JOU 4380 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Dominick Fernow
27 Mar 2017
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Obscenity is a crime, but subjective to jury opinion. Pornography, erotica, indecency used to be illegal too. We don"t try obscenity much anymore because you"ll lose, thus weakening the obscenity law. Not protected, can be almost anything; nowadays is profits and violence. Mainly stick to sexual events/things as obscene -- graphic portrayals of sexual acts . Indecency is material, sexual or nonsexula, seen as offensive. Erotica is basically art (fashion, paintings, etc. ) Even sexually explicit erotica is protected-only worried about children now. Law of sexual expression/morally inappropriate speech (1) interprets federal statutes and regulations that control or prohibit the creation and distribution of sexual expression (2) how far the federal and state governments may go in restricting sexual expression. Required a finding that works were utterly without redeeming social value . Made it hard to prosecute sex-themed works; any story-line or non-sexual plotting. Near v. minnesota shed no light on this niche. Most important this is the current law.
