Obscenity Vs Pornography

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This is indeed a touchy subject. This particular court case is one that has sparked a great deal of debate and one that requires some understanding of Miller v. California and New York v. Farber. Two semesters ago, my Media Law class spent a little time reviewing each of these cases plus the one we are discussing and even after doing so, I still find this ruling a bit disturbing. Maybe a good place to start with this question is to define the terms “pornography” and “obscenity”. According to the text Communications Law: Liberties, Restraints, and the Modern Media, “pornography is a broad term used to describe all material that is sexually explicit and intended for the purpose of sexual arousal”. (Zelezny, p. 448). The term “obscenity”, according to the same text, “has taken on a narrower legal meaning, indicating a class of sexual material so offensive that it is deemed by the Supreme Court to have virtually no First Amendment protection” (Zelezny, p. 448). On to the question at hand, the Child Pornography Act (CPPA) of 1996 was written to protect children from sexual exploitatio...

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