Ok, because of all the federal action this week I have been giving myself a laymans crash course in obscenity, legalwise.
I have found all sorts of different stuff, but probably the scariest thing I found, as far as the internet goes, is a little writeup on Ginzburg v US from 1965.
In this, the courts ruled that the way a product was advertised could be used in determining whether said product was obscene.
Quote:
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Writing for the majority, Justice Brennan held that in a close case, evidence that a defendant deliberately represented the materials in question as appealing to customers' erotic interest could support a finding that the materials are obscene. He wrote: "Where the purveyor's sole emphasis is on the sexually provocative aspects of his publications, that fact may be decisive in the determination of obscenity" even if the publications examined out of context might not be deemed obscene
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What that means (as I read it and no, I am not a lawyer - but I do post on Oprano
) is that if the clear intent of the advertisement was appealing to the prurient interest, it could be construed that the product therefore is designed to appeal to the prurient interest.
Think about that the next time you write a text link
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontl.../overview.html - a ways down the page