Before I enrolled in this course, I had no idea what I was getting into.  I never dreamed that we would cover some of the topics that we did in this course.  I also never could have guessed the material we would be shown in efforts to expand our awareness of the relationship between cyberporn and society. 

Some of the major themes discussed throughout the semester revolved around obscenity and what is defined as obscene in addition to restricted what is considered to be obscene.  This topic often got my blood boiling and was the topic of many of my blogs.  I still stand by my original theory that we must first more clearly define what a community is before we can define what the "community" defines as obscene.  One of the biggest ideas surrounding this issue is that what maybe be considered obscene to people who live in Olean, may not be considered obscene in NYC.  Therefore, it is important that if we are going to go by community standards we must first define communities clearly. 

Another major theme of this course had to do with child protection laws.  I thought this was an important issue to talk about with regards to cyber porn and the internet.  with the frequency of child predators taking advantage of young children over the internet, I thought it was important to become more well versed on this issue.  Taking advantage of children over the internet has become a major issue recently, it is important to shed light on this so that parents can becomes more educated on how to protect their children.

One of the most important things that I will take away from this course is the knowledge and ability to think critically about freedom of speech.  A lot of what we dicussed during this course caused me to evaluate the first amendment as how it relates to me.  I think it is important with the advancement of technology that we pay close attention to what the governement is looking to "protect" us against and as a result what rights are being infringed upon. 

Last but not least, one of the most important skills I will take away from this course is the invaluable knowledge of knowing how to blog! It is through the use of blogging that I was able to share my thoughts and ideas with the class and I will continue to do so with the rest of the world!

People.com which is a web site i frequently visit to catch up on my celebrity gossip, sometimes has explicit pictures of stars kissing or even cover shots of stars from explicit covers from magazines such as ELLE, Rolling Stone, and VOUGE.  Stars are sometimes depicted half naked on these covers, which are displayed on magazine stands nationwide.  If these new laws are implemented, material that is safe to put on magazine stands will be condemned on the internet.  

While I do tend to agree with the idea that parental controls are needed so that children are not taken advantage of via the internet, I think until we more clearly define what constitutes as sexually explicit, a lot of web sites are going to be blocked and rated as r or even XXX.

The new proposed legislation also discusses the possibility of internet services keeping better record of customer's activity to help aide in in future prosecutions.  I think this is a complete breach of the right to privacy.  Should this law come to pass I think there would be a lot of controversey surrounding it.  The very thought of the government having this type of access to our private lives cannot and should not go on. 

In this blog the author discusses how an owner of a bookstore was sentences to 13 months in prison for selling "obscene" material in his book store.  The clincher is that he was arrested in Texas.  As aforementioned in this blog, had this poor man owned a book store in Manhatten you probably couldn't walk ten steps away from his book store with out finding the same exact material that he was selling in his store.  Instead, becuase of "community standards," this man is forced to rot away in jail for selling what probably wouldn't be considered obscene and offensive in New York City.  Talk about being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

The author of this blog takes a stab at defininig pornography and obscenity and comes up with the same mundane definition as everyone else except that its missing "community standards."  Sugar speaks of obscenity as a math equation.  Porn minus porn/sex=Obscene?  The truth of the matter is unless we decide to do away with community standards, or as i've mentioned countless times in previous blogs, unless we do something to define these communities, innocent people will end up being prosecuted.  No one really can ever define obscenity.  It's a matter of age/tase/race/sex/religion, otherwise known as individual values.  This is the land of the free except when it comes to freedom of expression.  The lines are blurred and that's why its easy to prosecute.  Laws are considered moral codes for which we conduct ourselves under, but how can anyone know what is obscene or not if they cannot understand the laws themselves or they don't agree with their neighbor on what should be considered obscene. 

Also, with regards to condom usage in the films.  In the article it was mentioned that these films are supposed to depict how a gay couple can have fun while having safe sex, but do you think it takes away from part of the fantasy? Is the condom usage in the film openly talked about or depicted?

What is considered indecent is up to the community, but at some point we have to ask ourselves how far does a community stretch?  This became an important topic when trying to define obscenity, but the truth of the matter is when speaking of legislation this question will always be important.

As previously mentioned, a community can stretch across a whole state, but it is important to recognize that a community that stretches across a whole state is not always going to share values, or maybe it just means that the majority rules.

