What is the legal definition of 'indecent'?

[lobelia321]

i've now read LiveJournal's terms of service but am still no closer to enlightenment. Maybe I am blind or maybe medicated into stupidity, but I cannot find a formulation prohibiting anything under whose rubric slash would fall. I am also not clear under which circumstances a journal would need to be suspended and under which circumstances it would be enough to flock it.

The FAQ helped me a bit more. It contains the following:

Comments, entries, journals and posts not permitted on LiveJournal include but are not limited to material:
[...]
* meeting the United States legal definition of "indecent"; [...]

I am not familiar with the United States legal definition of 'indecent' and may have to do some more googling here. But this would be the one that those groups who have targeted LJ based their complaints on, if it's to do with slash.

I found one article on the Communications Decency Act of 1996 (CDA or Act) which is an act that seems to be mainly concerned with protecting minors on the internet.

Under (d), the authors of this article suggest that there is no legal definition of 'indecent'
:
Regardless of whether the CDA is so vague that it violates the Fifth Amendment, the many ambiguities concerning the scope of its coverage render it problematic for First Amendment purposes. For instance, its use of the undefined terms "indecent" and "patently offensive" will provoke uncertainty among speakers about how the twostandards relate to each other and just what they mean.

However, I am not a lawyer and may be misintepreting this.

Does anyone know what the US legal definition of indecent is? And what could be construed as illegal?

It is frustrating to be subject to the legal system of a country I am neither living in nor entitled to vote in.

Comments

[ithiliana.livejournal.com]

I am not a lawyer--but as far as I know/understand, there is no single definition of "indecent" that operates in this country. In the discussion over FanLib's TOS some people, more legally aware and more experienced with TOS, said something along the lines of "it would be decided on a case by case basis," and I know there is the sense that "indecent" can mean different things in different parts of the country ("community standards" issue)--remember we have the states' rights trumping federal powers in some instances. There is more specific stuff around obscenity, but even there, "artistic merit" plays a part. Is this in relation to the WfI group which as far as I could tell from reading what was posted last night (things may have changed in 8 hours) was focusing on interest words having to do with pedophilia and/or illegal acts?

Someone somewhere was saying they thought "incest" could be replaced by "incest_as_theme_in_fanfiction" (and there was specific discussion of genre terms not being illegal acts).

Talk about frustration: I live here and am entitled to vote and as far as I can tell it hasn't made a bloody bit of difference since I voted for Gore.

I only keep voting because that way I can feel ethically entitled to bitch!

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Talk about frustration: I live here and am entitled to vote and as far as I can tell it hasn't made a bloody bit of difference
Fair point! I hear you!!

What is WfI?

I also have come across the incest/chan issue in posts. Interesting, about tweaking the user interests to move them to the fictional realm. Thanks for this. The whole geography of law becomes bamboozling re the internet. If some states have laws differing from others: how does this affect the global web?

[bexone.livejournal.com]

If some states have laws differing from others: how does this affect the global web?

The precedents set up to this point seem to say that the laws apply from whatever state or country the company has its legal existence -- where the corporate headquarters and server farms are. It's come up in questions of whether sales tax should be charged on websales, since every state and/or county in the US has their own rates and rules for sales tax. I'm not sure whether that's been tested on "indecent material" or not.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

So for LJ that would be California?

[bexone.livejournal.com]

Yeah -- and the Bay Area more specifically, re: community standards. Which is just as well. The average San Franciscan is not fazed by male nudity or two boys making out!

[ithiliana.livejournal.com]

I see from your other post you've found about Warriors for Idiocy -- the current metafandom focuses mostly on the whole issue.

The world wide web shifted so rapidly from an arcane and elite tool for which one had to learn computer language to use to an accessible to the masses *thing* (which I gather, economically, like VCRs and other technology was fueled in large part economically and otherwise by a desire for porn, and I'm not talking female fanfiction) that laws have not had a chance to catch up.

Some states have different laws; countries have different laws (China is apparently blocking its citizens from any access to LJ). I mentioned the states only to note the insanity in this country with all the layers of legal systems, some in direct contradiction (I live in Texas where it's illegal to own more than a certain number of vibrators--six, I think!).

Another thing that scares me: in warriors' excuse for a mind, homosexuality=pedophilian. I wonder if they'll start going after people based on interest words for sexuality.

[ithiliana.livejournal.com]

Do you remember "nipplegate"--troll is banned for an icon showing nipple (Bea Arthur manip), trolls around and reports nursing mother icons, journals are suspended/deleted/etc., and a whole lot of debate over obscene vs. whatever is thrown out?

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

NO!! I don't remember this! Oh, the absurdity. *puts face in hands*

[abbylee]

It should be pointed out that (as far as this uninformed mind remembers) those journals were temporarily suspended until they chose a different default icon. LiveJournal has different rules for the default userpic than they do for the rest of your userpics, and one of them was that no nipples were allowed.

Their lawyers (oh, those lawyers!) told them that it didn't matter the *context* of the nipples being shown, so if you could see a nipple *and* it was a default icon then it didn't matter if it was a picture of a nursing mother, of a topless woman, or of someone engaged in a sexual activity. They were asked to choose a different userpic.

If journals were permanently banned, from what I recall, it was most likely because they were protesting by refusing to change their userpic.

To me (again, uninformed) this is very much the same thing. Note that LiveJournal is not suspending journals for using words like incest in places where it can be put into context. They are suspending journals for using words like incest in places like their interests, where it can be used to search and connect with other users with the same interest. I disagree with it, but I can also see where the logic comes from, and why they're worried.

You might find this post interesting:
http://wistfuljane.livejournal.com/162806.html

It breaks things down in a very similar way to how I see it. It's just a bad situation all around.

[ithiliana.livejournal.com]

Very very similard, though the users were allowed to remove their default icons (you could show nipples in non-default icons). However, some did not: yonmei was on my flist and refused to cave.

Some coverage in Making Light here: http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/007600.html

Race became a part of it too and weight because of the issue of what could be seen when baby was nursing: i.e women with larger breasts/aureolae or darker skin might show more than slim fair-skinned women.

[rossywar.livejournal.com]

I don't think "slash" is one of the the "at risk" interests. So far as I understand, it is just any kind of interest related to child porn, incest and paedophilia that is being targeted. Obviously, paedophilia is illegal and homosexuality isn't, so I think "slash" is safe.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Yes, this corroborates some of the more reasoned posts (others are getting annoyed and out of hand -- things tend to do that online...). Homosexuality is, of course, illegal in some parts of the United States. Not to mention the world. I have no idea how the global web relates to specific federal and national laws.