🚀 go-pugleaf

rmk@rmkhome.UUCP (Rick Kelly) writes:

[...]
>In Massachusetts, all depictions of naked children that show the genitals
>are obscene.
[...]

This is wrong on two counts.

First, "obscene" refers to the Miller test, not child porn.

Two, the Massachusetts law that defined all depictions of nude
childern as illegal child porn was overturned by the Massachusetts'
highest state court as an unconsititionally broad violation of freedom
of expression. (The current Massachsetts law is narrower but still
pretty broad; as far as I know it has not been tested in court.)
See Silvers' paper for details.

- Carl


ANNOTATED REFERENCES

(All these documents are available on-line. Access information follows.)

=================
law/miller
=================
* Expression -- Obscenity -- Law -- Miller

The Supreme Court's definition of obscenity (the so-called _Miller_
test)

=================
law/child-porn.silvers
=================
* Expression -- Child Porn -- Silvers

The Application of Child Pornography Statutes to Non-Obscene Art and
Family Photography by Jolyon Silversmith, silvers3@husc8.harvard.edu.
It is a term paper written in May, 1992 for Government 1341:
Constitutional Law at Harvard University.

=================
=================

If you have gopher, you can browse the CAF archive with the command
   gopher gopher.eff.org

These document(s) are also available by anonymous ftp (the preferred
method) and by email. To get the file(s) via ftp, do an anonymous ftp
to ftp.eff.org (192.88.144.4), and get file(s):

  pub/academic/law/miller
  pub/academic/law/child-porn.silvers

To get the file(s) by email, send email to archive-server@eff.org.
Include the line(s) (be sure to include the space before the file
name):

send acad-freedom/law miller
send acad-freedom/law child-porn.silvers


-- 
Carl Kadie -- kadie@cs.uiuc.edu -- University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign