Federal Obscenity Rule Nixed In Internet Porn Case

CaptainEbo writes "A court has declared the federal anti-obscenity law unconstitutional in a criminal case against an Internet porn distributor: 'We find that the federal obscenity statutes burden an individual's fundamental right to possess, read, observe, and think about what he chooses in the privacy of his own home by completely banning the distribution of obscene materials.' The court's decision rested in part on Lawrence v. Texas, the Supreme Court case striking down anti-sodomy laws. Under Lawrence, said the court, 'upholding the public sense of morality is not even a legitimate state interest.'"

Comments

Paul Graham Essay

[vladd_rom]

This reminds me of the wonderful essay of Paul Graham, What You Can't Say (which could be easily transformed in What You Can't Watch).

Re:Paul Graham Essay

[vsprintf]

Wonderful essay. Thanks for the link!

Wonderful essay?

Argue with idiots, and you become an idiot.

If you don't argue with idiots, you will find yourself ruled by policies set by idiots. I won't go into all the idiotic legislation we have because we failed to argue hard enough with the idiots in charge.

More Information from Pittsburgh Sources...

[Anonymous Coward]

The case was with a California company, but the Feds decided to try the trial here in Pittsburgh. They thought a federal judge in Pittsburgh would be more conservative than a judge in California, but thought wrong.

Here's more information from our local papers:

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Pittsburgh Tribune Review

WTAE-TV

Re:More Information from Pittsburgh Sources...

[demachina]

It is sad that the right wing, fundementalist Christian, fanatics in power have stolen and trashed the conservative label since they quite obviously don't have the first clue what political conservatism stands for, balanced budgets, small government, no intrusion in our private lives, no trade deficits, no foreign adventures, etc. Government spending under the Bush regime has exploded by 25% in the last three years, not to mention half trillion budget and trade deficits, optional wars abroad, the Patriot Act, etc.

I assure you the Bush administration and the new Republican party has noticed this little problem with these politicly conservative judges blocking government intrusion and invasion of our lives and they are going to fix it in the next four years.

You can be sure judges nominated by the Bush administration are going to be right wing, social conservatives, not political conservatives, and probably fundementalist Christian to boot, as their litmus test. The other litmust test will be their willingness to allow the state to use law to impose its view of morality and security by force, at the expense of the Constitution and our civil liberties.

Of course our great nation of laws was designed for the possibility that an extremist party might gain power and attempt to stack the courts with extremist judges. Thats why their is a filibuster in the Senate so a supermajority is required to approve controversial laws or judges. It prevents a majority party in power from going off the deep end, in law or judicial appointments, and is a critical element of checks and balances.

Unfortunately the Republican's are already talking about changing the Senate rules this year to do away with the filibuster on judicial nominees and require only a simple majority. If that happens they can nominate truly extreme judges, including to the Supreme Court, and as long as they can hold a party line vote they will be be approved. An essential check and balance, the filibuster, will be gone and another will be in imminent danger.

If the Republican's succeed in this rule change it is time to start marching in the streets because it means these extremists will have stolen your government from you. After four years of packing the courts, especially the Supreme court, they will have erased one more of the crucial checks and balances. The courts are an essential check on an extremist legislature and President who seek to pass laws in contravention of the Constitution and our precious civil liberties, civil liberties we have taken for granted and are about to lose.

If the New Republican Party succeeds in eliminating the filibuster for judicial nominations its just a matter of time before they eliminate it in the Senate all together. At that point the Democrats may as well not even bother showing up because they will be impotent and powerless. We will be effectively living in a one party state, and one party states are synonymous with dictatorship. The Republican's will be able to pass any law they can hold a party line vote on, and if they've packed the courts it wont be overturned in the courts.

There is irony when the right wing talks so much about all the blood that's been shed by soldiers over the last two centuries, blood shed protecting our freedom and civil liberties. The irony is they appear to be the ones seeking to dismantle those same freedoms through subterfuge and political trickery. The burning question, are their any great patriots still alive today willing to stand up and defend the world's first great experiment in Democracy in the hour of its greatest peril. These patriots will have a far harder job than their forefathers did when they joined an Army and carried a gun in to a war. They will have a job as hard as the founding fathers did when they stood up in rebellion against a tyrannical King. They will have to stand against their own government, their own neighbors and risk being branded as a traitor. They will face prison where the rule of law can apparently no longer can be counted upon, and torture has become acceptable practice. Are their any people left in this once great nation with the fortitude, and the greatness, to save it from itself?

The difference

[Monx]

I don't tell [insert moralizing group here] that they have to [insert activity that group dislikes]. Many of them like to tell me that I can't [same activity from previous sentence].

Take student prayer for example. A law that says you can't pray is wrong. A law that says you must pray is also wrong. A law that says you can pray if you want to but no government employee in authority over you is allowed to influence that decision one way or another is ok, but redundant.

By wrong I mean unconstitutional and anti-freedom. By redundant I mean that it is already in the constitution, so why write another law?

Re:about time

[MoneyT]

Really? Lets start with welfare, it's there because people deserve a second chance (a moral decision) and people need a helping hand (again a moral decision). Now even if I agree with those sentements, it is easily my choice to decide not to help people out with my money. After all, it's my money, and I'm an adult, I can decide what I want to do with it. Yet, the government takes my money and gives it to poor people. They force me to be charitable, thus forcing a particular beleif system on me. You choose to watch porn, I choose to save my money.

