I agree with the sentiment that it is up to the individual to determine what is proper for consumption and what is improper. Education plays an important role in equipping individuals with the critical apparatus necessary to generate considered opinions and navigate the marketplace.

Regulation is necessary only to a certain degree, to protect employees more often than consumers of "questionable" media content. 

We live in a country where there is freedom of speech. Therefore, pornography and crude music are ways that people express themselves. You are not forced to watch pornography nor to listen to music containing curses unless you want to. Therefore, why not let people express themselves and if you are an adult, you draw your own line as to what you feel comfortable with viewing and hearing. If you are a youngster, you are supposed to have parents who will do that for you although that is not always the case.

I think we draw the line when someone is being exploited.  If a person chooses to make pornography because there is good money in it, then there is nothing we can really say against it.  However, if children or women or anyone else are being forced against their will or exposed to danger, such as STDs, then there is a problem.

I have to agree with the other posters. I believe that it is up to the individual to determine what is pornographic and crude. That said, there are some people (under the age of 18) who should not be allowed to make the determination for themselves.

It seems that the media is opening up to what is considered acceptable (think about the movies--the rating has changed dramatically since its conception).

In agreement with everyone who has pointed to the false dichotomy, I am concerned about the "who decides" in the initial post.

When we transfer to others the responsibility of deciding what's "good" for us, we open the door to Big Brother. This is the first step toward censorship and curtailed personal liberties. With our acquiescence, those who supposedly know better begin by banning pornography and may end up by banning anything that implies a potential challenge to the regime's -any regime's- vested interests.

I think it is up to parents to "draw the line" as to what their children should listen to and watch. Yet at some point parents themselves need to openly discuss such matters with their children. Keeping them in ignorance may prove dangerous, because those who cannot distinguish between values and non-values are often an easy prey to exploiters.

An additional note is that the concept of pornography has changed over the years and will continue to change. Historian Arnold Toynbee often spoke about "the swing of the pendulum," meaning that we are constantly moving between exceedingly permissive and exceedingly repressive behavior. We do not seem to be able to reach a happy medium, and this should make us extra careful about what we condone or condemn.   

The line to be drawn must be drawn by the individual. If one believes the types of music and entertainment described in the original post are inappropriate, then they shouldn't watch or listen to them. They should not, however, be able to force their preferences on others, though they have the right to try to persuade people to see things their way. 

I completely agree with post #3's assessment of this being a "false dichotomy."  It does seem like a logical fallacy--even a 'post hoc, ergo propter hoc' type of argument.  This type of argument suggests that because event 'B' follows 'A', them event 'A' must have caused event 'B'.  In reality, the two are not connected at all.  It is really not a logical argument to say that the U.S. has pornography and crude music and is corrupt; well, the U.S. must be corrupt because it has those two things.  Are they good for society? Absolutely not, but it is a weak argument to blame any sort of social corruption on them, when in reality much deeper, involved forces are at work.

I think that this is a false dichotomy.  Is there proof that pornography and "crude music" are inconsistent with the societal good?  I do not think that there is any such proof.  Therefore, I see nothing that proves that we need some "line" so long as the pornography is made by consenting adults and the music and pornography can be kept from children whose parents do not want them to see/hear it.

The balance between individual freedom and governmental restrictions (laws) will always be with us, exacerbated by the free enterprise system, which measures everything by power represented by wealth.  The most frequently cited argument for regulating sex behavior (on the surface a strictly private matter) is exploitation of the weaker participants by the stronger—prostitutes and pimps, girls and slavers, etc.  But all human activity, all choice, is vulnerable to exploitation.  The “line” (an overused metaphor; there really is not distinct boundary between one kind of behavior and another) is ideally one of personal ethics or morality, not a “legal” distinction.  The “line-drawer” is the individual; the government’s task, a formidable one, is to insure individual freedom while protecting the weak in society from the strong (financially, not morally).  By this argument, individual behavior should not be regulated except by the participants; there is little comfort in this argument for the weak. But in simple cases, like indecent music, the choice to listen or support the artists is in the power of each individual.  As for so-called pornography, the argument that watching it leads to anti-social behavior is legitimate, but is not enough of a consequence to ban it – one could argue that it prevents as much crime as it promotes.