Miller test

The Miller test is the United States Supreme Court's test for determining
whether speech or expression can be labelled obscene, in which case it is
not protected by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution and
can be prohibited.

The Miller test was developed in the 1973 case Miller vs. California. It has
three parts:

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

The third condition is also known as the SLAPS test. The work is considered
obscene only if all three conditions are satisfied.

For legal scholars, several issues are important. One is that the test
allows for community standards rather than a national standard. What offends
the average person in rural Nebraska may differ from what offends the
average person in San Francisco. The relevant community, however, is not
defined. Another is that it asks for an interpretation of what the "average"
person finds offensive, rather than what the more sensitive persons in the
community are offended by.

The advent of the Internet has made this definition more difficult to
maintain, as material published on a New York webserver can be read on a
computer by a person residing in Utah: it is then a vexed question as to
which jurisdiction should apply. (Has this been resolved in U.S. law? If so,
please summarize the result here).

Because it allows for community standards and demands "serious" value, some
worried that this test would make it easier to suppress speech and
expression. They pointed out that it replaced a stricter test asking whether
the speech or expression was "utterly without redeeming social value"--a
much tougher standard than "serious" value. As used, however, the test
generally makes it difficult to outlaw any form of expression. Even
pornography, with the exception of child pornography, is argued to have some
artistic or literary value.

In practice, hard core pornography showing genitalia and sexual acts
normally does not pass the Miller test. For instance, in a court case in
conservative Provo, Utah in 2000, a jury quickly acquitted a video store
owner of charges involving obscenity.

How to - Physics - History - Companies - Internet - Video Games - List of Phobias - September 11, 2001
Radio - Timelines - Chemistry - Genealogy - Family - Film - SARS - Cancer - Medicine - DVD - Calendar
Countries - Disease - Health Science - Dentistry - Economics - AIDS - Law - Autism - Statistics - Bible
Recipes - Architecture - Computers - History of the Internet - Personal computer - Apple Macintosh
War - Presidents of the United States - United States Constitution - Universe - Philosophy - Animals
Biology - United States Constitution - Marketing Topics - Sports - Television - History of Computing

Debt Help - Free Credit Report - Mortgages - Loans - Cheap Flights