Oregon's New Censorship Law Challenged In Court

MachineShedFred writes "A lawsuit has been filed against all the county District Attorneys as well as the Attorney General of Oregon to block enforcement of a new law that restricts the sale of 'sexually explicit' material to people under the age of 18. Powell's Books (who claims to be the largest independent new and used bookstore in the world) as well as Dark Horse Comics (publisher of Frank Miller graphic novels) as well as many other bookstores claim that the new law would be impossible for these businesses to comply with. 'Powell's has in stock over 2 million volumes constituting over 1 million titles,' Michael Powell said in his affidavit. 'We receive on an average over 5,000 new titles per week. Obviously we cannot read each new title to determine whether there are any sexual explicit portions and if so whether such portions "serve some purpose other than titillation" (even if I knew what that meant).'"

Comments

Re:Written material

[QCompson]

Hasn't written material traditionally been exempt from obscenity laws? Absolutely not. There have been many books declared to be obscene, with resultant court battles over the matter. Ulysses, Tropic of Cancer, and Fanny Hill are some of the more famous examples.

Re:The obvious end result

[Man On Pink Corner]

There are no such laws. The fact that everyone just happily assumes there are laws behind movie, music, and game ratings is one of the more unsettling aspects of life in twenty-first century America.

Re:I don't think this will work

[Eevee]

The courts are not going to agree that it is constitutionally problematic that they cannot comply due to reasonable manpower issues.

From Cubby v. Compuserve, a case dealing with postings made on a forum on Compuserve:

CompuServe has no more editorial control over such a publication than does a public library, book store, or newsstand, and it would be no more feasible for CompuServe to examine every publication it carries for potentially defamatory statements than it would be for any other distributor to do so.

The court system does have an amazing amount of sense at times. Under the First Amendment, it would be a impermissible burden to have to monitor each and every work.

CUBBY v. COMPUSERVE, U.S. DISTRICT COURT FOR THE SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF NEW YORK, 776 F. Supp. 135, October 29, 1991

Re:Hmmmm

[ckthorp]

Sounds like you should be running chains, not studs...

Oregon and censorship

[Phroggy]

By the way, It was the Multnomah County Library that led the national fight against Internet censorship in libraries several years ago. They have chosen to reject federal funding so that they don't have to comply with the Children's Internet Protection Act (won't somebody think of the children!) which mandates that public libraries install filtering software on their computers.

And they link to Slashdot.

How did this pass in Oregon?

[Valdrax]

Oregon is noted for having one of the nation's most broadly interpreted free-speech clauses in their state constitution, which goes *way* beyond the U.S. Constitution's first amendment.

Article I, section 8:

No law shall be passed restraining the free expression of opinion, or restricting the right to speak, write, or print freely on any subject whatever; but every person shall be responsible for the abuse of this right. I seriously doubt, given the history of this clause, that the Oregon Supreme Court is going to find that it's okay to "speak, write, or print freely on any subject whatever," but not to sell the result. Hell, I mean Oregon voters rejected Measure 19 intended to specifically exempt porn from this clause in 1994, and then again with Measure 31 two years later.

While the law is pretty narrowly tailored in defining what sexually explicit material is (you can read it here), I'm surprised they thought it would stand. Maybe they didn't -- who knows?