Miller test
en.wikipedia.org
en.wikipedia.org
For an especially problematic issue see "Reason Number 3: Because You Don’t Know Whether You’re Guilty Until the Jury Renders Its Verdict"
And their whitepaper, https://www.firstamendment.com/articles/Nexus_Obscenity_in_t...
| The more troubling aspect to this defect in obscenity laws is the inability for law abiding Webmasters to steer clear of inadvertent violations of the law. It is an essential element of any fair criminal justice system that all laws must adequately advise citizens how to comply with them, and more importantly, how to avoid breaking them. Citizens should not be so uninformed that they avoid lawful conduct in order to keep from violating an inadequately defined law. For example, Congress has determined that no one should drive faster than 65 miles per hour, but it is perfectly fine-and in many cases citizens are encouraged-to drive right at the speed limit. Every driver understands his or her rights and obligations, and can easily comply with the law. Imagine the chaos and outcry if the speed limit were defined as “the highest speed measured in cubits per hour that the average person, if polled today, would find that a Unicorn could gallop, with a serous purpose as measured by a reasonable person in the community.” Imagine how slowly people would go; imagine how many tickets would be written for speeding. Imagine how long it would take for such an inane standard to be repealed.
[0] “objective” in legal standards often refers to a subjective standard where the decision-maker is not to apply their opinion on the overt rule, but to apply their opinion of what a “reasonable person” would opine about the overt rule.
(However, in practice analogy to past uses, especially in courts whose precedent is binding, may be used in place of the test itself.)
Your framing makes it seem like they decided something was pornographic, when what they were doing was protecting free speech.
From your own source:
>I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description ["hard-core pornography"], and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it, and the motion picture involved in this case is not that.
Many of us like to think of the First Amendment as broadly protecting the right to say whatever you want, dating back to its enactment over 200 years ago, but that interpretation is much newer.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alien_and_Sedition_Acts#Sediti...
Especially the part about the book being more obscene than the justices could imagine.
> The Utah County region had often boasted of being one of the most socially conservative areas in the United States. However, researchers had shown that guests at the local Marriott Hotel were disproportionately large consumers of pay-per-view pornographic material
Unfortunately, in case of wikipedia, it does not surprise me at all. US left-wing activists have weaponized the "facts" (or, the authority to be the bearer of "facts", to be exact) a long time ago, and a free-for-all public encyclopedia is a perfect proxy for that.