←back to thread

693 points macawfish | 2 comments | | HN request time: 0.449s | source
Show context
ViktorRay ◴[] No.44544867[source]
This article is incorrect.

The Supreme Court’s ruling only applied to obscene sexual material. It doesn’t apply to sex scenes within artistic works or sexual content in general.

There’s a test used to determine whether sexual material is considered pornographic. It’s known as the “I know it when I see it” test.

More info on this test here:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_know_it_when_I_see_it

More specifically here is what is considered obscene:

The criteria were:

1. whether the average person, applying contemporary community standards, would find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest;

2. whether the work depicts or describes, in an offensive way, sexual conduct or excretory functions, as specifically defined by applicable state law;

3. whether the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.

The third criterion pertains to judgment made by "reasonable persons" of the United States as a whole, while the first pertains to that of members of the local community. Due to the larger scope of the third test, it is a more ambiguous criterion than the first two.

replies(7): >>44544894 #>>44544906 #>>44544934 #>>44544975 #>>44545017 #>>44545415 #>>44547600 #
1. stego-tech ◴[] No.44545415[source]
The article is, in fact, correct.

Community standards vary by community, both physically and digitally. The community standards of a rural town in Utah or ChristianDating.net are likely to be wildly different than the community standards of a major city on the coastlines or PornHub users. This wrinkle is exactly why there's renewed efforts to define what obscenity legally is [1], so that it's inclusive of as much "porn" as possible.

Additionally, you're conveniently ignoring what the author spends most of their piece decrying: the fact that these laws permit "ambulance chasing" attorneys to sue across state lines. That's the real issue, especially given the fact that some state laws can allow civil action to lead to prison time for conviction. Even ignoring the potential outcomes however, these lawsuits are instantly bankrupting for a majority of Americans, and the laws so (intentionally) broadly written that even genuinely innocent parties are likely to fork over money to make it go away given the cost of mounting a defense.

Put simply: obscenity lacks a firm legal definition, the definition of porn is nebulous and variable from person to person, and these laws are written to maximize harm to a maximal population size. The intent is to criminalize as many undesirables as possible, and the current administration and political parties have been transparent that anyone not rich, white, straight, Christian, and cisgendered male are emphatically undesirable.

[1] https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/senate-bill/167...

replies(1): >>44545622 #
2. tiahura ◴[] No.44545622[source]
As an ambulance chaser, I can assure you that suing out of state defendants for out of state activity has become nearly impossible. See Daimler AG v. Bauman (2014), BNSF Railway Co. v. Tyrrell (2017), Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. v. Superior Court (2017), Ford Motor Co. v. Montana Eighth Judicial District (2021), Mallory v. Norfolk Southern Railway Co. (2023)