I've been playing in Wikipedia again...


In some states, there are Son of Sam laws prohibiting convicted criminals from publishing memoirs for profit. These laws were a response to offers to David Berkowitz to write memoirs about the murders he committed. The Supreme Court struck down a law of this type in New York as a violation of the First Amendment in the case Simon & Schuster v. Crime Victims Board (1991). That statute did not prohibit publication of a memoir by a convicted criminal. Instead, it provided that all profits from the book were to be put in escrow for a time. The interest from the escrow account was used to fund the New York State Crime Victims Board – an organization that pays the medical and related bills of victims of crime. Similar laws in other states remain unchallenged.

Is my history legal or illegal?

What if my history is obscene? (My gosh, I picked my nose as a kid.)

What if my history depicts illegal acts? Is that obscene or historical? (Hysterical, perhaps, but certainly it is hisTORical, eh?) Is Berkowitz's murders obscene? Are my kisses?

A work is obscene if:

(a)...‘the average person, applying contemporary community standards’ would find the work, as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest,...

(b)...the work depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by the applicable state law, and

(c)...the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.

I can be literary and artistic, eh?

Roses are red,
Violets are blue.
Some poems rhyme
But this one doesn't.


Child pornography is not subject to the Miller test, as the Supreme Court decided in New York v. Ferber (1982) and Osborne v. Ohio (1990), ruling that the government's interest in protecting children from abuse was paramount.

What is abuse?

What if abuse is desired? (see sadomasochism, et al.) Kids, today, are happily "sexting" to each other as well as to interested adults. Obviously, such sexual activity is desired by the sender and, usually, by the receiver. It is not subject to the Miller test, is it...

Hmmm, lots of fun things to think about...








• ( http link ) Miller test at Wikipedia
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