From: "Brett Turcotte" <turcotte@io.com>
Date: Wed, 8 Feb 95 06:42:12 PST
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re: Effects of S.314 (Communications Decency Act)
Message-ID: <199502081442.IAA29984@pentagon.io.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


On Feb. 8, Samuel Kaplin wrote:
> The question is: What is obsene? What the community in NYC considers 
> obsene is sure a lot different than what the community in Elk River 
> Minnesota considers obsene. (They've been trying to eject their one XXX 
> bookstore for years now while NYC has the American Museum of Pornography 
> at 42nd Street ;) ;) :) ) As you can see, obsenity depends where you are 
> geographically located, at least according to our highest court. If 
> community standards say it is obsene then it is. They never legally 
> defined what constitutes something as being obsene or an obsenity.
> 
> Sam
> 

And don't forget the recent case where the operators of a California 
bulletin board were prosecuted and convicted in court in 
Memphis....whereas they never would have been convicted under the 
community standards in California.  You want to talk about 
scary....there is a section in Robert Heinlein's "Job: A Comedy of 
Justice" where the protagonist describes some "moral" codes that they 
got passed...one of them was having the community standards of the 
median size community of the state apply to all communities in the 
state.   What's the betting out there that this is what would 
ultimately happen under these kinds of bills?