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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).'"
Note to self: Buy some more books from Powells.
I understand perfectly well that it is in Michael Powell's best interests to make such a response, but in the idiotic (and often overwhelming) tide of mommy-government "we know what's best for you" sophism, it is nothing less than delightful to see a vendor actually put up a fight instead of rolling over.
Note to everyone else: If you're a technical person, and you're not familiar with Powell's technical bookstore, you owe it to yourself to at least look around.
My only connection with Powells is that I've bought books from them.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Ahh Oregon, how I love thee,
since I obviously can't look after myself,
I really appreciate that you are looking out for me,
What are we going to do tonight Brain?
Hasn't written material traditionally been exempt from obscenity laws? It would be unlikely that any written material would fall under this law, so unless Powell's is selling Hustler magazine or porn videos to kids, I doubt seriously that they have any legitimate concerns.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
First movies, then video games, now books will need to have a big ugly "E" stamped on their cover before they can be sold to minors. And on the back cover there will be spoilers like "Warning! Graphic content: main character murdered at the end"
At least until this case gets decided and the law is thrown out.
That sexually explicit comment there obviously serves no purpose other than titillation.
The enemies of Democracy are
Using this for this. Would make it titillating.
Best Slashdot Co
I wonder when people will stop this thinkofthechildren crap, just like in Indiana where book stores have to register and pay a fee if they sell any "sexually explicit material" which is vaguely defined as any product that is "harmful to minors." Maybe they'll get a hint from Oregon and drop that crap from the books.
Absolute power corrupts absolutely. indymedia
makes it a crime to provide sexually explicit material to a child through sales or viewing, if the material was meant to "satisfy a sexual desire."
That means most novels including many great works of literature are banned, think of what would be banned if the law was expanded to tv too.
There is some fairly raunchy stuff in the Bible. Not attened for good people under the age of 18. Heck they have every sin in there.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Kilgore Trout stories?
Monstar L
For the sake of the children, we should restrict what they read. Restricting them to 18th century classic novels ought to be perfectly safe.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Powell's Books (who claims to be the largest independant 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.
Somewhere, a 5th grade English teacher is sobbing uncontrollably.
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
Looking at past rulings from the Oregon Supreme Court, it will be overturned.
http://www.mediabuyerplanner.com/2006/03/24/oregon_court_rules_billboard/
http://www.drbilllong.com/LegalEssays/OrSpeech.html
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B0DE5D6113DF936A25757C0A961948260
In GOD we trust, all others we monitor.
It's not just the unfair burden on the stores that matters. It's also the issue of blatant censorship of books which I'm pretty sure is unconstitutional.
You can blame incompetent people having children. Ultimately it is a parents job to look after the well being of their children - this includes monitoring what they are reading, playing, seeing, etc. If parents did their jobs, government wouldnt be stamping M on everything and carding people well into their 30's. I'll admit it's stupid, but what can I say, we live in a society where many times our children are more mature then their parents.
If the law is impractical or not is really beside the point. This kind of vaguely defined censorship will only lead to companies erring on the side of caution to make sure the don't get fined. Think about books that you have read and think about how many of them have a certain amount of sexually explicit content. We're not just talking about Hentia comic books here, we're quite possibly talking about Classics of every genre.
The 1984, Lolita, the Dune Series, not to mention practically every "romance" novel every written all have sexually explicit material and would be banned from sale to anyone under 18. I think you're going to find more teenage girls missing Daniel Steele than teenage boys missing their Manga.
That entire summary was a train wreck of poor spelling, punctuation, and grammar. What exactly are the "editors" being paid for?
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
And by subj I mean those comment that equalize restricting the audience of the material to banning it, or (favourite word of leftties) "effectively" banning it.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
"restricts the sale of 'sexually explicit' material TO people under the age of 18." You could read that sentence as restricting it to being sold to ONLY people under 18 (if you are 18 or older, you can't get it) or the way it was intended.
It's things like this that make me call it "The People's Republic of Oregon". This is the state that doesn't let you pump your own gas, apparently as a way of creating jobs. What they haven't considered is that they have created an entire underclass of low-paid workers whose job is to spend their day outside being exposed to carcinogens. Spreading that risk around for the once or twice a week fill-up isn't a big deal, but I'm betting that a long term study would show these workers have a higher than average cancer rate.
