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Oregon's New Censorship Law Challenged In Court 248

Posted by timothy from the it's-ok-it-must-have-been-a-joke dept.
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).'"
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Oregon's New Censorship Law Challenged In Court More

Oregon's New Censorship Law Challenged In Court

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  • 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]

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Xzzy ( 111297 )
      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
    • Two Canadian bookstores have been fighting Customs for decades against unlawful seizure of materials and discriminant enforcement of "obscenity" laws. One has given up the fight, the other went bankrupt trying to fight. Granted, they are smaller, independent and primarily gay-focussed, but sometimes Big Brother wins simply my attrition and deeper pockets.

  • Ahh Oregon, how I love thee (Score:3, Interesting)

    by QuantumRiff ( 120817 ) on Thursday May 01, 2008 @12:03PM (#23264330)
    Ahh Oregon, how I love thee,
    since I obviously can't look after myself,
    I really appreciate that you are looking out for me,

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by mOdQuArK! ( 87332 )
      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.
      • The Oregon Supreme Court in Oregon v. Henry threw out all "obscenity" laws, making the argument that since there was no historical precedent for a first amendment "obscenity" exception that it couldn't be enforced today. They enforce child porn laws and others of course but in Oregon there is no categorical free speech exception based on the notion of "obscenity" like there is in every other state in the union. I don't know Oregon law (the case is 20 yrs old), but I don't think this case has been overturn
    • 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

    • That's one thing I discovered about Oregon, particularly the Portland area, that is a huge misnomer. I'm all about social liberalism and freedom to be yourself. However here it is more like "I want to be myself which means all these other things I should worry about but get in the way of me being 'me', I want someone else to take care of for me."

      I'm from small town midwest, which has its share of quirks and ignorant tools. They're far easier to ignore though, since, in my experience, they by and large do th

    • As others have said, Oregon has very strong free speech protections.

      For that matter, Oregon is one of the most "libertarian" (small 'L',) states out there. We've got nearly unlimited free speech, (for example, anti-abortion groups are allowed to carry banners showing aborted fetuses in front of baseball games!) We have (tied for) the most legal marijuana, we have legal doctor-assisted suicide, etc. We've had the state Attorney General come out against the RIAA, we've had our local police refuse to partic

  • 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.
    • 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.
      • That would throw the balance of power too far towards the judges. Say the Supreme Court is Republican controlled and the Congress is Democrat. The Democrats pass a law by a narrow majority. In an act of partisan spite, the Supreme Court finds the law unconstitutional - immediately barring all Democrats from congress.

        The opposite is also possible - if both bodies were of the same party, there would be a strong disincentive for the judges to find ANY law unconstitutional, no matter how bad it was.

        The core of

      • 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.

        Well, that solution certainly won't have any unintended consequences. Some of the more serious flaws with your proposal, in no particular order:

        Final rulings on constitutionality can take many years to come down, particularly in cases that proceed all the way to the state or federal Supreme

    • Re:Written material (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Vellmont ( 569020 ) on Thursday May 01, 2008 @12:23PM (#23264630) Homepage

      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.
      • Ironically Lenny Bruce once did a show wearing nothing but a bowler hat, bow tie, and a pair of shoes. The line of cops that stood in the front row could do nothing about it because he hadn't broken any laws, the show was 18+. However, after the entire hour+ show was over he said the closing word "$hit", the only swear word in the entire show. At that point they hauled him off to jail for violating obscenity laws.

    • Re:Written material (Score:4, Informative)

      by QCompson ( 675963 ) on Thursday May 01, 2008 @12:23PM (#23264632)

      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.
    • 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 (Score:5, Funny)

    by InvisblePinkUnicorn ( 1126837 ) on Thursday May 01, 2008 @12:06PM (#23264362)
    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"
    • 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 (Score:5, Informative)

        by Man On Pink Corner ( 1089867 ) on Thursday May 01, 2008 @12:26PM (#23264670)
        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.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by sm62704 ( 957197 )
          Well, they buy laws when they have to, but it's a lot cheaper to just make everyone THINK it's the law. Same result.

          People think downloading Metallics MP3s is illegal, for instance, when actually you have to upload them to infringe.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by kabocox ( 199019 )
          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.

          I'd much rather the various industries self rate rather than the government or my wife's or father-in-law's church rate the media. It's when the government gets involved that scary parts can happen. It's those churches/groups that like to define things obscene to just get non members viewed as evil/sinful that a
          • The are laws preventing churches and the like from bribing politicians, at least in theory. There are no such laws preventing them from bribing industry self-regulators.
            It's not like religious groups don't heavily influence things like the ESRB. At least if the ESRB were a government panel, you could (theoretically) put a stop to it.

