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

I don't think this will work

[MikeRT]

The courts are not going to agree that it is constitutionally problematic that they cannot comply due to reasonable manpower issues. "Change your business model if you can't screen what you sell" is going to be the likely response from even a liberal court.

I just don't see what Dark Horse's excuse is. They publish comics. There is no reason for them to not be painfully aware of what's in everything they sell, and to sell it accordingly.

Re:Too bad he couldn't read your comment

[electrictroy]

I don't really sse it's any more difficult for book-sellers to "keep out" non-adults from buying books, than the theater-owners or videostore-owners who keep out non-adults from NC-17 movies.