Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/boundvolumes/529bv.pdf
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529US3

Unit: $U60

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UNITED STATES v. PLAYBOY ENTERTAINMENT
GROUP, INC.
Scalia, J., dissenting

431 U. S. 595, 597–599 (1977); Hamling v. United States, 418
U. S. 87, 130 (1974). Cf. Jacobellis v. Ohio, 378 U. S. 184, 201
(1964) (Warren, C. J., dissenting) (“In my opinion, the use
to which various materials are put—not just the words and
pictures themselves—must be considered in determining
whether or not the materials are obscene”). This is so
whether or not the products in which the business trafﬁcs
independently meet the high hurdle we have established for
delineating the obscene, viz., that they contain no “serious
literary, artistic, political, or scientiﬁc value.” Miller,
supra, at 24. See Ginzburg, 383 U. S., at 471. We are more
permissive of government regulation in these circumstances
because it is clear from the context in which exchanges be-
tween such businesses and their customers occur that nei-
ther the merchant nor the buyer is interested in the work’s
literary, artistic, political, or scientiﬁc value.
“The deliber-
ate representation of petitioner’s publications as erotically
arousing . . . stimulate[s] the reader to accept them as pruri-
ent; he looks for titillation, not for saving intellectual con-
tent.”
Id., at 470. Thus, a business that “(1) offer[s] . . .
hardcore sexual material, (2) as a constant and intentional
objective of [its] business, [and] (3) seek[s] to promote it as
such” ﬁnds no sanctuary in the First Amendment. FW/
PBS, supra, at 261 (Scalia J., concurring in part and dis-
senting in part).

Section 505 regulates just this sort of business.

Its cover-
age is limited to programming that “describes or depicts sex-
ual or excretory activities or organs in a patently offensive
manner as measured by contemporary community standards
[for cable television].” 47 CFR § 76.227(d) (1999) (emphasis
added).
It furthermore applies only to those channels that
are “primarily dedicated to sexually-oriented program-
ming.” 1
It is conceivable, I
suppose, that a channel which is primarily dedicated to sex

(emphasis added).

§ 505(a)

1 Congress’s attempt to limit the reach of § 505 is therefore, contrary to

the Court’s contention, see ante, at 812, a virtue rather than a vice.