Briar Patch Justice
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 9:08 AM

Apologies for bloggish neglect of late -- Tbilisi does not believe in blogging. But I have pried a moment away from my khachapuri to send along an update on those federal obscenity charges aimed at a woman who placed sexually violent stories on the internet. Among the unusual features of this prosecution is that the charges -- which concerned adult obscenity only, even though some of the characters in her fictional tales were minors -- were aimed at text, mere words: there were no drawings or photos. A second unusual feature is that the defendant, who seems to have had a hard life, suffers from agoraphobia. This latter feature played a role in the resolution of the case, because she was in no condition to be coming to a courtroom for weeks on end. The woman has agreed to a settlement in which she pleads guilty and is sentenced to --- home confinement, to which her medical condition had essentially sentenced her long ago. A sad story all around, though not as sad as what might have happened with a full blown trial. And federal prosecutors have succeeded in cleaning up the internet through this fiendishly clever legal maneuvering. Of course, it has come at some cost: they may have momentarily averted their gaze from that dastardly Tommy Chong.

Labels: internet, litigation, obscenity

 
"Defend Our Porn"
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 9:57 PM

That's the title of a website that has just been launched by the company and individual recently charged with federal obscenity crimes. (The subtitle is "Protect Our Freedom.") The site has news about the case, a guest book with some interesting posts from supporters, and information about donating to the cause. Seems the Justice Department was so enamored of this case that its press release announcing the indictments preceded (by days) any official notification to the targets. Here's the site's Mission Statement, from the "Donate" page:

DefendOurPorn.org is a site started in 2008 as a direct result of the Federal government filing an obscenity indictment against John Stagliano, John Stagliano Inc and Evil Angel Productions for the traffic and interstate commerce of two pornographic movies and the website available of a trailer for a third pornographic movie.

In the days following the indictment, Mr. Stagliano received an outpouring of support from adult industry members and fans, asking how and where they could donate money to help fight the legal case. DefendOurPorn.org was founded.

Any money which is donated and not used towards the legal defense of the John Stagliano / Evil Angel case will be rolled over in the DefendOurPorn fund and will be earmarked for future First Amendment / obscenity prosecutions.

Note from Karen Stagliano: In the very near future, DefendOurPorn.org will be formed as a non-profit organization. Unfortunately, the Justice Department released a press release about the indictment against John Stagliano / Evil Angel before actually notifying the defendants, so we have been organizing things here while keeping day-to-day operations on schedule.

Thanks to AVN.com for the pointer -- link Not Safe For Work.

Labels: obscenity, pornography

 
Feds After Mainstream Porn?
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 10:43 PM

A new federal obscenity case has come into being, with the target a well-known figure in the pornography industry. He directs his own films (apparently inventing or at least being a progenitor of "gonzo" porn) and live shows, but also operates companies that produce and distribute porn videos directed by others. The charges against him (and his companies) arise from some of these other films. From what I can gather from this article (not safe for work) at Adult Video News.com and this one in the LA Times, the obscenity charges differ from those in recent cases because the porn itself is not particularly extreme. That is, there is a hint in these stories that these charges are aimed at restricting a much broader segment of the current porn market than was previously targeted. At least on this score, our Attorney General is a man of his word.

Labels: litigation, obscenity

 
Canada Customs Polices Obscenity
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 10:56 PM

The long-running legal battle between Vancouver's Little Sister's bookstore and Canadian Customs has centered around the tendency for Customs to seize gay and lesbian literature that is en route to Little Sister's. (The case essentially ground to an end more than a year ago, when government funding was denied for Little Sister's legal expenses; Little Sister's maintains a webpage devoted to the history of the case.) But lots of sexually explicit material is perfectly legal in Canada -- how does Customs know what to seize and what to pass? In part, it seems, they are instructed by a list of titles, with an indication of which titles are acceptable and which are verboten. How do I know this? Because Slate.com was good enough to publish excerpts from the list and the accompanying instructions for the fourth quarter of 2007. The distinctions drawn by the censors suggest a refined development of the casuistrical arts.

If you want to, you can buy Little Sister's for $675,000 (Canadian, presumably).