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).
Sounds to me like the 21st-century version of "...has redeeming social value." That was the phrase, IIRC, used to allow screening of Deep Throat.
https://app.box.com/WitthoftResume Code: https://github.com/cellocgw
It seems to me like the real problem lies in the vagueness of determining (prior to standing before a jury) whether or not something is meant only to titillate.
The plaintiff's other issue, which is that he handles too many titles to evaluate, sounds like simple whining. I.e., he has a business model that breaks under the new law. (On the other hand, this complaint does reminds me of those raised by website operators when faced with liability for what was posted by the general public on their message boards. I forget - was that worked out with the legislature, or did the courts end up defending them on that issue?)
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:
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
I don't understand the problem here. Powell's simply needs to ban children from their store. Why should children be reading books their parents haven't approved, anyway? In fact, I think no child should be allowed to read a book that their parents haven't or can't read. That way, illiteracy will become an inheritable disease, and we'll need a government program to treat it. Your health care dollars at work.
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
Oregon has one of the most liberally construed state constitutional rights to free speech in the nation. That's one reason PDX boasts one of the highest numbers of strip clubs per capita of any major city in the US (see http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2003336880_portlandclubs02m.html). Although I guess the cause could also be all the guys at the OSDL offices.
I wonder how most of these people would react when they find out the Bible would need to be restricted by this law as well.
"I do have a cause, though, it is obscenity. I'm for it! (laughter) Thank you. Unfortunately, the civil liberties types who are fighting this issue have to fight it, owing to the nature of the laws, as a matter of freedom of speech and stifling of free expression and so on. But we know what's really involved: dirty books are fun! That's all there is to it. But you can't get up in a court and say that, I suppose. It's simply a matter of freedom of pleasure, a right which is not guaranteed by the Constitution, unfortunately. Anyway, since people seem to be marching for their causes these days, I have here a march for mine. It's called:"
Smut!
Give me smut and nothing but!
A dirty novel I can't shut
If it's uncut
and unsubt-le.
I've never quibbled
If it was ribald.
I would devour
Where others merely nibbled.
As the judge remarked the day that he acquitted my Aunt Hortense,
"To be smut
It must be ut-
Terly without redeeming social importance."
Por-
Nographic pictures I adore.
Indecent magazines galore,
I like them more
If they're hard core.
Bring on the obscene movies, murals, postcards, neckties, samplers, stained
glass windows, tattoos, anything!
More, more, I'm still not satisfied!
Stories of tortures
Used by debauchers
Lurid, licentious and vile,
Make me smile.
Novels that pander
To my taste for candor
Give me a pleasure sublime.
Let's face it I love slime!
Old books can be indecent books,
Though recent books are bolder.
For filth, I'm glad to say,
Is in the mind of the beholder.
When correctly viewed,
Everything is lewd.
I could tell you things about Peter Pan
And the Wizard of Oz - there's a dirty old man!
I thrill
To any book like Fanny Hill,
And I suppose I always will
If it is swill
And really fil-thy.
Who needs a hobby like tennis or philately?
I've got a hobby: rereading Lady Chatterley.
But now they're trying to take it all away from us unless
We take a stand, and hand in hand we fight for freedom of the press.
In other words: Smut! I love it.
Ah, the adventures of a slut.
Oh, I'm a market they can't glut.
I don't know what
Compares with smut.
Hip, hip, hooray!
Let's hear it for the Supreme Court!
Don't let them take it away!
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.
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
Unfortunately not. The "obscenity" doctrine doesn't discriminate based on medium, it's just been applied more often towards photographs and motion-pictures than it has to text. But there's no reason why you can't ban books using the exact same reasoning.
Google "Red Rose Stories" if you want a current example; that was a textfiles site that got raided by the FBI. If the prosecution is successful -- as I see little reason to believe it won't be -- then you can look for other sexually explicit text websites to shut down, and from there it's not much of a jump to dead-tree media. They'll start with the more fringe material and work their way in from there.
Once we invented an exception to the First Amendment for "obscenity" (a word that's never used in the Constitution, by the way), the battle was effectively lost. I find it doubtful that today's Court is going to remedy that.