After learning about the CDC law, it was extremely disheartening to learn that even though less than 1% of the traffic on the internet is porn related, the CDC was still passed just because people were scared.  Voices of communities were synchronized just because a bunch of outspoken, ill educated people wanted to put a blanket over the internet to "protect the children," while infringing upon 1st amendment rights.

It is refreshing to hear about "adverse secondaty effects," when it comes to zoning.  The need for clear evident for such effects are extremely important for the sake of protecting our rights.  With out this "burdon of proof," laws would be passed just because the community was scared, and who knows how far the community would extend?  Perhaps across the nation.

Although we are taking a step in the right direction as far as adverse effects go, I think it is important that while we are defining zones, we define communities as well.

This amendment, while it has good intentions was clearly not thought through.  If we want to make out cyber streets safer for the children, then we need to put safety locks on what the children are exposed to.  The Communications Decency Act is a breech of privacy in that it condemns any and all foul language and or exchanging of materials between any two people, even if they are consenting adults.  The article discusses the provisions of the amendment.  One of the senators brings up a string of well thought out positions that i agree with.  It is not fair to make using a "four letter word," grounds for being thrown in jail and slapped with $100,000 fines.  He justifies this argument by saying that if someone received an obscene call and responded to it with a four letter word and hanging up, they would receive no penalty.  Isn't the telephone a means of communication? Can't a child just as easily pick up the phone as he can sit in front of a computer?

He also brings up the point that if a person happened to be browsing through their email and happened to come across these "dirty words," they too could be penalized for something they never even intended to do.  While the Communications Decency Act has good intentions, it is not addressing the matters it seeks to address.  As mentioned in the article, people would find it offensive if obscene photos were posted on lamp posts in neighborhoods and children were allowed to visit XXX video stores, the same goes for the internet, but by implementing this act, we are infringing upon freedom of speech while claiming that we're just trying to protect the children.  Perhaps it goes back to everyone's personal definition of obscenity, but this act clearly has many flaws in it.  We need to put child restrictions on computers.  If we have codes and passwords to get onto computers in the first place, why couldn't we have that for access to the internet?  While it is the duty of the law to provide restrictions and regulations on evil predators who seek to harm children, it is the parents duty to monitor what their child is veiwing on the internet.

Although most of what we are going over this week has to do with the legalities of determining what should be considered obscene or not, I thought it is important to look at the issue of children and obscenity.  If children are veiwed as not having any first amendment rights-freedom of speech, then when exactly are they in a position at which they can obtain those rights? If we were to actually live by this rule, then it would be hypocritical to decide what is too obscene for children to veiw when they dont have the right  to express themselves in the first place. 

To say that children are too young to express themselves is to assume that before the age of 18 they will never be exposed to new values and ideas through out the course of growing up.  Although we are looking at it purely from a legal stand point, i feel that it is completely absurd to perpetuate the idea that children should have no freedom of expression.  There comes a time in early childhood when a child may learn about the parts of their body and perhaps one day they express that knowledge through a drawing in school.  If it assume that children have no first amendment rights then what do we do, expell that child for their expression of the knowledge they just accumulated?

If children are too young to express themselves, then it is safe to assume that they don't know what is deemed appropriate or inappropriate by society.  This is clearly not the case.  Children are a product of their enviorment.  Their ideas and values reflect the ideas and values of those around them, which means the adults around them.  If adults have the freedom to express those ideas and impart knowledge upon these children then they in turn have the right to express their feelings about their values and ideas as well. 

This is not to say that there are no concrete definitions. As aforementioned on our class aggregator, laws of determination such as the Miller test have been put forth in order to determine what a community considers obscene. One of the major problems that I see with this is that an entire state can encompass a “community.” According to Webster’s dictionary, a community is considered to be a body of people with common interests living in the same area. If we were to go by this definition, the operative phrase that we would have to look at is “common interests.” If a community has common interests then how could there could be a dispute over what is obscene. Furthermore, although counties and towns may share the same state, such as the case with New York, they most certainly do not share the same ideas and values, therefore making it impossible to consider them a community.

There is a huge difference between what is considered obscene in Manhattan, as opposed to what is considered obscene in Albany or Rochester. The culture is different and as a result so are the values. Therefore a law such as the Miller test should not be considered substantial. The idea of community is one in which people share the same ideas and values, putting all the counties, cities, and towns, that comprise a state together and calling it a community is not a democratic way of looking at things.