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From the article:
Has this been resolved in U.S. law? -Unsigned
As of 2022, such a prosecution becomes a moot point by way of interstate commerce doctrine articulated in United States v. Morrison, which holds that while the constitutional police power belongs to the states, the states are not free to regulate interstate commerce. Rather, a plethra of court decisions hold that computers and the internet are elements of interstate commerce- hence it is illogical, once Morrison is correctly applied, to suggest that the states may prosecute obscenity crossing state lines. 98.178.191.34 ( talk) 22:53, 13 February 2022 (UTC)
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)
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
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
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Like.. Lolita? -Unsigned
That would seem to then create the problem in that while the government may regulate the manner of expression of an idea (e.g. pornographic depictions), it may not regulate the underlying idea to the extent the government must allow so alternate forms of expression of the underlying idea, as not to pervasively censor the content of speech. Thus, it becomes how then do we objectively define "serious artistic, literary, or scientific value" apart from what is, in reality, an arbitrary and capricious opinion of the majority, where others may well have conflicting viewpoints as to what kinds of artistic value are 'serious'? We cannot say simply "majority opinion rules" here because the first amendment is primarily designed to protect against the tyranny of the majority. - e.g. the majority typically does not need the sort of protection the first amendment affords in the first place. Therefore, it seems that the whole line of reasoning is illogical given the clear historical purpose of the first amendment in general, noting that the framers likely would have considered all pornography to be obscene- given that such was the majority line of thought in the late 1700s / early 1800s at the time the framers wrote the constitutional text. 98.178.191.34 ( talk) 23:05, 13 February 2022 (UTC)
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).
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)
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)
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)
Should the title be partially italicized, like "Miller test"? Is the test named after the man, Marvin Miller, or the case Miller v. California? Mammoth Kod ( talk) 21:02, 15 March 2015 (UTC)
i think, especially since search on SLAPS redirects here, that some explanation of the acronym should be given. i can't figure it out with any degree of certainty Toyokuni3 ( talk) 08:10, 29 November 2017 (UTC)
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
The main article states "In practice, pornography showing genitalia and sexual acts is not ipso facto obscene according to the Miller test." However, The problem with this is that the Department of justice, in it's Citizen's Guide to U.S. federal law on Obcenity defines "prurient interest" as "i.e., an erotic, lascivious, abnormal, unhealthy, degrading, shameful, or morbid interest in nudity, sex, or excretion", defines "depitcts or describes sexual conduct in a patently offensive way as "i.e., ultimate sexual acts, normal or perverted, actual or simulated, masturbation, excretory functions, lewd exhibition of the genitals, or sado-masochistic sexual abuse)". It would therefore seem that, according to the DOJ, that all pornography will then inherently meet the first two prongs, leaving the only remaining inquiry being as to "serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value." I can't see much of a rational argument to say that any pornography has any serious "political, scientific, or literary" value, and if the notion that pornography is some form of "art", then it poses the problem of how some pornography could be considered "art" while some other pornography would not be considered such. Rather, it appears that the line of reasoning then becomes so impermissibly arbitary and capricious as to make something hinge on emotion as opposed to any reasonably objective standard. Therefore, further explanation is both warranted and needed here as to demonstrate that the standard isn't overly arbitrary and capricious to a degree of becoming an abuse of discretion, as more recently articulated by J. Sotomayor during oral arguments in the October 2021 term. 98.178.191.34 ( talk) 22:49, 13 February 2022 (UTC)
Right now, the article reads:
This characterization of the "Movie Buffs" case seems misleading for a few reasons.
First, the jury in this case took "two hours" to deliberate according to this news article. Calling this "only a few minutes" is technically correct (I suppose if they had deliberated for several weeks, that would have been "only a few minutes" in a manner of speaking), but misleading.
Second, this was not a supreme court case, or even an appellate court case. So, the case may not be easily generalizable, especially given the particulars of the case. For instance, according to the news article I referenced,
So, it seems like the obscenity or non-obscenity of the pornography in question was not the primary basis of the jury's decision. The way this article is written right now really doesn't reflect this at all.
On the other hand, I don't know enough about obscenity law to give a good explanation why "pornography showing genitalia and sexual acts is not ipso facto obscene according to the Miller test." Are there any legal experts around who can weigh in on that and perhaps rewrite this paragraph altogether?
