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The sale and distribution of obscene materials had been prohibited in most American states since the early 19th century, and by federal law since 1873. Adoption of obscenity laws in the United States at the federal level in 1873 was largely due to the efforts of Anthony Comstock, who created and led the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice.
The Miller test, also called the three-prong obscenity test, is the United States Supreme Court's test for determining whether speech or expression can be labeled obscene, in which case it is not protected by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution and can be prohibited.
The Child Protection and Obscenity Enforcement Act of 1988, title VII, subtitle N of the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1988, Pub. L. 100–690, 102 Stat. 4181, enacted November 18, 1988, H.R. 5210, is part of a United States Act of Congress which places record-keeping requirements on the producers of actual, sexually explicit materials.
These common-law ideas of obscenity formed the original basis of obscenity law in other common law countries, such as the United States. The classic definition of criminal obscenity is if it "tends to deprave and corrupt", stated in 1868 by Lord Justice Cockburn, in Regina v. Hicklin, now known as the Hicklin test.
Rabe v. Washington, 405 U.S. 313 (1972), was a decision by the United States Supreme Court involving the application of obscenity laws and criminal procedure to the states. On 29 August 1968, William Rabe, the manager of a drive-in movie theater in Richland, Washington, was arrested on obscenity charges for showing the film Carmen, Baby.
Obscene materials are defined as those that the average person, applying contemporary community standards, find, taken as a whole, appeal to the prurient interest; that depict or describe, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct or excretory functions specifically defined by applicable state law; and that the work, taken as a whole, lacks ...
The First Amendment puts protection for expressive content in terms that are both sweeping and absolute: "Congress shall make no law... abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press" [2] Despite this broad protection, the roots of U.S. attempts to legally suppress obscenity extend back to the English common law offense of obscene libel and censorship of stage plays by the Master of the Revels.
United States. [1] In its 6–3 decision written by William J. Brennan, Jr. , the court held that material being obscene depended upon "whether to the average person, applying contemporary community standards, the dominant theme of the material taken as a whole appeals to prurient interest."