Republican Senator Pushes Law to Effectively Outlaw Online Porn Nationwide
On Wednesday, Republican Senator Mike Lee (Utah) introduced the Interstate Obscenity Act to the Senate. The bill would “establish a national definition of obscenity that would apply to obscene content transmitted through interstate or foreign communications.” This would effectively strengthen federal laws against obscene material, and in the process would cause significant harm to sex workers and NSFW artists.
According to The First Amendment Encyclopedia, the bill eliminates the Miller Test’s guidelines for “modern adult community standards,” a controversial point in obscenity cases, as legal experts have argued that community standards should be seen as highly diverse and local phenomena.
Under the new definition provided in the current IODA text, obscenity and obscene material will apply to various forms of media that:
– taken as a whole, causes a lascivious interest in nudity, sex or excrement;
– depicts, describes or represents real or simulated sexual intercourse or sexual contact, actual or simulated normal or perverted sexual intercourse or obscene display of the genitals with the objective intent to arouse, arouse or satisfy a person’s sexual desires;
– and generally has no serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value.
IODA will deal a major blow to sex workers who create sexually explicit material such as photos, videos and even sexts. It will also hurt adult artists trying to make ends meet by distributing and selling pictorial content of a sexual nature. The vague and vague nature of the bill’s wording creates potential legal risks for advertising sexual services and even for discussing sexual content online.
IODA will also create and distribute adult content that is privately shared online, such as explicit images shared via instant messaging by loved ones, observers warn.
