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)
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.”
