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Originally Posted by ScalyFreak
Quote:
Originally Posted by djulian
What does constitute obscenity? (Please don't say, "I'll know it when I see it.")
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My dictionary says that in order to be obscene, something must be "abhorrent to morality or virtue; specifically : designed to incite to lust or depravity".
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Dictionaries define things by common use, not technicalities. The *legal* definition of obscenity is much more narrow. The "Miller test," named for the lawsuit that established it, established the test for obscenity in the US:
The basic guidelines for the trier of fact must be: (a) whether 'the average person, applying contemporary community standards would find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest, (b) whether the work depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by the applicable state law; and (c) whether the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.
So: not just "offensive," but sexual and offensive, *and* lacks artistic (etc) value. (I say "etc" because artistic is probably the lowest bar to meet, although political also covers a lot of ground.) It also established "community standards" as relevant, which is a huge kettle of worms today, because nobody knows what "community" counts for online content.