Well was an exciting week, NY passed a law that'll cost $2-5 million to prove fails constitutional muster, and the US District Court ruled unanimously that COPA is also unfit to be a law.

In the last couple of months, we in the US have had 3 major lawsuits dealing with obscenity. For some people it's not an issue, they either don't create erotic works, or they are distinctly 'safe' in what they do create. For other people, this ranges from worrisome to terrifying.

The Supreme Court's 1973 ruling in Miller v. California sets out a 3 part standard for ruling content obscene:

1. an average person, applying contemporary community standards, would find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest;
2. the work depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by the applicable state law; and
3. the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.

Most frightening about this in conjunction with the internet is the fact that law officials have not only stated they have jurisdiction over the entire internet, but they've actually enforced it. Looking back to 2005 we have a Florida Sheriff quoting (Sheriff Judd as quoted in the Online Journalism Review)

"This might be the first [case we've dealt with] where the alleged server is out of the country," Judd said. "But it makes no difference, because if you fed that server or you could receive information off that server in this county, then it gives us jurisdiction. ... Technically I could charge someone in Kansas, if I received child pornography here, obtained a warrant and had him extradited from Kansas and tried here."