Autodidact137 ( talk) 03:14, 24 August 2022 (UTC)
A fact from this article was featured on Wikipedia's Main Page in the On this day section on June 21, 2019 and June 21, 2021. |
This article is rated Start-class on Wikipedia's
content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
From the article:
Has this been resolved in U.S. law? -Unsigned
As of 2022, such a prosecution becomes a moot point by way of interstate commerce doctrine articulated in United States v. Morrison, which holds that while the constitutional police power belongs to the states, the states are not free to regulate interstate commerce. Rather, a plethra of court decisions hold that computers and the internet are elements of interstate commerce- hence it is illogical, once Morrison is correctly applied, to suggest that the states may prosecute obscenity crossing state lines. 98.178.191.34 ( talk) 22:53, 13 February 2022 (UTC)
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)
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
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
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Like.. Lolita? -Unsigned
That would seem to then create the problem in that while the government may regulate the manner of expression of an idea (e.g. pornographic depictions), it may not regulate the underlying idea to the extent the government must allow so alternate forms of expression of the underlying idea, as not to pervasively censor the content of speech. Thus, it becomes how then do we objectively define "serious artistic, literary, or scientific value" apart from what is, in reality, an arbitrary and capricious opinion of the majority, where others may well have conflicting viewpoints as to what kinds of artistic value are 'serious'? We cannot say simply "majority opinion rules" here because the first amendment is primarily designed to protect against the tyranny of the majority. - e.g. the majority typically does not need the sort of protection the first amendment affords in the first place. Therefore, it seems that the whole line of reasoning is illogical given the clear historical purpose of the first amendment in general, noting that the framers likely would have considered all pornography to be obscene- given that such was the majority line of thought in the late 1700s / early 1800s at the time the framers wrote the constitutional text. 98.178.191.34 ( talk) 23:05, 13 February 2022 (UTC)
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).
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)
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)
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)
Should the title be partially italicized, like "Miller test"? Is the test named after the man, Marvin Miller, or the case Miller v. California? Mammoth Kod ( talk) 21:02, 15 March 2015 (UTC)
i think, especially since search on SLAPS redirects here, that some explanation of the acronym should be given. i can't figure it out with any degree of certainty Toyokuni3 ( talk) 08:10, 29 November 2017 (UTC)
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
The main article states "In practice, pornography showing genitalia and sexual acts is not ipso facto obscene according to the Miller test." However, The problem with this is that the Department of justice, in it's Citizen's Guide to U.S. federal law on Obcenity defines "prurient interest" as "i.e., an erotic, lascivious, abnormal, unhealthy, degrading, shameful, or morbid interest in nudity, sex, or excretion", defines "depitcts or describes sexual conduct in a patently offensive way as "i.e., ultimate sexual acts, normal or perverted, actual or simulated, masturbation, excretory functions, lewd exhibition of the genitals, or sado-masochistic sexual abuse)". It would therefore seem that, according to the DOJ, that all pornography will then inherently meet the first two prongs, leaving the only remaining inquiry being as to "serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value." I can't see much of a rational argument to say that any pornography has any serious "political, scientific, or literary" value, and if the notion that pornography is some form of "art", then it poses the problem of how some pornography could be considered "art" while some other pornography would not be considered such. Rather, it appears that the line of reasoning then becomes so impermissibly arbitary and capricious as to make something hinge on emotion as opposed to any reasonably objective standard. Therefore, further explanation is both warranted and needed here as to demonstrate that the standard isn't overly arbitrary and capricious to a degree of becoming an abuse of discretion, as more recently articulated by J. Sotomayor during oral arguments in the October 2021 term. 98.178.191.34 ( talk) 22:49, 13 February 2022 (UTC)
Right now, the article reads:
This characterization of the "Movie Buffs" case seems misleading for a few reasons.
First, the jury in this case took "two hours" to deliberate according to this news article. Calling this "only a few minutes" is technically correct (I suppose if they had deliberated for several weeks, that would have been "only a few minutes" in a manner of speaking), but misleading.
Second, this was not a supreme court case, or even an appellate court case. So, the case may not be easily generalizable, especially given the particulars of the case. For instance, according to the news article I referenced,
So, it seems like the obscenity or non-obscenity of the pornography in question was not the primary basis of the jury's decision. The way this article is written right now really doesn't reflect this at all.
On the other hand, I don't know enough about obscenity law to give a good explanation why "pornography showing genitalia and sexual acts is not ipso facto obscene according to the Miller test." Are there any legal experts around who can weigh in on that and perhaps rewrite this paragraph altogether?
Autodidact137 ( talk) 03:14, 24 August 2022 (UTC)