Karen Fletcher has decided to forgo being a test case for the First Amendment, and will plead guilty to six counts of distributing obscenity online; the obscenity in question was fictional stories, text only, published on a members-only Web site she ran.
Before now, the government has never, so far as I can find, won a criminal conviction on text-only obscenity.
Ms. Fletcher claims to suffer from agoraphobia, and that a trial would be impossible for her to endure. The terms of her guilty plea include an agreement for home detention in lieu of prison.
I’m not sure I am comfortable with the possibility of a conviction for obscenity on text-only stories.
I’m not particularly comfortable with convictions for obscenity in general, but I would’ve imagined the law drew no particular explicit distinction between text and other media, no? One may arise implicitly, I suppose, from appeal to community standards and such things, if one believes that community standards are such that text is incapable of being patently offensive in the same way other media can be, or whatever it is that community standards are appealed to for, but this would not be intrinsic in the law, and I would find it a dubious proposition at any rate.
For those of us not familiar with what is meant by “distributing obscenity”, could someone clarify? (Mainly, I’m wondering why something like this constitutes distributing obscenity, if skin mags don’t.)
Offhand, I’m inclined to agree with the OP. (But depending on the details of these laws, it might just be because I think the laws are ridiculous.)
I’m not comfortable with the idea either. I thought this was settled with Lady Chatterley’s Lover or something.
I read an entire book about the court cases that basically put an end to the prosecution of book publishers for obscenity. It was called The End of Obscenity. Unfortunately I can’t remember much about it!
Well, I don’t think I’d want to read her stories, but I’ll defend her right to distribute them. If you can’t publish something just because it’s disturbing and gross, your right to publish anything depends on an unknown person’s tender sensibilities.
Imagine if posters to this MB had to adhere to the “community standards” of all the communities where the board is available. Anybody remember that thread where a poster detailed his attempts to measure the blood volume of his erection by dunking his dick in a cup of water? I bet that violated someone’s community standards.
Suppose a similar case comes up in the future but does go to trial, and on up to the Supreme Court, and the SC overturns the conviction in some way that implies it shouldn’t have been brought up for prosecution? Will this have any legal implications for Fletcher herself?
First of all I’m extremely disgusted by what she was doing.
But second I’ve gotta wonder if anyone involved in the prosecution has ever heard of fan fic.
Also, what about The Chocolate War they made me read in high school? There was underage sex and multiple beatings and emotional abuse aplenty in that. Granted it wasn’t as far underage, but would an internet posting of the text from it be prosecutable?
I haven’t heard of The Chocolate War. But are these activities depicted in order to turn people on? (I think that’s what is meant by the legal phraseology “appealing to the prurient interest.”)
According to Wikipedia, the current test for Constitutional obscenity is the Miller Test, which has three parts:
I don’t see much here that would apply differently to one form of media than another. It’s quite clear on the first point that there are text works that apply primarily to prurient interest. The third point is equally applicable to any medium. The only part of the test that seems like it could be specific to medium is the second prong. It could be argued that a photograph, sound recording, or video depiction of something is more capable of being “patently offensive” because it has a greater or more immediate impact on the senses.
I don’t necessarily disagree with that argument, but I do think that it’s difficult to make any argument at all in such a hazy framework.
This whole concept of “distributing obscenity” sounds so ambiguous and open-ended, I don’t see how it couldn’t include text-only incarnations. It just seems like a big middle finger to the idea of free speech. Wow.
I thought when people plead guilty they had to forgo their right to future legal proceedings (appeals and such). Can she really get the conviction expunged?
