Oregon's New Censorship Law Challenged In Court

MachineShedFred writes "A lawsuit has been filed against all the county District Attorneys as well as the Attorney General of Oregon to block enforcement of a new law that restricts the sale of 'sexually explicit' material to people under the age of 18. Powell's Books (who claims to be the largest independent new and used bookstore in the world) as well as Dark Horse Comics (publisher of Frank Miller graphic novels) as well as many other bookstores claim that the new law would be impossible for these businesses to comply with. 'Powell's has in stock over 2 million volumes constituting over 1 million titles,' Michael Powell said in his affidavit. 'We receive on an average over 5,000 new titles per week. Obviously we cannot read each new title to determine whether there are any sexual explicit portions and if so whether such portions "serve some purpose other than titillation" (even if I knew what that meant).'"

Hmmmm

Note to self: Buy some more books from Powells.

I understand perfectly well that it is in Michael Powell's best interests to make such a response, but in the idiotic (and often overwhelming) tide of mommy-government "we know what's best for you" sophism, it is nothing less than delightful to see a vendor actually put up a fight instead of rolling over.

Note to everyone else: If you're a technical person, and you're not familiar with Powell's technical bookstore, you owe it to yourself to at least look [powells.com]

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It really is an excellent store. Lived in Portland for a few years and made regular trips to the place, they never once failed to have a book in stock that I wanted. From service manuals for 30 year old cars to a specific reprint of LoTR (I wanted my covers to match!), they had it all. They even carried Slackware back when people were still trying to figure out what the proper pronunciation of Linux was.

Beyond that, the place is so big you can lose a day wandering the aisles and seeing what's available. Pla

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Try living outside the willamette valley. I live in southern Oregon. We are no longer allowed to buy studded tires for our cars. Too many people in PDX and the rest of the valley were putting them on their cars and tearing up the highways, when it only snows an inch once a year. So our wonderfull leaders, (who all live there) said no more studs. Where I live, I had 4 feet of snow, most of the winter. The next town is 70 miles away, over a mountain pass, that gets even more snow. Yes, studless tires exis

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Sounds like you should be running chains, not studs...

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Even to this valley native it's clear that there is good cause to have different rules for the different geographic areas of the state.

Studded tires are a great example. In my opinion, they should be made permit-only for any vehicle registered at an address at less than 1000' elevation, with a gratis automatic permit for any address at or over 1000'. But I guess that's too easy for the legislature.

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I'm from eastern Washington originally, but I've lived in both Oregon and now in San Francisco (leaving soon, thank god), and all I have to say is... Seattle wants really really badly to be San Francisco North. There's this unholy triumvirate of hippie cities in a row down the coast: Seattle, Portland, and San Francisco. Seattle has lots and lots of crunchy granola types, Portland has its holier-than-thou bicycle hippies (I cycle sometimes myself, but I'm not a dick about it), and San Francisco has hippies

Spending money at Powell's

My only beef with Powell's is that I spend too much money whenever I go there. Last time I was there I dropped about $500 at the main store, then about $500 more at the technical store. I particularly like the fact that the technical store is all kinds of technical stuff. The "technical" sections in the bookstores here (Vancouver) are 99% computer stuff, with a handful of pop science books.

I've heard of people who take vacations in Portland for the express purpose of shopping at Powell's. Sure, I can get

Ahh Oregon, how I love thee

Ahh Oregon, how I love thee,
since I obviously can't look after myself,
I really appreciate that you are looking out for me,

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Actually, the Oregon Constitution has even stronger free speech protections than the Federal Constitution (the Wikipedia page a brief reference to the differences).

That's one of the reasons there are so many topless dancer joints & adult bookstores scattered around, despite the best efforts of the "family values" crowd to shut them down. That's also why Powells (and the other bookstores) will probably have a good chance of getting this law thrown out.

How did this pass in Oregon?

Oregon is noted for having one of the nation's most broadly interpreted free-speech clauses in their state constitution, which goes *way* beyond the U.S. Constitution's first amendment.

Article I, section 8:

No law shall be passed restraining the free expression of opinion, or restricting the right to speak, write, or print freely on any subject whatever; but every person shall be responsible for the abuse of this right.

I seriously doubt, given the history of this clause, that the Oregon Supreme Court is going to find that it's okay to "speak, write, or print freely on any subject whatever," but not to sell the result. Hell, I mean Oregon voters rejected Measure 19 [wikipedia.org] intended to specifically exempt porn from this clause

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Not bad, really, You just have to fill out forms in triplicate, file them with 2 offices, pay a $8 "processing" fee at each office, along with a $15 application fee, and wait 6-8 weeks to hear back!