The last Supreme Court justice to have the balls to take a hard stand in favor of the First Amendment was Hugo Black ("no law means no law"), and I doubt we'll ever see someone like him confirmed again.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
I for one welcome this law surviving the law suit. Parenting these days is hard, you can't expect to even keep track of your children's location let alone the media they consume. Laws like this one provide assistance to parents by removing some of the unreasonable large burden of parenting.
I'm not clicking, as I thought the twofo was some damned virus. Come to think of it, a virus IS more obscene than goatse!
And indeed, often slashdot is very NSFW. That's an old one from last year, kids. The third newest one is a lot tamer, but it has a hooker in it. Am I under arrest?
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
My favorite example (I did not enjoy it, but it is a great example) is 'The Scarlet Letter'. It is basically porn of a bygone era. It is definitely written with the explicit purpose of being sexually titillating, and yet it is assigned reading in many high schools around the country.
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?
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Years ago before you could see anything you could imagine googling for, young kids got their porn pictures from National Geographic where tribal womam had breasts exposed or more.
The problem with "titillation" is that, more than subjective, it ignores context. I wrote a "porn filter" for an internet search site 10 years ago, and while I was looking at all sorts of porn, I was not "titillated." I was studying the language, canonical terms, and word usage to create a proper filter.
I posted Tom Lehrer's "smut" earlier, but I think my point was missed. Specifically, the paragraph where it goes: "For filth is in the mind of the beholder, when correctly viewed, everything is lewd, I can tell you things about Peter Pan, and the wizard of Oz is a dirty old man."
"Titillation" can be anything from pictures of women in police uniforms, hell, some people get their rocks off by looking at pictures of women's feet. I don't understand it, but it is true.
Censorship, throughout history, has never had much success in suppressing that which had been targeted. It has, however, been quite successful in suppressing those that disseminate information. and creating an environment of fear.
Censorship is terrorism.
The Oregon Supreme Court in Oregon v. Henry threw out all "obscenity" laws, making the argument that since there was no historical precedent for a first amendment "obscenity" exception that it couldn't be enforced today. They enforce child porn laws and others of course but in Oregon there is no categorical free speech exception based on the notion of "obscenity" like there is in every other state in the union. I don't know Oregon law (the case is 20 yrs old), but I don't think this case has been overturned, which means this law has very little likelihood of surviving constitutional scrutiny there. If it does survive, the state will probably have to prove direct harm to children of some sort rather than relying on "obscenity" or other morality-based arguments.
"Change your business model if you can't screen what you sell" is going to be the likely response from even a liberal court.
Is it the Republicans or the Democrats that want the nanny-state?
Both? God Damn son of a fucking bitch, that sucks.
And, er, "change your business model?" If they're going to say that, why don't they say it to the record labels? Sorry to burst your bubble, son, but America is a plutocracy, the businessman is king, mammon is the state religion and the banker is its high priest.
There is no reason for them to not be painfully aware of what's in everything they sell, and to sell it accordingly.
There's no reason they should have to. Should slashdot be "painfully aware" that some of the comments are vulgar, some of the journals are obscene, and there are links to goatse pictures?
Hell, I intend right now, this minute, to link to Boobs! (there are pictures!!!!) What's more I'm going to quote part of it RIGHT HERE AND NOW.Fuck censorship. There is nothing more obscene than censorship. If you want the god damned thought police, move to China.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
Why don't we create a group of people who can read these books and tell the retailers what's in them? That way the retailers won't have to waste their time with it but it will still get done. We could probably chair it with people who are within the industry, and call it the Book Publishers' Association of America, or maybe the Entertainment Text Rating Board. And then they could even put the rating somewhere on the book so parents could see it and then we wouldn't need a stupid fucking law like this one.
Rob
I really can't see that this lawsuit has merit. It's illegal to sell pornography to minors, that's the law not just some rating body. Yet somehow, video stores and music stores and even newsstands where the content changes weekly or even daily manage to do this. Bow? Do you think they're flipping through every page at every newsstand across the country? Hell no, they got agreements, they got markings and for books in a worst case they can do an ISBN lookup. While I think it'll be a hell to conclusively categorize anything (age limits are rather absolute), I don't see any good arguments for why a certain number of books could not be sold to minors.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Did anyone else read "restricts the sale of 'sexually explicit' material to people under the age of 18" as meaning that only minors would be able to buy porn?
a Free Press shall not be infringed, did Oregon fail to understand?