Labels: Canada, obscenity

 
Internet Porn Stats
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 9:36 PM

Top Ten Reviews hosts a webpage that is chock full of statistics relating to pornography generally and internet pornography specifically. For instance, it seems that China is the largest market (in value terms) for pornography, though in per capita value terms, South Korea is dominant: porn "revenues" in South Korea exceed $500 per-capita per year, versus less than $50 in the US of A. (Revenues for porn may well be falling in the US.) Search engine requests for "sex" are most prevalent (in per capita terms?) in Pakistan, whereas South Africa is top of the table for "porn" searches. Among US cities, one stands out for naughty internet searching, leading the country in the "sex", "porn", and "xxx" categories. I am sure that by now you have guessed that this hotbed of perversion is, er, Elmhurst, Illinois.

Do you think that Elmhurst (located in the Northern District of Illinois) leads in those searches because some Elmhurst residents are trolling for potentially obscene material to pass along to the Feds? Or maybe there is one very active fellow who lives in Elmhurst?

Incidentally, I am uncertain about the provenance of many of the numbers reported on the Top Ten webpage, so I would take them with a grain of salt. (I am pretty confident about the "Elmhurst factor," however.)

Update: Please drop what you are doing right now and go watch Michael Pollan (of, among other things, The Omnivore's Dilemma) give a TED talk. Just in case you are new to this, TED talks are the best things on the web; while there, check out Freakonomics guru and general good fellow Steve Levitt. [I almost forgot: Pollan has been mentioned on Vice Squad before (surely his greatest honor) in part for the following quote: "As a result of the war against cannabis, Americans are demonstrably less free today." Levitt, too, has had his days in the Vice Squad sun.]

Labels: Illinois, internet, obscenity, pornography

 
Obscenity Updates
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 8:10 PM

A few days ago Vice Squad brought word of three obscenity stories in the news, two from Virginia and one from Pennsylvania. Adult Video News.com provides updates for all three stories. (Links to Adult Video News.com generally are Not Safe For Work.)

(1) The forthcoming trial of a woman facing the possibility of years in prison for writing obscene stories and posting them on the web, where a couple dozen subscribers paid $10 per month for access, is the subject of one longish AVN.com story. Along the probable timeline of the case, we learn that there are substantial legal problems with the search warrant that was relied upon to seize evidence, and that the defendant has a very difficult history (hence the claimed cathartic value in the stories) and suffers from agoraphobia.

(2) The Sex Workers' Art Show at the College of William and Mary went ahead with two sold out performances on Monday night -- nothing like the threat of cancellation or arrests for obscenity to give a boost to ticket sales. All the hullabaloo and the presence of police officers did cause the performers to tone the show down a bit, however, so the censorious citizenry was somewhat appeased.

(3) The City of Virginia Beach has decided not to pursue obscenity charges against an Abercrombie & Fitch store that displayed some largish racy photos. (Customers complained, don't you know, and then a manager didn't cave when the police visited, so he had to be summonsed.) Alas, the AVN.com story has a reference to the photos as displaying less nudity than a plumber -- "alas" because I do not think that this particular plumber stereotype should be further promulgated. (Maybe I can censor it?) The police apparently intend to return the briefly-almost-obscene photos.

Labels: obscenity

 
Obscenity Case Explosion
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 6:01 PM

(1) The unusual case that does not involve dirty pictures -- only text -- continues apace in Pittsburgh. The author's statements to the FBI can be admitted into evidence -- do you think she said that her cathartic (she tells us) writing had no significant literary, artistic, political, or scientific value? All right-thinking Americans have the federal prosecutor to thank for giving us the possibility of keeping the dangerous wordsmith behind bars for thirty years -- and the decision to admit the FBI interview material will surely convince anyone who missed the Martha Stewart case to talk openly when interviewed (not even under (explicit) oath) by FBI agents. ABC News has more.

(2) The College of William and Mary is hosting a Sex Workers’ Art Show; a Virginia state legislator wants to make sure police are there to enforce any violations of state obscenity laws -- that is, if her pressure on the College president to cancel the show does not succeed. But if the show really is artistic, doesn't that put it squarely within Miller v. California's safe harbor? You don't understand: our legislator, the wise Athenian of one month's tenure, has never before witnessed such a public outpouring against a public performance. (Perhaps she should contact the federal prosecutor from the Pittsburgh area.) The College thought it best to prohibit cameras at the show. That might be enough to scuttle the whole deal, however, as the performers typically record the show to protect themselves against obscenity charges -- not work safe link here. I'd mention Catch-22, but I understand that it is obscene, too.

(3) Abercrombie & Fitch, in one Virginia Beach incarnation, goes down. This must be one of the best behaved (or coldest) beaches in the good ol' USA, if some racy photos can bring the heat.

