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NEWS: Virginia Man Gets 20 Years for Anime Child Porn

The Miller test was developed in the 1973 case Miller v. California. It has three parts:

* Whether the average person, applying contemporary community standards, would find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest,
* Whether the work depicts/describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by applicable state law,
* Whether the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.

The third condition is also known as the SLAPS test. The work is considered obscene only if all three conditions are satisfied.

For legal scholars, several issues are important. One is that the test allows for community standards rather than a national standard. What offends the average person in Tulsa, Oklahoma may differ from what offends the average person in San Francisco. The relevant community, however, is not defined.

Another important issue is that Miller asks for an interpretation of what the "average" person finds offensive, rather than what the more sensitive persons in the community are offended by, as obscenity was defined by the previous test, the Hicklin test, stemming from the English precedent.

Because it allows for community standards and demands "serious" value, some worried that this test would make it easier to suppress speech and expression. They pointed out that it replaced a stricter test asking whether the speech or expression was "utterly without redeeming social value"--a much tougher standard than "serious" value. As used, however, the test generally makes it difficult to outlaw any form of expression. Even pornography, with the exception of child pornography, is argued to have some artistic or literary value.

Some critics of obscenity law argue that the existence of Miller proves that federal obscenity laws are in fact not defined, and thus unenforceable and legally dubious.

If no one were getting hurt, that'd be one thing, but my wife works in Child Protective Services, and trust me, child pornography and pedophilia are NOT victimless crimes whatsoever.

b) REAL child porn addicts like repeat offender Dwight Whorley, who should NOT be a cause celebre for lolicon defenders because lolicon was NOT the primary reason for his conviction, though I must say that possession of lolicon is a damn stupid thing if you're trying to beat a child porn rap!

Again, Virginia is not exactly famed for its progressive legal structure

But one tangential (and possibly exaggerated) reference to "anime" does not a precedent make, and again, if someone into lolicon gets convicted of possession of real child porn, that's just plain indefensible.

Frankly, as much as all of would like to be armchair lawyers, I think i'll leave this one to the real Lawyers/Paralegals/Law Students.

The FBI would never waste resources hunting down lolicons because the conviction rate would be rediculously low. They will however have, unfortunately, no qualms about including it in the legal proceeding to put away more serious offenders.

The Prosecutor will paint the picture that the lolicon fan is a bomb just waiting to go off and the who is going to speak out in the defense of images that depict child abuse?

Had they not had the child porn to back up the 1466A charge, they may not have been able to score a conviction.

Why not? If even one person on the jury is a parent, I can't imagine a verdict of not guilty. So, at worst they get a hung jury and are forced to retry. The Prosecutor will paint the picture that the lolicon fan is a bomb just waiting to go off and the who is going to speak out in the defense of images that depict child abuse?

Will this happen tomorrow? Not likely, but if the percived amount of child molestation occuring continues to climb, it will eventually.

All that aside, I find the argument "Don't worry about that wacky law, no one will ever enforce it" to be mildly unsettling.

I am not saying this is somethign that should be ignored, but merely stating that I personally doubt that we will be seeing such blatant "thought police" cases anytime soon.

Often the best way to get rid of a law is to be convicted of it first.