Anyone...?
Bueller?
Because anything, viewed by a mind seeking titillation, will FIND titillation in ANYTHING it reads... even some tech manuals... "the male connector seats into female socket, firmly..." Yep! That's titillating to some engineers I know...!
This law doesn't assist anyone in parenting well, it enables bad parenting.
Refusing to educate your kids about sex, drugs, and violence before they are exposed to such themes in life is naive and ignorant, and it will make your kids grow into naive and ignorant adults. You can not expect the world to censor itself all of the time just because you haven't educated your children. Books have gone for hundreds of years without being rated for lewdness or censored; I don't think anyone was scarred for life when Shakespeare made some comment or other about "the beast with two backs."
And even if you do go so far as to censor Shakespeare (an explicit writer, especially by some hyper-conservative modern standards), how will you keep little Johnny at school from telling your kid all about sex? After all, there a lot of kids at school, and you can't expect that all of their parents are also planning on sheltering their children from the whole world until they are 18 -- you should assume that if you aren't educating your kids about sex, drugs and violence before they go to school, that their peers are educating them (and their peers will surely have less wisdom about such matters).
That must make California the land of the Book People.
I also find it ironic that Oregon, the only state where euthanasia is legal, wants to keep a 17yo from reading about sex.
"Porn has 0 productive value."
What does that mean, pray tell? Once you've defined it, tell us exactly why that definition cannot be applied to rock music, superhero movies, children's comic books, odd translations of the christian holy book, tabloids, romance novels (trashy or high-class), or the Illiad?
For that matter, why do YOU get to decide what countless millions of people do with their free time? Who gave YOU that right?
Just another "DOJ fascist authoritarian totalitarian bootlicker" -- Zeio
Request your free CD of my piano music.
My only beef with Powell's is that I spend too much money whenever I go there. Last time I was there I dropped about $500 at the main store, then about $500 more at the technical store. I particularly like the fact that the technical store is all kinds of technical stuff. The "technical" sections in the bookstores here (Vancouver) are 99% computer stuff, with a handful of pop science books.
I've heard of people who take vacations in Portland for the express purpose of shopping at Powell's. Sure, I can get just about anything I want through Amazon, but there is still no substitute for browsing the shelves to see what you can find.
I think I feel another Powell's trip coming on. I always stop at Boeing Surplus (Seattle) on the way back. Sometimes all they have is just plain junk, but they often have lots of really cool sh*t.
...laura
The Oregon Constitution guarantees more freedom of expression than the US Constitution. Thats why in some areas of Portland, there are strip clubs on almost every block. The religious nuts have tried over and over again to ban strip clubs, but any law that gets passed eventually struck down by the Oregon Supreme Court.
The only control anyone has over them is via the liquor license. Then the clubs just get creative and find other things to make money off of other than alcohol.
So considering all of this, I doubt that any ban on the sale of books is ever going to take place.
I remember on my 17th birthday, my mother bought me a book of Limericks.
On the cover the book specifically noted it was not for sale to minors.
(NY State)
Inside the book they explained:
"First there are Limericks you can tell in front of women,
then there are Limericks you can tell in front of Priests,
and then there are Limericks.
This book is full of Limericks."
Let me tell you these limericks are not for the faint of heart.
There are no pictures. The words themselves are quite graphic.
However, this law sounds a bit overbroad and probably is unconstitutional on the face of it.
I'm shocked this law even got passed to begin with. This is America, _not_ China, we are a democracy, not a Communist country. In America, we do not allow censorship of that nature here (or so I thought). Whoever made that a law in Oregon should go back to history class and learn about censorship and how evil it is...
Secondly, I could just see how many people would be in jail because of this law. Since the law defines 'sexually explicit' very vaguely, it could be assumed that any piece of literature that deals with sex or even so much as suggests it would be justified as 'sexually explicit'. Some of the most well known books ever written would fall in this category! I could come up with a HUGE list of books I've read in middle or high school that would be banned!
These people are taking censorship WAY to far!
Ironically Lenny Bruce once did a show wearing nothing but a bowler hat, bow tie, and a pair of shoes. The line of cops that stood in the front row could do nothing about it because he hadn't broken any laws, the show was 18+. However, after the entire hour+ show was over he said the closing word "$hit", the only swear word in the entire show. At that point they hauled him off to jail for violating obscenity laws.
