The issue of Internet filtering in school and public libraries has been getting a lot of attention lately, as we mark ten years since the Children’s Internet Protection Act was instituted. Unfortunately, the news is not good: Filtering software remains…
Category: Legal
Obscenity Case Files: Stanley v. Georgia
In previous editions of Obscenity Case Files we looked at cases involving mailing obscene circulars and stores selling obscene books, but we have yet to explore the private possession of obscene materials in one’s own home. In Stanley v. Georgia…
Alabama Lawmaker, Board of Ed Members Call for Ban on Bluest Eye
Only a few months after Toni Morrison’s novel The Bluest Eye was challenged in an Adams County, Colorado, school district, an Alabama state senator is calling the book “just completely objectionable” and says that it should be removed from classrooms…
Finland Censors Anti-Censorship Site
On August 28, the Supreme Administrative Court in Finland ruled that Finnish police adding a prominent anti-censorship website to its blacklist was a perfectly reasonable, not in any way illegal thing to do. Except was it? The site in question,…
Russian Artist Seeks Asylum After Authorities Shut Down His Exhibition
Russian authorities confiscated politically-charged paintings on Monday from a newly opened art gallery in St. Petersburg. As a result of the seizure, the artist fled the country and the exhibit was shut down. The paintings — one of which depicts…
South Korean Child Pornography Law Targets Drawings, Animation
In 2011, the National Assembly of South Korea revised laws surrounding child pornography to cover materials featuring “creations of persons who can be perceived as minors” in sexual situations, expanding the definition of illegal practices to include the perceptions of…
Violent Content Research Act Raises Free Speech Concerns
Video games, the latest scapegoat in the war against gun violence, are being faced with yet another attempt to stifle their First Amendment rights. As a result of the Sandy Hook massacre and other recent tragedies, a new act is…
The Inconvenience of Barefoot Gen
Translator and manga industry expert Dan Kanemitsu submitted the following opinion piece on the recent ban of Barefoot Gen from the perspective of being close to the ground in recent battles involving manga regulation in Japan. In December of 2010,…
Obscenity Case Files: Smith v. California
It was established in Roth v. United States that the freedom of speech would not extend to materials that were considered obscene. But what happens to a book store that unknowingly carries books that contain obscene material? Is a book…
Supreme Court Justices Played Video Games During Brown v. EMA
At 53, Elena Kagan is the youngest member of the U.S. Supreme Court. Kagan recently spoke in Providence, Rhode Island, and Michelle R. Smith with Talking Points Memo wrote about Kagan’s comments on how the Court uses technology. Kagan admitted…