Written material

Hasn't written material traditionally been exempt from obscenity laws? It would be unlikely that any written material would fall under this law, so unless Powell's is selling Hustler magazine or porn videos to kids, I doubt seriously that they have any legitimate concerns.

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Doesn't stop idiot lawmakers from trying.

You know what I want to see? An amendment that states that every time someone sponsors or votes for a law that is found to be unconstitutional, they get fined their entire yearly salary, and are barred from ever holding the position of lawmaker.

I'm tired of politicians creating sham laws without any repercussion. Since they can't get voted out (judging by the amount of time that some people are in office), they need to be tossed out.

Re:Written material

Hasn't written material traditionally been exempt from obscenity laws?

Not really. Wikiepedia has a whole section on "non image based obscenity" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obscenity [wikipedia.org]

The comedian Lenny Bruce was prosecuted in the 50s and 60s for merely speaking about "forbidden" topics at nightclubs. Just recently there's an internet site that published text stored "red rose stories" that was raided by the freaking FBI. There's a ton more. The Red Rose Stories prosecution case is scheduled to start soon.

So no, if you think this is about image based porn "obscenity", you're very wrong.

Re:Written material

Hasn't written material traditionally been exempt from obscenity laws?

Absolutely not. There have been many books declared to be obscene, with resultant court battles over the matter. Ulysses, Tropic of Cancer, and Fanny Hill are some of the more famous examples.

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I doubt it. Remember that pornography hasn't always meant videos and pictures. The "graph" part comes from the Greek word for writing. The "porn" part from the Greek for harlot. The word "pornography" originally referred to the written word, especially about hookers.

The obvious end result

First movies, then video games, now books will need to have a big ugly "E" stamped on their cover before they can be sold to minors. And on the back cover there will be spoilers like "Warning! Graphic content: main character murdered at the end"

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This made me think about whether it would currently be possible to argue against laws that require ratings on movies, music, and games, if someone was willing to make a movie or audiobook with the title "Will they have sex?" where the movie is about two people and whether or not they will ever have sex. Then if the movie gets rated "Mature: Sexual Content", and that label is stamped on the cover, the publisher could argue that the law is affecting sales of their product, because the answer to the question i

Re:The obvious end result

There are no such laws. The fact that everyone just happily assumes there are laws behind movie, music, and game ratings is one of the more unsettling aspects of life in twenty-first century America.

You can blame...

You can blame incompetent people having children. Ultimately it is a parents job to look after the well being of their children - this includes monitoring what they are reading, playing, seeing, etc. If parents did their jobs, government wouldnt be stamping M on everything and carding people well into their 30's. I'll admit it's stupid, but what can I say, we live in a society where many times our children are more mature then their parents.

Titillation

Using this [surlatable.com] for this [thesun.co.uk]. Would make it titillating.

Indiana

I wonder when people will stop this thinkofthechildren crap, just like in Indiana [ohmygov.com] where book stores have to register and pay a fee if they sell any "sexually explicit material" which is vaguely defined as any product that is "harmful to minors." Maybe they'll get a hint from Oregon and drop that crap from the books.

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Chlorine bleach, lye, household ammonia, and oven cleaner can be "harmful to minors", but they're only "sexually explicit" if you're into some really kinky shit that I don't want to read or hear about.

Absurdly Overbroad

From TFA

makes it a crime to provide sexually explicit material to a child through sales or viewing, if the material was meant to "satisfy a sexual desire."

That means most novels including many great works of literature are banned, think of what would be banned if the law was expanded to tv too.

Absurdly idiotic

And by subj I mean those comment that equalize restricting the audience of the material to banning it, or (favourite word of leftties) "effectively" banning it.

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Hell, this would have put my high school English teachers in jail for the books they gave us to read. Middle school, too, I wouldn't doubt.

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I'm ecstatic for you. Are you also great with databases?

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No they aren't, because very few of the considered great works of literature were constructed primarily for the purpose of titillation. Anything that was usually is not going to meet the criteria of "important."

Second, just because it's important doesn't mean it's appropriate for kids at all. If I had a daughter in middle school, I would not want a teacher assigning her to research erotic poems of ancient Mesopotamia even though they are fantastic, important pieces of literature.

