Talk:Miller test

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From the article:

The advent of the Internet has made this definition more difficult to maintain, as material published on a New York webserver can be read on a computer by a person residing in Utah: it is then a vexed question as to which jurisdiction should apply.

Has this been resolved in U.S. law?

Not yet. The pending cases may resolve it because they involve some internet-only distribution. Jamesday 19:37, 22 Jan 2004 (UTC)

The U.S. v. Thomas [external link] case provides some background about the relevant community under which obscenity can be prosecuted. The Thomases, who operated a California bulletin board, were prosecuted and convicted of obscenity in Tennessee, where a federal postal inspector had signed up for the service and ordered sexually explicit videos. The Thomases appealed, arguing for the notion of a "virtual community" whose standards would determine what is or is not obscene. The appellate court rejected this reasoning, and stated that the Thomases could have avoided obscenity prosecution by not accepting applicants from Tennessee or mailing their products to that state. Hope that helps somewhat. --bceaglejoe 20:53, 19 May 2004 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] From the article:

There may sometimes be adult content at the following reference:

That's all very nice and all, but it's not clear what it has to do with the rest of the article. --221.249.13.34 07:53, 22 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Agreed, so I removed the sentence and link. I tried to save it to this page, but the spamblocker kept me from doing so, confirming that it probably doesn't belong in the article.

I also removed this link from the prior sentence, as Newsday articles drop off the free access part of the site after 30 days. Ellsworth 20:25, 18 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Here's the link address - I can't link directly to it:

www.theadultwebmaster.com/legalcorner/2003_09_legal_update.phtml

Ellsworth

[edit] rape

This case includes a video called Forced Entry, which includes depictions of rape, murder, suffocation, beatings and urination in sexual contexts. Each of the components when considered alone, is not uncommon in sexual fantasy (murder probably being the least common) and, except for murder, feature routinely in sexual activities of varying proportions of the US population.

I'll admit that rape is more common than murder, and that it does "feature routinely in sexual activities of varying proportions of the US population" but somehow this part just seems wrong. --anon

[edit] previous tests

I think this article is missing some historical perspective; before Miller v. California there were a series of cases in the 1960s where the Court established a fairly unenforceable standard of obscenity (the origin of Potter Stewart's infamous "I know it when I see it" test); Miller tried to resolve the problem by moving these cases back to state courts, with limited success. -- LordSutch

[edit] child porn

"Even pornography, with the exception of child pornography, is argued to have some artistic or literary value." What if the piece of child porn was exceptionally artistic, and a lot of respected artists were brought in to verify how artistic it was?
Like.. Lolita?
Or American Beauty. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 68.49.243.207 (talk) 19:37, 29 April 2007 (UTC).
Lolita and American Beauty are not examples of child pornography. Firstly, they were not made with the indent to arouse, but to tell a story. Second, in the case of American Beauty, nudity of a minor in not automatically illegal and therefore not automatically illegal. Nudist photos are not illegal, for example, because they are not made with the intent to be pornography, but to just be family photos. In American Beauty, likewise, the nudity was not supposed just to arouse, but to be part of the story. Further, the actresses and their parents must have consented. The point of anti-child porn laws is to protect children from exploitation, and it would be very hard to argue that any of the minor actors in that film were exploited. --206.57.35.85 16:00, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] background

I agree that some historical perspective is required. The fact that Miller changed the test that SCOTUS had been using under Roth, which defined obscenity as only those works with utterly no social redeeming value, seems important. ~anon. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 129.62.88.66 (talk) 14:01, 23 March 2007 (UTC).

[edit] Vandalism from LiveJournal

This is receiving a lot of vandalism lately because it is linked from a news post that is attracting lots of attention[1]. If things get out of hand, I think this should be temporarily semi-protected. Zachary 20:11, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Small amount of bias

The aside at the end of the main section which reads- (Needless to say, guests in a hotel generally are not representative of full-time residents in the city where the hotel is located: Las Vegas, commonly called "Sin City," has many Evangelical churches, whose members may disapprove of the people whose gambling and other "sinful" behavior make their city prosperous.) -and was already in parentheses on the site seems to be biased and based out of a personal vendetta against an assumed hypocrisy of the church. Would anyone miss this needless commentary? Icarus of old 05:07, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Peter Klashorst

Are you guys sure that none of Klashorst's works (which are on Wikimedia Commons) fail the Miller test? Some of the images seem to show suspiciously young nudes in suspiciously provocative positions. 204.52.215.107 (talk) 07:14, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

On the other hand, those appear to be adults after all, and people who have viewed those photos have not objected to them. 204.52.215.107 (talk) 11:06, 13 December 2007 (UTC)