2005/06/15 Council Agenda Packet

Consultants' Final Report - Page 8 found in Miller v. California 413 U.S. 15 (1973): (a) whether "the average person, applying contemporary community standards' would find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest; (b) whether the work depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by the applicable state law; (c) whether the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value. (24) Despite this standard, the Attorney General's Commission concluded that: [after the Miller decision]... the nature and extent of pornography in the United States has changed dramatically, the materials that are available today are more sexually explicit and portray more violence than those available before 1970. The production:, distribution and sale of pornography has become a large, well -organized and highly profitable industry.' Indeed, there is some empirical evidence to suggest that the number of prosecutions' and appeals' of obscenity convictions have declined nationwide.8 Recently much of the local control of pornography has been of a more indirect nature given the difficulties of direct regulation and legal constraints involving First Amendment rights. One rather unique approach has been the attempt to regulate pomography as a violation of women's civil rights. This use of ' Final Report supra note 4 at 461. 6 The New York Obscenity Project, "An Empirical Inquiry in to the Effects of Miller v. California on the Control of Obscenity", New York University Law Review 52:843 (1977). ' R.E. Riggs, "Miller v. California Revisited: An Empirical Note," Brigham Young Universiry Law Review 2:247 (1981). 8 See generally Downs, supra, note 2 at 20. EVER00348