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So that means no more 16 and 17 year olds admitted to "The Graduate" at the local community theater?

Can schools no longer explain that Henry the 8th of England had so many wives (and divorced, killed, and founded a national church over it) because he wanted one of them to produce a son?

Most biology books are pretty explicit about sex. Are those banned?

This sort of vague bullshit law that's half-thought and haphazardly enforced is one of the biggest problems in the US today.

No Bibles unless you are over 18.

There is some fairly raunchy stuff in the Bible. Not attened for good people under the age of 18. Heck they have every sin in there.

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That is the best idea I have heard in a long time.

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Ban it. Am I being sarcastic? I don't even know anymore. Probably so, but...

It would be too hard to implement such a ban and frankly I'm apposed to all book bans.
Instead perhaps we could just remove all the special protections for the faithful from our laws then we can just haul them off to psychiatric facilities for treatment for their dangerous delusions.
Child protection services can take their kids to foster homes where they can learn about Reason and Science and learn to distinguish between reality and fantasy.

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King David and Bathsheba? The Song of Solomon? Or maybe something kinky like the scene in one of the gospels where a woman washes Jesus' feet with her hair? Wouldn't that titilate a foot fetisher?

Many things can be considered obscene and I'll bet that Powell guy has plenty of it in a technical bookstore. I'm sure he has books with explicit screens shots of <whisper>the two letter v-word editor</whisper>. I don't know about you, but I don't want my kids exposed to filth like that and neither

What if the kids want to read

Kilgore Trout stories?

I 100% support this.

For the sake of the children, we should restrict what they read. Restricting them to 18th century classic novels [wikipedia.org] ought to be perfectly safe.

what that phrase means

Obviously we cannot read each new title to determine whether there are any sexual explicit portions and if so whether such portions "serve some purpose other than titillation" (even if I knew what that meant).
Sounds to me like the 21st-century version of "...has redeeming social value." That was the phrase, IIRC, used to allow screening of Deep Throat.

Challenge

It seems to me like the real problem lies in the vagueness of determining (prior to standing before a jury) whether or not something is meant only to titillate.

The plaintiff's other issue, which is that he handles too many titles to evaluate, sounds like simple whining. I.e., he has a business model that breaks under the new law. (On the other hand, this complaint does reminds me of those raised by website operators when faced with liability for what was posted by the general public on their message board

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It seems to me like the real problem lies in the vagueness of determining (prior to standing before a jury) whether or not something is meant only to titillate.

I agree that that is a significant flaw/problem with this legislation.
However, I would like to suggest that the real problem is that the state is enacting legislation for the purpose of controlling how and when citizens can be titillated.

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I wish I had mod points right now, because you are the only person so far that gets it. Most great literature contrary to some posts here, are not constructed primarily for the purpose of titillation, and are not going to be banned. But the law is likely to be vague and hard to define, and puts comics in particular at risk because frankly, most comics are NOT great literature.

Children simply shouldn't be able to buy books

I don't understand the problem here. Powell's simply needs to ban children from their store. Why should children be reading books their parents haven't approved, anyway? In fact, I think no child should be allowed to read a book that their parents haven't or can't read. That way, illiteracy will become an inheritable disease, and we'll need a government program to treat it. Your health care dollars at work.

no way in OR

Oregon has one of the most liberally construed state constitutional rights to free speech in the nation. That's one reason PDX boasts one of the highest numbers of strip clubs per capita of any major city in the US (see http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2003336880_portlandclubs02m.html [nwsource.com]). Although I guess the cause could also be all the guys at the OSDL offices.

Tom Larher: Smut

"I do have a cause, though, it is obscenity. I'm for it! (laughter) Thank you. Unfortunately, the civil liberties types who are fighting this issue have to fight it, owing to the nature of the laws, as a matter of freedom of speech and stifling of free expression and so on. But we know what's really involved: dirty books are fun! That's all there is to it. But you can't get up in a court and say that, I suppose. It's simply a matter of freedom of pleasure, a right which is not guaranteed by the Constitution, unfortunately. Anyway, since people seem to be marching for their causes these days, I have here a march for mine. It's called:"

Smut!
Give me smut and nothing but!
A dirty novel I can't shut
If it's uncut
and unsubt-le.

I've never quibbled
If it was ribald.
I would devour
Where others merely nibbled.
As the judge remarked the day that he acquitted my Aunt Hortense,
"To be smut
It must be ut-
Terly without redeeming social importance."

