The dominant theme of any Web site, whether an Official or Unofficial Web Site, must not appeal to prurient interest to the average person applying contemporary community standards.
The first thing I had to do was look up a definition for prurient. According to dictionary.com it means:
- having, inclined to have, or characterized by lascivious or lustful thoughts, desires, etc.
- causing lasciviousness or lust.
- having a restless desire or longing.
Alternatively it would appear that we could have some really prurient content on the site as long as it wouldn’t appeal to the average person. So what, like as long as it only appeals to really deviant individuals, its ok? That’s a pretty frightening policy too.
1 comment:
That phrasing sounded familiar, and I was even going to say that it was probably based on the Supreme Court's three-prong test for obscenity (aka the Miller Test).
Sure enough, it's pulled verbatim from that:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miller_test
What they're saying is that obscenity is based on the average person's view through the perspective of modern life. (That was the Supreme Court wisely allowing culture to evolve with the times.)
This means that it takes more than a few fringe wackos to deem something obscene.
I had to study this quite a bit in Communications Law, and although I have issues with the byzantine phrasing, I think the Miller test is actually a pretty cool example of a legal standard that isn't locked into one era.
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