Labels: obscenity

 
Obscenity in Staunton, Virginia
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 8:38 PM

Staunton, Virginia, was fortunate enough not to record a single homicide in 2007. But it isn't exactly crime-free: there was nearly an assault per day, and more than one-and-a-half larcenies on a daily basis. So you would think local prosecutors would be keeping busy. Nonetheless, a video store clerk was charged last week with various obscenity counts, accused of selling legally-obscene material. Oh the humanity. The new charges come in the wake of an earlier indictment of the man who owns the store from which the videos allegedly were sold. Oddly, six of the counts filed against the poor clerk are felonies. What is the explanation? A lawyer for the owner speculates (on avn.com, not safe for work) that the prosecutors are trying to use the law that makes repeat offenses a felony. So if they get a misdemeanor conviction for selling one obscene DVD, they will claim that sales of others are repeat offenses, and hence felonies, even though the sales occurred before the prior conviction. Actually, maybe the local prosecutors in Staunton are busy. The idea to indict the clerk seems to have come from the federal Department of Justice, which is helping out with the Staunton prosecution. I had sort of been hoping that our new Attorney General wouldn't want to make obscenity a huge priority, if for no other reason than to distinguish himself from his two immediate predecessors. Staunton is the home of the world's only re-creation of the Blackfriar's Theatre, the indoor space north of the Thames that Shakespeare's acting company took over in 1608. Uh oh, aren't some of those Shakespeare plays obscene?

Labels: obscenity, Shakespeare

 
Parking Ticket Profanity
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 11:37 PM

A few months ago, a fine fellow received a ticket for a parking violation in Doylestown, Pennsylvania. (Actually, that scenario probably arises daily.) He did what any proud, free American would do -- he sent in a check to pay his fine. Oh yeah, he also wrote on the check: 'Go (Bleep) Yourself.' The aftermath?

Well this little display of pique or defiance or whatever you want to call it resulted in borough police charging him with disorderly conduct for using obscene language - the F-word - in public, that is to say, on a public document, which his parking fine check was deemed to be.

Oh, this would have made for a super Supreme Court case, one that would have settled for a long time the extent to which we can legally curse our employees, our agents, our hirelings, the government. Alas, Doylestown had no stomach for the fight. At the trial, they offered to drop the disorderly conduct charge as long as our petulant parker paid the original ticket and provided a written apology to the borough clerk whose eyeshade had come across the sarcastic suggestion. (They had to insist on the parking ticket being paid because the ticket itself was sort of out of action, having become evidence in the disorderly conduct charge.) The mouthpiece for the foulmouth accepted the deal, and the possibility of a journey to the Supremes was nipped in the bud, much to the detriment of our republic.

Perhaps you might want to know what century they are living in in Doylestown? Here's some (accurate) information that might provide a clue. The parking fine was $5, and the possible penalty for disorderly conduct was $25 plus court costs. In Chicago, $5 is what they fine you if you are legally parked.

Labels: driving, obscenity

 
The Next Attorney General (?) and Porn
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 10:45 PM

The two attorneys general nominated by George W. Bush and confirmed by the Senate, John "Comstock" Ashcroft and Alberto Gonzales, both promoted anti-obscenity as a priority of their department's enforcement efforts. But those efforts never met the high standards of some anti-porn organizations. Can we hope for a further perfecting of the anti-porn plan if Michael Mukasey becomes AG? Senator Orrin Hatch wants to know, especially with respect to a campaign against mainstream porn, and the nominee offers reassurance: "...we have to make sure that this stuff does not affect children and does not wind up undermining families." Is that in Miller v. California, the notion that we can suppress sexually-explicit material if it undermines families? It must be, what with Mr. Mukasey being a retired judge and all. Mukasey seems much more categorical with respect to mainstream porn than waterboarding.

Labels: obscenity, pornography, Supreme Court

 
Phoenix Obscenity Verdict
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 11:48 PM

[Standard disclaimer: the links in this post are not safe for work.] First, all the humans whom the feds originally charged with obscenity offenses had charges dropped or were found innocent before the jury was called upon to decide their fate. The only parties left on trial, therefore, were two corporations. The original charges concerned four DVDs, but one of those was dropped from the case, too. So in the Incredible Shrinking Porn case, the jury split on the remaining charges: two of the DVDs were not obscene, the jury said, and one was. Whew -- at least the feds got something. But they might even lose this upon appeal, when the judge's decision not to allow in evidence that similar DVDs were sold at numerous places in the Phoenix area -- and hence might not really violate those community standards -- might be re-assessed.