Two Canadian bookstores have been fighting Customs for decades against unlawful seizure of materials and discriminant enforcement of "obscenity" laws. One has given up the fight, the other went bankrupt trying to fight. Granted, they are smaller, independent and primarily gay-focussed, but sometimes Big Brother wins simply my attrition and deeper pockets.
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
Dear Oregon Resident,
Based on an automatic keyword analysis it has been determined that the content is explicit with a probability exceeding 99.45%, and it has been replaced by this message. The material included the following keywords:
studs chains
Have a good day!
So from now on, only minors can buy porn in Oregon? Wow, that is harsh.
because a higher law (oregon constitution, in this case) prohibits prohibiting that?
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
Please... don't feed the trolls, it isn't worth it. How do I know he's a troll? He's at -1 without anyone modding him. If that doesn't convince you look at his user page, -1's all the way down.
I'm a gay man, you insensitive clod!
You could take the opportunity to link goa... er, never mind.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
I will create a sig when innovation restarts in the U.S.
Since it is quite clearly legal in Oregon to use studded snow tires, for not only the entire winter, but also extended this year due to late snows, I suggest you partake in a little less of Oregon's number one cash crop
Someone at the LA Times once wrote:
"Censorship is the strongest human drive;
sex is a weak second."
There are always going to be exceptions to the First Amendment; this is necessitated by the overly vague and broad manner in which it was written.
Moreover, I don't see why Oregon's constitution would be any different in this respect.
"It is possible to commit no errors and still lose. That is not a weakness. That is life." -Peak Performance
Everything can be "harmful to minors" in some way.
They should just take all these protectionism laws to their logical extreme conclusion and make it illegal for minors to possess money (cash, credit, or debit), to sell anything directly to a minor, and for minors only be allowed to receive goods or services purchased or approved by an authorized parent or legal guardian, unless he/she has emancipated-minor status (verifiable proof required at point-of-sale). School cafeterias would be exempted.
Then they'll just have to deal with the "harmful" stuff kids can get for free.
Nah, that'll never happen. The toy, candy, and soft drink companies (to name only three) wouldn't stand for it.
Still, it might make for an interesting city ordinance in Springfield, Quahog, or South Park.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
Oregon has a much stricter version of the First Amendment in its Constitution. The "family values" types tried pass an amendment that would have created and exception that would shut down the strip clubs.
For once the electorate showed some sense and voted it down.
I used to live in OR and WA. I lived in OR for pretty much all of my childhood, in out-of-reach-ish places like Vernonia, Detroit, etc. I lived in WA after that until about 2005. Oregon used to be a lot more care-free. They always had a higher property tax and income tax but no sales tax. However, the Oregon government seems to have been squeezing more out of people, not doing more and trying to tell everyone what they should do. If you decide to move over to Washington, I'd completely understand. It's like Oregon went from its innocence to becoming a money-grubbing church matron. Now, I don't know if there has been any changes after I left the Pacific Coast and I really couldn't say if the problems in Oregon are more due to corrupt officials than just people not understanding what they're doing or mis-managing money but I can say it didn't look good back then and still doesn't...
...and the Holy Pillars of Signatures... yeah... They've had so many authors visit and they just let them sign their names on the pillars in the main store... Man, I need to visit there again. I think I'll take my boyfriend's mom... she'll want to live there...
You misunderstand me; the version of the first amendment in Oregon's constitution is no more 'strict' in real sense, and it is no more enforceable in its wording.
The real enforcement of these clauses is by the electorate- what the society supports, the society will make law.
"It is possible to commit no errors and still lose. That is not a weakness. That is life." -Peak Performance
For that matter why can't that be applied to candy, sex with the light on, sex without the intent of reproducing, sex toys, comfortable beds, colorful paint to decorate our walls, clothing for any other purpose than to keep warm, recreational vehicles, 2-seater cars, food that tastes good, etc, etc, yadda, yadda. If we were to measure some thing's worth by someone's definition of "productive value" we'd have a lot less shit in this world. Why not just turn us all into a bunch of fucking machines that do nothing but work and reproduce. Oh wait, Warren Jeffs already tried that.