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\title{Amateur Action BBS and Community Standards}
\author{Greg Hudson}
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\maketitle

In 1973, the Supreme Court set three criteria for defining obscienity,
including the criterion that community standards must determing that
the material arouses immoral lust.  In the summer of 1994, the
operators of the California-based Amateur Action BBS were prosecuted
in Memphis, Tennessee for transmitting allegedly obscene images to a
user in Memphis (as well as mailing a pornographic videotape by Fedex,
and receiving a child pornography video, although the last charge was
dismissed).  The jury was instructed to apply the community standards
of Memphis, Tennessee to the case.  According to Mike Fischer, there
is a statute (or principal of case law?) stating that in commercial
transactions between communities, the community standards of both
communities must be obeyed.

The case is currently under appeal; the EFF has filed an Amicus brief
on the basis that the interpretation of the ``community standards''
criterion used in the Amateur Action case restricts most or all
commercial electronic communications to the community standards of
Memphis, Tennessee.  The ACLU has also filed an Amicus brief with
similar allegations about the interpretation of ``community
standards'', and also making the argument that the law has been
misapplied because electronic downloading does not fall under
``transport.''

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