It’s largely a matter of the judge’s attitude, the community standards, and how the local laws are worded.
I am made to think about Mike Diana. Punch his name into Google and see what you get.
In a nutshell: he was a cartoonist who drew some disgusting stuff. A Florida judge decided that his stuff was obscene, and went so far as to issue him guidelines as to what the man COULD and COULD NOT draw… even in the privacy of his own home. In fact, his sentence allowed for officers to wander into his home whenever they pleased, without a warrant, to make sure he wasn’t drawin’ no nasty pitchurs.
Diana fought it clear to the Supreme Court… which refused to hear his case. Last I heard, he was still on probation.
I should point out that his cartoons are NOT photorealistic, or really even very prurient… his style is reminiscent of Ed “Big Daddy” Roth’s Rat Fink cartoons. Admittedly, he WAS drawing cartoons about abortion and stuff guaranteed to piss off Florida politicians… and his stuff WAS pretty gross… but I think his case pretty much nails down the fact that “if the court really wants to nail your ass, they will find a way.”
Are US laws about obscenity consistent from state to state? I would have thought not (I know the OP asked about Federal laws, but I would imagine that individual state laws greatly impact on both the production and distribution of erotica in the US).
I really doubt that decisions restricting what a person can draw or write in the privacyh of their own home are Constitutional and over the long run will be dumped. But in the short run, we got the Rehnquist Court to deal with.
well, over on nntalk.com there was discussion awhile back about a guy who was running one of those “titilating teen sites”, something like near-nude teens or something.
He got arrested, despite the fact that all the models that were under 18 never actually exposed anything illegal, and had parentally signed contracts.
I don’t know how it ended. Findout that stuff out was during a particularly odd fetish period that was exceedingly brief.
There was a BBS in San Jose, California, a very conservative community & it got away with doing nude photos of all ages (mostly from nude beaches or nudist colonies) for years. Eventually they got caught for sending the photos over state lines via file transfer & that was it for them.