Appeals Court Rules On Internet Obscenity Standards

dark_requiem writes "The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that online content can be judged by the standards of the strictest community that is able to access it. The court upheld the conviction of pornography producer Paul F. Little, aka Max Hardcore, for violating obscenity laws in Tampa, despite the fact that the 'obscene' material in question was produced and sold in California. From the article: 'The Atlanta-based court rejected arguments by Little's attorneys that applying a local community standard to the Internet violates the First Amendment because doing so means material can be judged according to the standards of the strictest communities. In other words, the materials might be legal where they were produced and almost everywhere else. But if they violate the standards of one community, they are illegal in that community and the producers may be convicted of a crime. ... Jurors in Little's trial were told to judge the materials on the basis of how "the average person of the community as a whole — the Middle District of Florida" — would view the material.'"

Comments

Re:So Iran's standards then?

[Eudial]

So by that measure we should censor all pictures of women's faces as it violates the decency standards of Iran.

We can do better than that. Let's form a community that considers rules on internet decency the height of indecency.

Re:So Iran's standards then?

[ray-auch]

And if it turns into a federal case in any way, then extradition is a non-issue.

And they have an easy, proven, way of doing that.

- Mail you some child porn, and then "find" it
- Oh, now you're on a federal charge
- Ship you to other state
- Drop federal child porn charge (sorry, we mailed you child porn by mistake...)
- Ah, but now you're here, there's this state charge... (so don't think you're going home anytime soon).

This has been done before, and withstood legal challenges, so don't think they won't do it again.

Re:Does this apply to ALL "obscene" speech?

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

I strongly suspect that you are correct.

In addition, the application of "contemporary community standards" is done in a way that would likely come down harder on porn than on politics.

If you really wanted to know what "contemporary community standards" in a given time and place were, that would basically be a market research question, to be settled in discovery. What are Middle District residents googling? How much porn per year per capita are they watching online/purchasing at retail? What are the local rates of murder, rape, incest, etc? Hell, how many of them were watching Max Hardcore videos?

Instead of applying this basically empirical test, "contemporary community standards" are determined by sitting the jury down and asking them "So, does X violate the standards of your community?". In order to pass, it has to be something that the community not only engages in; but accepts so thoroughly that jurors will be willing to admit sympathy, in court, with the potential of being publicly linked to the case later, with the material in question.

Curious

[Compulawyer]

I wanted to read the actual court opinion so I logged into PACER, the official web site of the US federal courts. I was unable to find any opinion (or even any docketed case) for a Paul Little or Max Hardcore dealing with obscenity in ANY federal appeals court.

Does anyone have the docket number or a copy of the opinion?