            This idea that private industry tends to screw up less often than the government is naive and, given the evidence of the past few decades, silly. The American government has its
        • Indeed, I just pointed this out to a girl I met the other day. She has a degree in sociology and while studying her thesis centered around media's impact on our culture. She had no idea the MPAA ratings were completely self-imposed.

          Crazy.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by PMuse ( 320639 )
          What is needed is a rating system that says clearly what is in the work, not that says who should be permitted to see it.

          "PG-13" is not helpful. "Mild language, brief nudity, and extensive violence" is helpful, as is "No language, no nudity, no violence, sexual topics".

          It should not be up to the theatres, booksellers, and libraries to police what children watch.
    • 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.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by GlL ( 618007 )
        What about uninvolved? This goes way beyond "incompetent" all the way to irresponsible.
        I am about to become a father, and I am going to quit my job and stay home to raise my daughter. My wife and I are going to have to lower our standard of living, but I think that being involved in my daughter's development and life are more important than filling my closet with more stuff I will only use once. Yes, I will have to live in a "less desireable" neighborhood filled with people who don't look like me, think lik
    • I remember on my 17th birthday, my mother bought me a book of Limericks.

      On the cover the book specifically noted it was not for sale to minors.
      (NY State)

      Inside the book they explained:

      "First there are Limericks you can tell in front of women,
      then there are Limericks you can tell in front of Priests,
      and then there are Limericks.
      This book is full of Limericks."

      Let me tell you these limericks are not for the faint of heart.
      There are no pictures. The words themselves are quite graphic.

      However, this law sounds a
  • Using this [surlatable.com] for this [thesun.co.uk]. Would make it titillating.
  • 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.
    • 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 (Score:2, Interesting)

    by tux_attack ( 1173501 )
    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.
    • 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.

    • 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.

      • I would disagree. We can't imagine passages from Chaucer or Shakespeare being titillating because, on the whole, the language and idiom are pretty foreign and we are used to a far higher level of sexual content. I think Chaucer's description of the Wife of Bath was intended to be very racy, for example, and Shakespeare was certainly trying to titillate his audience occasionally, especially in the comedies.

        If we're talking about cases where the whole work is intended to be titillating, we only have to look

        • Well, I disagree precisely because most of those works do not meet a contemporary criteria of "explicit." That's all the law is really concerned with, not if it was extremely racy when it was written. I don't disagree with your examples, you are totally correct, I'm saying that most are not and you're saying some are. We're both right I think. Swift was a very crude writer, and for that reason many primary school libraries do not contain ANY of his works, or they only contain Gulliver's Travels in a censore

          • Yup, okay - makes sense. I see what you're saying about watching your kids too. I was old enough to be given some freedom to go out alone long before I was ready to read, say, "American Psycho". (Not sure I was ever ready to read that one, in fact.) And yet I could have bought it from any bookshop whereas I would have been asked for ID if buying the film.

            I must say, though, that the age limit of 18 (according to TFA) bothers me a little. If they want to protect kids, they need a rating system rather than

      • Okay, you go round up copies of "The Scarlet Letter", "Catch-22", "Of Mice and Men", "The Grapes of Wrath", "A Midsummer Night's Dream", "The Color Purple", "The Graduate", "Their Eyes Were Watching God", and "Ulysses". Then we'll burn you for damaging the education of our children. How's that?

        How people intend for kids to be kept entirely ignorant of sex, drugs, violence, dishonesty, war, poverty, and illness for 18 years then send them off to university and expect them to survive is beyond me.

        Some of the
    • 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.
    • Exactly! Several of the books that are required reading for high schoolers may be covered by this law. Of course some school districts already ban things that are on required reading lists for others, so who knows. A quick search for banned books will show you that this isn't the first time great works of literature have been banned, and it won't be the last.

      Personally, I think it could be pretty helpful for Oregon students not wanting to read a book. When you go to the bookstore to buy your copy of Wat

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by sm62704 ( 957197 )
      That means most novels including many great works of literature are banned

      Two Isaac Asimov science fiction novels are excellent examples. The Robots of Dawn [wikipedia.org] has a woman who uses a humaniform robot as a dildo, and includes a graphic adultery scene. The Gods Themselves [wikipedia.org] illustrates in detail sex between three aliens (sex takes three on their world).