How about the drinking age. A consenting adult who can watch porn and kill, but can't drink.

Gun laws in general. A concenting adult can look at porn but can't own a gun to protect his family? Sounds like a moral decision to me.

No, I'm perfectly serious. Every particular set of laws which forbids something that doesn't violate the rights of another person is a moral decision imposing a set of beleifs upon society. Porn, obcenity, drinking and gun ownership are all variations on the same thing.

Re:Dangers in aggregation of power to the feds....

[snooo53]

Yes, I agree. The Republican party has been shifting away from it's libertarian roots ever since the Newt Gingrich and Contract with America days. They no longer care about fiscal responsibility, states rights and individual freedoms.

I think what has happened is the Republicans who believed in those two things have either become Libertarians, or only still reluctantly vote for people like Bush. And to fill that void, the party has sucked in Democrats and Moderates who care more about religion than common sense civil government. So basically they've alienated the people who really believe in personal liberty. I sincerely hope McCain leads the charge to taking back the Republican party.

Re:I'm with you here.

[Thangodin]

Interesting, but not surprising.

Next time you're at the supermarket, look at the tabloids. What you see in there is a combination of titillation and outraged posturing. How better to disguise your own sexual desires, even from yourself, then to assume a posture of moral outrage? Of course, the tabloids have photos of semi-naked celebrities only because paparazzi are paid outrageous sums to intrude into private spaces to take pictures of people who think they are in a place where no one can see them. It's like having someone barge into your bathroom while you take a shower and being outraged that you aren't wearing any clothes. And yet, these tabloids sell like hotcakes by doing this and appealing to purient outrage. So who are the perverts here?

There's another interesting thing going on here. Yesterday my wife and I were trying to figure out why some people get turned on by S&M. We just couldn't see the attraction. Then it occurred to me that it has to do with guilt: crime and punishment. If you're naughty you must be punished, but the punishment itself gives you permission to be naughty. The other side of the equation is the dom, who punishes the submissive; the attraction here is power and control. The dom is in fact attempting to control their own desires; they are also motivated by guilt, which they escape by shifting it on to the submissive. The submissive is the naughty one. (In fact I've heard it said that the submissive is actually the one in control in S&M--at least when it's done right, and a lot of doms just play the role for the benefit of the submissive.)

And then it struck me: this whole 'family values' thing is kink! The outraged moralists are frustrated doms, obsessed with sex, desparate to partake in it. The reason they are so offended by the sexual practices of others is that they just can't stop thinking about it. So they displace the guilt. It's your fault that they're thinking about it--if you would just stop doing it, they could stop thinking of it. In the Muslim world, this is the motivation behind the hijab, the bhurka, and female cirumcision.

What we are witnessing is a sexual disfunction elevated to the level of a social and political movement. But it's still just kink.

Re:I'm with you here.

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, there was the court case that was on I believe, 60 minutes, of the video rental shop owner somewhere in Utah who was brought up on obscenity charges. His not-famous attorney had a brainstorm, and subpoened the satellite TV companies' records for porn rentals in the community (since obscenity is supposed to be defined at the "community" level and found that those outraged citizens were viewing a LARGE amount satellite porn. He proved that the video store owner was well within community standards, and the charges were dropped.

DirecTV, Hughes, etc are owened by MUCH larger corporations, but you will NEVER see them break out their earnings by adult TV subscriptions, because General Motors or Rupert Murdoch (or EchoStar or whomever) don't want you to know that they are one of the US's largest porn distributors.

Re:I'm with you here.

[MightyMartian]

> No problem with freedom to put in your body what
> you want; however, there is a limit when that
> interferes with other's rights (drunk driving,
> for example).

That's where the notion of personal responsibility comes into play. I don't think one should be banned from getting drunk any more than I think the state should have the power to stop someone from smoking a joint or snorting cocaine. Providing an individual doesn't jump in a car, then so be it. We don't ban alcohol because some people are idiot enough to drive while under the influence, so why shouldn't the same notion be extended to heroin or marijuana.

> I'm also not to keen on having to pay through
> health insurance costs and tax dollars to keep
> pumping the stomach of every drug addict on the
> streets.

This is a dangerous slippy slope. Shall we forbid downhill skiing because of the risks of knee injuries? How about Big Macs? Should we ban those as well?

In a free society, we shouldn't be trying to micromanage anybody's life. I'd rather have my tax dollars go to pay to try to help out some poor bastard who is addicted to crack, rather than having the "Moral Majority" or whatever group claims to be speaking God or whoever telling me I can't smoke a joint or watch a porn flick.

One-dimensional thinking

[gidds]

Sounds like the old problem of oversimplistic labelling. Most people still try to fit all political thinking into a one-dimensional mental map, with 'left' (meaning anything from communist to liberal) on one side, and 'right' (meaning anything from small-c conservative to fascist) on the other.

And yet there are many types of issue, and people's thinking about economics doesn't necessarily correlate with that on social issues, or morality, or the military, or culture, &c. Being aware of the difference can help you to think more clearly about them.

For example, Political Compass uses a two-dimensional grid for displaying political positions, with an economic axis (traditional left/right), and a social one (libertarian/authoritarian). On that scale, for example, the opposite of communism (at the extreme left) is neo-liberalism (at the extreme right), and the opposite of anarchism (at the extreme libertarian end) is fascism (at the extreme authoritarian end).

It's still simplistic in many ways, but presents a vastly more useful way of thinking about politics. Recommended.