Por-
Nographic pictures I adore.
Indecent magazines galore,
I like them more
If they're hard core.

Bring on the obscene movies, murals, postcards, neckties, samplers, stained
glass windows, tattoos, anything!
More, more, I'm still not satisfied!

Stories of tortures
Used by debauchers
Lurid, licentious and vile,
Make me smile.
Novels that pander
To my taste for candor
Give me a pleasure sublime.
Let's face it I love slime!

Old books can be indecent books,
Though recent books are bolder.
For filth, I'm glad to say,
Is in the mind of the beholder.
When correctly viewed,
Everything is lewd.
I could tell you things about Peter Pan
And the Wizard of Oz - there's a dirty old man!

I thrill
To any book like Fanny Hill,
And I suppose I always will
If it is swill
And really fil-thy.

Who needs a hobby like tennis or philately?
I've got a hobby: rereading Lady Chatterley.
But now they're trying to take it all away from us unless
We take a stand, and hand in hand we fight for freedom of the press.
In other words: Smut! I love it.
Ah, the adventures of a slut.
Oh, I'm a market they can't glut.
I don't know what
Compares with smut.
Hip, hip, hooray!
Let's hear it for the Supreme Court!
Don't let them take it away!

Oregon and censorship

By the way, It was the Multnomah County Library [multcolib.org] that led the national fight against Internet censorship in libraries several years ago. They have chosen to reject federal funding so that they don't have to comply with the Children's Internet Protection Act [wikipedia.org] (won't somebody think of the children!) which mandates that public libraries install filtering software on their computers.

And they link to Slashdot [multcolib.org].

What is obscene?

Years ago before you could see anything you could imagine googling for, young kids got their porn pictures from National Geographic where tribal womam had breasts exposed or more.

The problem with "titillation" is that, more than subjective, it ignores context. I wrote a "porn filter" for an internet search site 10 years ago, and while I was looking at all sorts of porn, I was not "titillated." I was studying the language, canonical terms, and word usage to create a proper filter.

I posted Tom Lehrer's "smut" earlier, but I think my point was missed. Specifically, the paragraph where it goes: "For filth is in the mind of the beholder, when correctly viewed, everything is lewd, I can tell you things about Peter Pan, and the wizard of Oz is a dirty old man."

"Titillation" can be anything from pictures of women in police uniforms, hell, some people get their rocks off by looking at pictures of women's feet. I don't understand it, but it is true.

Censorship, throughout history, has never had much success in suppressing that which had been targeted. It has, however, been quite successful in suppressing those that disseminate information. and creating an environment of fear.

Censorship is terrorism.

Whoa, /. better stop selling subscriptions in OR

At least until this case gets decided and the law is thrown out.

That sexually explicit comment there obviously serves no purpose other than titillation.

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I'm not clicking, as I thought the twofo was some damned virus. Come to think of it, a virus IS more obscene than goatse!

And indeed, often slashdot is very NSFW [slashdot.org]. That's an old one from last year, kids. The third newest one is a lot tamer, but it has a hooker in it. Am I under arrest?

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If the law is impractical or not is really beside the point. This kind of vaguely defined censorship will only lead to companies erring on the side of caution to make sure the don't get fined. Think about books that you have read and think about how many of them have a certain amount of sexually explicit content. We're not just talking about Hentia comic books here, we're quite possibly talking about Classics of every genre.

The 1984, Lolita, the Dune Series, not to mention practically every "romance" nov

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The courts are not going to agree that it is constitutionally problematic that they cannot comply due to reasonable manpower issues.

From Cubby v. Compuserve, a case dealing with postings made on a forum on Compuserve:

CompuServe has no more editorial control over such a publication than does a public library, book store, or newsstand, and it would be no more feasible for CompuServe to examine every publication it carries for potentially defamatory statements than it would be for any other distributor to d

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Unfortunately not. The "obscenity" doctrine doesn't discriminate based on medium, it's just been applied more often towards photographs and motion-pictures than it has to text. But there's no reason why you can't ban books using the exact same reasoning.

Google "Red Rose Stories" if you want a current example; that was a textfiles site that got raided by the FBI. If the prosecution is successful -- as I see little reason to believe it won't be -- then you can look for other sexually explicit text websites

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What exactly are the "editors" being paid for?

They get paid to elicit off-topic comments from the grammar police, which in turn elicit even further off-topic self-referential comments about off-topic comments. Rinse. Repeat.