      I imagine there is quite a bit of banned shakespeare.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Valdrax ( 32670 )
      Perhaps you should read the bill's definition of sexually explicit material before getting all worked up about that.
      Hint: "Most novels" don't apply.

  • No Bibles unless you are over 18. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by jellomizer ( 103300 ) on Thursday May 01, 2008 @12:11PM (#23264452)
    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.
    • That is the best idea I have heard in a long time.

    • It's also the easiest policy for bookstores as well. If you're younger than 18, you can't buy anything here. Move along.

      Library cards would be a form of proof-of-age.
      (Yes, I see that there are exceptions to the law, likely including libraries, and you really need to be 21 to be considered a full adult in Oregon, but that doesn't add to the joke, does it?)

  • Kilgore Trout stories?
  • 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.
  • 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.
    • La Monte Young set fire to his violin at a performance. I quoted him in my kuro5hin diary [kuro5hin.org]:

      KOSTELANETZ - What happened in the piece where you burned a violin?

      YOUNG - That was in a piece by Richard Maxfield performed at the Y.M.H.A. in New York. Even though it was Richard's piece, he gave me free rein, as he did in all his pieces; and this one of the general conditions I often asked for my performance of the works of other composers and artists during that period. The piece was his Concert Suite from Drome

  • 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

    • 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.

    • 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.
    • Next up, your local newspaper is sued out of existence because the classifieds section was used to con 12 people out of their lifes' savings.

      "The guy who placed the ads is currently living it up in Fiji, but we'll arrest him if he ever runs out of money and comes back to our town," the police chief said. "Meanwhile, isn't it nice that the civil court system allowed these citizens to put 110 of their neighbors out of work in his place?"

      Film at 11.
  • 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.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by sm62704 ( 957197 )
      we'll need a government program to treat it. Your health care dollars at work.

      We don't have health care in the US. Well, I do but quite a few folks I know (one who died from its lack) don't.
  • 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 (Score:3, Funny)

    by mlwmohawk ( 801821 ) on Thursday May 01, 2008 @12:59PM (#23265078)
    "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 (Score:3, Informative)

    by Phroggy ( 441 ) <slashdot3@@@phroggy...com> on Thursday May 01, 2008 @01:07PM (#23265150) Homepage
    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? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by mlwmohawk ( 801821 ) on Thursday May 01, 2008 @01:31PM (#23265498)
    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.
    • I worked at IEG [wikipedia.org] in 1999 - 2000. I was very titillated most of the time. Good thing I sat behind a desk.

    • Absolutely right. Personally, I have a big thing about blue shirts. It's a particular shade of blue, and makes me weak at the knees just to see photos of people wearing this particular kind of apparel. I could make a big coffee-table book of such pictures, just to titillate myself. Should it be banned, despite featuring only fully clothed people, just because of the author's personal feelings?

      Equally, recently at a conference I gave an academic paper about masculinity and pornography. There were a heck o

    • It also has a tendancy to create even weirder fetishes. The more that you prevent people from seeing, it always seems to simply create a new undiscovered fetish for something that hasn't been censored yet.
  • Why don't we create a group of people who can read these books and tell the retailers what's in them? That way the retailers won't have to waste their time with it but it will still get done. We could probably chair it with people who are within the industry, and call it the Book Publishers' Association of America, or maybe the Entertainment Text Rating Board. And then they could even put the rating somewhere on the book so parents could see it and then we wouldn't need a stupid fucking law like this one
  • I really can't see that this lawsuit has merit. It's illegal to sell pornography to minors, that's the law not just some rating body. Yet somehow, video stores and music stores and even newsstands where the content changes weekly or even daily manage to do this. Bow? Do you think they're flipping through every page at every newsstand across the country? Hell no, they got agreements, they got markings and for books in a worst case they can do an ISBN lookup. While I think it'll be a hell to conclusively cate

  • This law doesn't assist anyone in parenting well, it enables bad parenting.

    Refusing to educate your kids about sex, drugs, and violence before they are exposed to such themes in life is naive and ignorant, and it will make your kids grow into naive and ignorant adults. You can not expect the world to censor itself all of the time just because you haven't educated your children. Books have gone for hundreds of years without being rated for lewdness or censored; I don't think anyone was scarred for life when

  • The Oregon Constitution guarantees more freedom of expression than the US Constitution. Thats why in some areas of Portland, there are strip clubs on almost every block. The religious nuts have tried over and over again to ban strip clubs, but any law that gets passed eventually struck down by the Oregon Supreme Court.

    The only control anyone has over them is via the liquor license. Then the clubs just get creative and find other things to make money off of other than alcohol.

    So considering all of this, I

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