What a waste of time and money this whole prosecution has been. We can be thankful that no one has gone to jail, which not only is extremely unpleasant for those involved but sentences the taxpayers to forking over still more resources to save Phoenix from the likes of Gag Factor 18. We did manage to learn from the trial, however, that Filthy Things 6 and American Bukakke 13 are not legally obscene in Phoenix.

Labels: obscenity

 
The Incredible Shrinking Obscenity Trial
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 10:56 PM

Recall that trial for distributing dirty DVDS that got underway in Phoenix last week? It started with three defendants, but one had to be jettisoned in the interest of pursuing the case against the other two. A second defendant (link not work safe) had charges dismissed today -- the judge ruled that there was essentially no evidence that his job would have provided him with knowledge of the content of the challenged videos. Hard to know how a jury will react to having defendants and their lawyers regularly disappearing.

Incidentally, an unwillingness to pursue this obscenity case may have played a role in costing one of those famously fired US attorneys his job.

Update: [Note: Links that follow are not work safe] Oops, almost missed the really important story for the porn industry: a federal appeals court in the 6th district has declared the record-keeping requirements for adult businesses, the so-called 2257 requirements, to be overbroad and thus unconstitutional. (These are the regulations that cost 'Girls Gone Wild' a couple million dollars.) The regulations are intended to ensure that adult entertainers are at least 18-years old, but porn producers have been quite vocal in their complaints that the requirements are too demanding. It seems that the 6th district agrees.

Labels: obscenity

 
The BBC Embraces Some Controversial Topics
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 10:11 PM

A friend of Vice Squad sends us a pointer to this BBC article on disabled people, some of whom have very limited options for 'normal' romantic relationships, paying to have sex with prostitutes. The article focuses on one 25-year-old disabled British man who went to a legal Spanish brothel for sex. Later, he returned with two other disabled men, and BBC cameras (funded by the taxes paid by television owners in Britain) came along. The disabled apparently tend to favor the legalisation of prostitution, if one survey referred to in the article can be believed:

A survey for the Disability Now website in 2005 suggested that 75% of disabled people believed in the legalisation of prostitution, with 62.5% of men and 19.2% of women saying they would use trained sex workers. It's a situation that exists in the Netherlands where a voluntary group provides just such a service for disabled people. Most clients pay for it themselves but some local authorities subsidise the service.

Recall that prostitution per se is already legal in Britain, though associated activities such as solicitation are illegal; the Netherlands has even more liberal laws regarding prostitution.

The article gives time to people who do not support legal prostitution for the disabled or for anyone else, and it has attracted many interesting comments, also on both sides of the issue.

Speaking of interesting uses for the tv tax revenues, the BBC is showing "Fanny Hill," a two-hour adaptation of the famous 18th-century erotic (or indecent, if you prefer) novel, Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure, by John Cleland. The book was banned in both Britain and the colonies (er, the US) for more than 200 years after it first appeared. But Cleland's novel has been available legally in Britain since 1970, and is now adapted for publicly-financed tv!

Labels: Britain, obscenity, prostitution

 
Federal Obscenity Trial in Phoenix
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 5:07 PM

The FBI ordered some sexually-explicit DVDs from a website; the DVDs were duly shipped from Phoenix to Virginia. The Phoenix distributors are now on trial for four of the DVDs, which the government maintains are obscene. Adult Video News (not safe for work!) has been providing accounts of the trial, and I have to say, they are fascinating. The report from October 17 (not work safe, remember) charts the jury selection last Tuesday -- 12 jurors and three alternates, who had to be sufficiently familiar with Phoenix at the time of the DVD mailings to be credible judges of what would violate Phoenix community standards, which are key to the Miller test that provides standards for what qualifies as obscene. One potential juror, a libertarian, asserted his belief that jurors were allowed to judge the facts as well as the law, but agreed that he could follow the judge's instructions. One potential juror claimed that she would be unable to watch the videos at issue. The same day also saw the dismissal of all charges against the producer of the DVDs, who was accused of sending them to the Phoenix store that allegedly sent them on to Virginia -- the government needs his testimony about the origin of the DVDS in their case against the retailers, but with charges pending against him, he could withhold that testimony on the grounds that it would amount to compelled self-incrimination. Whew. The last hour of Tuesday's courtroom activity was devoted to watching part of one of the four DVDs. Each of the jurors (and the judge) has their own personal monitor; there's also a large screen version for all the spectators. (Didn't a defendant in another federal obscenity case memorably note that the only people who would be forced to watch his videos would be the jurors in his trial?)

