🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <BxxAKw.4xr@cs.uiuc.edu> kadie@cs.uiuc.edu (Carl M. Kadie) writes:
>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

I have enough doubts about this, that I would not gate a.b.p.e through
my system.  If the state authorities confiscated my system as evidence,
I would expect to never see it again, whether I won in court or not.

The Town of Framingham would surely deem that pictures of nude children
appearing on my system to be obscene and pornographic.  This is in the
wake of a case of a guy in my neighborhood luring young boys to his
house through contacts on BBS systems, with promises of sexually explicit
digitized pictures.  He was arrested for rape, but he was also charged
for having hundreds of pictures of naked young boys on his computer system,
which was confiscated for evidence.

The community standard laws are strong enough that the Framingham Selectmen
and Police were able to close down to video stores that rented and sold
X rated adult videos, even though they were kept in separate areas where
you had to be 21 to enter.  And you must note that the X rated films that
were cited are easily available at video stores in neighboring towns.

>=================
>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.

Term papers do not set the laws of the community.

It is easy for the EFF to cite cases and papers, but I don't see the EFF
opening up an adult rated BBS to the public, or buying new equipment to
replace that lost to "continuing" investigations.

I had email from the former sysop of Doug's Den.  His equipment was
confiscated, he was found to be innocent, but his equipment has never
been returned.

-- 

Rick Kelly	rmk@rmkhome.UUCP	unixland!rmkhome!rmk	rmk@frog.UUCP