CBS spent almost four-and-a-half years fighting the fine imposed by the Federal Communications Commission for singer Janet Jackson's flash of nudity during the Super Bowl XXXVIII halftime show.

Fighting the Civil War didn't even take that long.

But in the end CBS got what it wanted: The Third Circuit Court of Appeals this week struck down the $550,000 penalty, deciding that the FCC acted "arbitrarily and capriciously" in punishing the network for the performance that helped introduce the phrase "wardrobe malfunction" into the pop-culture lexicon.

For the 12 people on Earth who didn't hear about it, it unfolded like this: Jackson was onstage dancing during a musical number when fellow performer Justin Timberlake tears off part of her costume to reveal her bare breast.

People who have pooh-poohed this whole episode as a silly overreaction like to point out that the flash of skin lasted only a half-second. Blink and you would've missed it.

But that argument doesn't wash in an information age when -- to borrow a phrase from CBS' Dan Rather -- the camera never blinks. With constantly improving video and recording technology, action that lasts even a fraction of a second can be replayed over and over, or digitally captured as an everlasting frozen image.

So if the estimated 90 million viewers of the 2004 Super Bowl -- including who-knows-how-many kids -- didn't see the slip of nudity the first time, they and untold millions more certainly saw it when the captured image blazed its way worldwide courtesy of the Internet.

The performers intentionally perpetrated it. CBS broadcast it. And the FCC was well within its purview to slap CBS with a $550,000 fine.

But the most galling aspect of the fine's removal is this: Who do the judges on the Third Circuit Court of Appeals think they are that they can tell the FCC how to enforce its rules? This isn't checks and balances -- this is just shameful second-guessing on the part of the court. A three-judge panel basically robbed the FCC of its duty of punishing people who trowel out obscenity over the airwaves.

Just tack this on to the ever-growing list of examples demonstrating judicial activism gone amok. That could be the real obscenity here.

If any good comes out of this incident, it would be in the form of Senate Bill 1780, the Protecting Children from Indecent Programming Act. It would require the FCC to maintain a policy stating "that a single word or image may be considered indecent." There's been little movement on this bill since December, but in light of this shameful court ruling, S. 1780 needs Congress' full attention to assure it becomes law.