If anything, things got more interesting on Thursday (here's AVN's October 18 report). It was learned that the reason that the DVDs were ordered via the Phoenix retailer as opposed to the California-based producer is good old-fashioned forum-shopping: the feds did not want to try an obscenity case in LA County. The display of the videos continued, and it seems as if the four DVDs have to be shown in their entirety at the trial: another element of the Miller test is that two of the three conditions that must be met for a work to be legally obscene involve the work "being considered as a whole." These hardcore DVDs have "extra" segments that might take some of the edge off the nastiness that the feds hope will shock the Phoenix jury into a conviction. Here's the description (some fairly explicit language ahead) from AVN's correspondent, Mark Kernes:

Among other things, the extras showed Audrey and Otto preparing for their scene, setting up the giant plastic dildo that would be shoved up her ass, discussing how the d.p. with Rick would be choreographed, and perhaps most importantly, letting the audience know that she and Otto were married. They showed director Jim Powers relating his conception of the video as a whole, explaining how the Cindy Crawford scene might seem familiar because it was essentially a restaging of a scene from Filthy Things 1 which Powers felt hadn't come off just as he'd planned, so he wanted to try it again. They showed him discussing the impending sex with various performers, giving suggestions as to how it should be staged, and expanding the audience's point of view to show some of what goes on behind the scenes as the sex is being performed for the camera. In all, they put an artistic frame around the entire production ... and if it's art, it's not obscene.

On the third day, the jury sent a note to the judge, apparently asking if they had to watch all four DVDs in their entirety. Th trial resumes on Tuesday.

Labels: obscenity

 
The Withering Away of Obscenity Prosecutions
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 12:32 AM

Obscenity laws in the US have not changed much in the US in the past few decades. Yet prosecutions for adult obscenity offenses have fallen off considerably, to the point that hardcore (but not extreme hardcore) porn of the non-broadcast variety seems to be de facto legal in the US. Tim Wu, writing in Slate, asks what has led to this informal decriminalization. Wu's answer:

...it was a combined product, over decades, of the decisions of hundreds of prosecutors, FCC officials, FBI agents, and police officers—all of whom decided they had better things to do than chase around pornographers the way they chase murderers. Their consensus—that normal pornography just isn't harmful in the sense that, say, drugs are—has driven the current law more so than any official enactment.

Kansas, of course, is continuing to buck the trend.

Professor Wu first received (implicit) mention in Vice Squad with his speculation that WTO rules might lead to marijuana legalization; the first explicit Vice Squad notice came in regard to his co-authored book on the internet.

Labels: obscenity, policing

 
Obscenity Rampant in Kansas!
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 10:49 PM

Except, er, that if it is rampant, then it can't legally qualify as obscenity, because obscenity has to violate community standards.

A grand jury in Johnson County brought misdemeanor charges against four businesses for peddling filth, including one accused of displaying nasty Halloween costumes in store areas where the children might be harmed. Another business, which presumably offers many items for sale, was indicted for a single proffered DVD that the grand jury thought merited further court review. Somehow I missed the story that violent crime had been eliminated in Kansas.

The Supreme Court of the United States also contributed to the purification of America, by declining to review an Alabama law that bans the sale (not the possession, just the sale) of something called a vibrator, along with related items. But will the state law, now allowed to persist, actually be enforced? The "senior media and sexuality analyst" for Focus on the Family Action is concerned: 'Upholding the law is one thing, but consistently enforcing it is an entirely different matter. The citizens of Alabama will need to remain vigilant on this issue.' The price of unliberty is eternal vigilance.

Labels: Kansas, obscenity, sex

 
Trying to Imprison a Dissident Writer
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 6:24 AM

A story in the New York Times today begins thusly: "Sometime early next year, Karen Fletcher, a 56-year-old recluse living on disability payments, will go on trial in federal court here [Pittsburgh] on obscenity charges for writings distributed on the Internet to about two dozen subscribers." No pictures involved, only words. Since the 1973 landmark obscenity case, Miller v. California, there have been no federal convictions for purported obscenity of the image-free variety. Fletcher's short stories involve "detailed fictional accounts of the molesting, torture and sometimes gruesome murders of children under the age of 10, mostly girls." But she is not charged with violating any child pornography laws -- only the (adult) obscenity rules. She is charged with being a commercial filth purveyor, because she established a fee of $10 to grant her small coterie of readers access to the site. According to the Times, Ms. Fletcher's lawyers "argued in court that the fee barely covered her expenses and was imposed only because she believed using a credit card requirement would prevent minors from signing into the site. In the end, only 29 people subscribed, at least one of whom is likely to have been a police informant." Lots of prosecutorial resources are being expended so that lots of prison resources can be expended to keep the likes of Ms. Fletcher locked up. Right then, that should take care of this internet filth. I feel safer already.

