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: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.

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.