Legal Periodical: Comparative Legal Approaches to Pornographic Obscenity by the United States and the United Kingdom
Two Nations, One Web: Comparative Legal Approaches to Pornographic Obscenity by the United States and the United Kingdom
William T. Goldberg, 90 B.U. L. Rev. 2121 (2010)
Should the obscenity standard for internet speech be national, or local?
FindLaw: “Obscenity law has always had weak underpinnings. Now, due to the advent of the Internet, it may be toppled entirely, if courts truly begin to take seriously the due process and First Amendment problems it raises. If it is not toppled, then significant injustices – like the injustice perpetrated in the Paul Little case – will only continue.”
Eleventh Circuit Rejects Ninth Circuit’s National-Standard-for-Internet-Obscenity Decision
Eugene Volokh reports: “United States v. Little concludes that Internet obscenity distribution prosecutions may rely on the community standard of the place in which the material was distributed — which means the government can try to download the material in the most restrictive community, and prosecute the distributor there. This may well be correct, given the Court’s decision in Ashcroft v. ACLU (I); and the Ninth Circuit’s contrary decision in United States v. Kilbride might well be mistaken . . . “
11th Circuit reject’s 9th Circuit’s Kilbride decision and upholds application of local community standards to Internet obscenity prosecution
United States v. Little, No. 08-15964 (11th Cir. Feb. 2, 2010)
Law Review: The Constitutional Status of Moral Legislation
The Constitutional Status of Moral Legislation
John Lawrence Hill, 98 Ky. L.J. 1 (2010)
“This Article argues that, in seeking to protect the private activities of gays and lesbians, liberals from Hart on have thought it necessary to throw the baby out with the bathwater by maintaining that the state may never regulate on the basis of ‘private morals.’ The better conclusion is that society has now reached a general consensus that it is wrong to single out one type of sexual activity and mark for punishment the class of people who engage in it. This, indeed, is the meaning of Lawrence v. Texas, and not the more expansive claim that Lawrence declares the end of morals legislation.”
Arizona Court of Appeals: Residents’ personal knowledge and experience adequately supported denial of SOB use permit
Treulich’s Plaza, LLC v. City of Phoenix, No. 1 CA-CV 09-0025, 2009 WL 4981478 (Ariz. App. Div. 1, Dec. 22, 2009)
11th Circuit obscenity case tests community standards on the internet
Fulton County Daily Report: “The federal judges who on Thursday heard the appeal of the movie producer, known as Max Hardcore, aren’t being asked to make the same judgments the jury did . . . the judges are being asked to decide some of the heaviest issues in the area of obscenity law, such as whether the government should criminalize adult films purchased over the Internet and viewed in the privacy of the home, and whether a Tampa jury should apply its own mores to materials available all over the country.”
9th Circuit: National community standard must be applied in regulating Internet obscenity
U.S. v. Kilbride, No. 07-10528 (9th Cir., Oct 28, 2009)
MIM Report Shows How the Explosion of Hardcore Adult Pornography on the Internet and Elsewhere is Contributing to the Sexual Exploitation of Children
“Morality in Media has compiled information from hundreds of news articles and from court cases, social science studies, books, Congressional testimony, and other sources that show how the explosion of hardcore adult pornography on the Internet and elsewhere is contributing to the sexual exploitation of children. The works cited in the report were published from 1980 to the present.”