Labels: obscenity, pornography

 
Obscenity Omission
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 10:32 PM

I am still playing catch-up on vice-related news following my month in Tbilisi; today I discovered this August 10 New York Times article concerning ObscenityCrimes.org, a webpage (operated by Morality in Media and linked to by the Justice Department) on which folks can turn in internet sites that they suspect contain illegal obscenity. Two retired police officers seek out illegal cyberporn and review the sites identified through the web informant page. According to the Times article, these efforts are funded through federal grants made to Morality in Media. And for those of us who think that our own toil has a Sisyphean element, take heart.

In the last few years, 67,000 citizens' complaints have been deemed legitimate under the program and passed on to the Justice Department and federal prosecutors.

The number of prosecutions resulting from those referrals is zero.

In what is surely a coincidence, Vice Squad's own Northern District of Illinois leads the nation in supplying the seemingly fruitless smut referrals.

Labels: obscenity, policing

 
Two From Wednesday's Trib
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 12:28 AM

It's now Thursday, so you will probably have to sign up for the free registration if you want to read online the two vice articles that appeared in the Metro section of Wednesday's Chicago Tribune. The first concerns a 'racy' billboard outside suburban Glenview:

The 10-foot-by-36-foot sign along Willow Road near Patriot Boulevard depicts a model lying on the beach with lines pointing to "problem" areas on her body, such as facial lines and wrinkles, and corresponding "solutions," including Botox.

By Tuesday, more than 300 people had signed petitions asking the owners of the salon and medical spa to replace the billboard, Thibeau said.

The owner of the salon is a native Parisian -- which seems to be part of his defense -- and the billboard does bring back memories to me of my six-month Paris sojourn last year. (Not much else in the Glenview area has the same effect.) He isn't backing down to the pressure -- either out of principle, I suppose, or because the previously mailed ad featuring the same photo proved to be great for business.

Trib vice article number two was on the very next page in the print edition, in a boon to vice-interested readers throughout the Chicagoland area. This story concerns how librarians are standing up for free speech by opposing proposed Illinois state legislation that would, you guessed it, require internet filters to annoy vice researchers (oh, and for the children). Librarians continue to be my anti-authoritarian heroes, despite that unfortunate reputation for shussing you. And while they may be anti-authoritarian, they can be pretty authoritative themselves. How would a librarian handle some n'er do well using an internet connection inappropriately? With a federal or state law? Noooooo. From the end of the Trib story:

Jane Schulten, director of the Crete Public Library, said filters are labor intensive. She said her small staff might not be able to closely monitor each computer or turn software on and off each time a patron makes such a request.

She said she's only had two incidents in eight years in which a patron looked at something deemed inappropriate. In both cases, a "tap-on-the-shoulder" approach seemed to work, Schulten said.

Labels: Chicago, internet, obscenity

 
Kansas Community Standards
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 10:36 PM

Sexually-explicit forms of speech in the US can be regulated or banned provided that the three-part test from the 1973 case of Miller v. California is satisfied. The first part of the "Miller test" is that the work, taken as a whole, and in applying contemporary community standards, appeals to the prurient interest in sex. The second prong of the Miller test relating to "patent offensiveness" also relies upon contemporary community standards. (The third prong concerning the lack of serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value is not to be judged by community standards, according to a later Supreme Court decision, Pope v. Illinois (1987).)

I bring it up because I am wondering about the latest activities of anti-obscenity crusaders in Kansas. They have presented county prosecutors with petitions urging that grand juries be empaneled with the aim of bringing obscenity charges against some local businesses -- not one or two businesses, but, er, 32. Doesn't the very fact that they can identify 32 filth peddlers suggest that these businesses are operating in accord with community standards? I mean, maybe one or two businesses might be able to make a go of it even while flying wildly in the face of community standards -- but 32?

The anti-obscenity crusaders should be careful in opening up this petition thing. In Hong Kong, a student journal that included a quiz asking about incest and bestiality fantasies provoked 184 complaints, leading to a finding that the journal was indecent. But then a website went up describing some Biblical scenes; more than 1700 complaints have now been submitted to the indecency authorities about the Bible.

Labels: Asia, Kansas, obscenity, pornography, Supreme Court