sex/drugs/etc.

For an example, look at Third Eye Blind's self-titled, debut album. Semi-Charmed Life is clearly about meth and sex, but it is sufficiently clean sounding that it gets by without a sticker.

Meanwhile, albums that sounds a little edgier, but are actually about clean, mundane subject matter have the sticker forced upon them.

IMO, the movies and games industries have much better, more objective rating systems.

> IMO, the movies and games industries have much better, more objective rating systems.

If you believe that, I recommend you watch This Movie Is Not Yet Rated[0].

It's just as bad in movies :-). I don't know anything about game ratings to dispute that part, though.

[0]: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0493459/

ESRB (games rating system) is the same way. Almost no physical retailers will carry NR (Not Rated) or AO (Adults Only) rated games as a matter of corporate policy. ESRB DOES clearly list whatever content caused the game to receive it's rating though. If you're a dev who wants to make a game and distribute physical copies, you can still do so online through Amazon or some other distributor, and Steam hosts digital distributions without ESRB ratings of any kind simply because there are too many indie games for ESRB to rate (if they all applied for ratings that is).

> IMO, the movies and games industries have much better, more objective rating systems.

Honestly, the music industry is way better than the movie industry. The MPAA rating system is a literal censorship board, complete with an actual member of the clergy serving in an advisory role on all appeals. But if you don't get your film rated, it's almost impossible to distribute it to anyone but the very small independent movie theaters.

The MPAA results in an immensely chilling effect, which influences the movies people produce in the first place.

Contrast that with music, where the distribution mechanisms are much more varied than for film, and there's nothing preventing people from releasing music with incredibly explicit lyrics, as long as they don't expect the uncensored versions to be played on the radio - a medium which, while still popular, is by no means thr primary distribution channel anymore.

Indeed, it seems like its principal purpose is to sell CDs to teenagers. Admittedly, the sticker doesn't seem to do very much of anything anymore, possibly due to the dearth of CDs to attach it to.

The original use case was "Darling Nikki" by Prince which, I have to say, isn't a song I'm going to be playing to my daughter anytime soon. (And believe me, I think the whole of Purple Rain is genius.) But the tone? That's hugely damaging. It's all "these musicians are corrupting our kids" and not enough "some people make art for adults and that's OK".

Of course, if the debate had been more reasonable, Eminem would have had to come up with a different marketing angle.

I don't have a problem with Walmart. They are a private company, they can pick and choose what items they want to sell in their stores. They can ask a manufacturer to make changes, which the manufacturer is free to decline. Walmart is a big retailer, but hardly the only place to buy music, even when people still bought music in stores.

Oh, I don't think Walmart should be legally stopped from putting pressure on artists, I just think it is likely to be more culturally corrosive than a content warning.

They destroy artistic presentation, artistic value, and artistic message. Its impossible to see a piece of art as art, if they state stands in between the art and the observer and forces acknowledgement of its righteous dictations and moral superiority.

The state forces you to acknowledge its authority before you are allowed to observe and ponder an artistic message - additionally, compromising the display of said artistic message with a big nasty horribly designed stamp of disapproval covering a significant portion of the work.

Its is parents' responsibility to police content their children are exposed to. Its parents' responsibility to read the lyrics of "Louie Louie" and determine if that is safe for their children or not. Requiring the state to burden itself with this role is not only no route to security in such a situation, but tremendously irresponsible of this so-called league of concerned parents.

Asking people to change their art is generally considered a negative thing.

Asking people to change their art is generally considered a negative thing.

What do you think I'm talking about with the statement about Walmart?

Some might say that the album cover is just as much a piece of art as the actual music. Would it be okay to put a parental advisory sticker on any other piece of art?

Wasn't the sticker on the out side of the shrink-wrap?

There's a big difference between refusing to comply with a distributor and losing access to their network, vs standing up to one of the largest trade groups in the country. In practice the RIAA probably has more clout with their record label than the artists themselves.

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