When Can Fictional Stories be Prosecuted as Obscenity

My question involves civil rights in the State of: New Mexico

I have an adult social website, is it accessed by members only and the age limit is 18. Part of the features we offer are fictional stories contributed by members and they range in severity from very light sexual content to very intense and specific.

I have been doing some reading and in my research i ran across the case of Karen Fletcher, if you are not familar with it. Here is a link of the news release.

http://abcnews.go.com/TheLaw/story?id=4222798&page=1


For legal reference

Here is a good link which on the bottom includes court documents including her plea agreement.

http://www.citmedialaw.org/threats/u...tes-v-fletcher


I personally dont agree with her content but i agree she had the right to do so and i think she should have stood her ground for us all, because next IMO they will be deciding what we can and cant think. I think she was railroaded from the beginning for some political agenda and why their attorney did not press for a trial by camera under special circumstances for her i dont know. When you go to court now days you dont stand in front of a judge that i am aware of. You are on camera so why could they not do that with her. She would have won her case but they wanted a legal standing fast IMO and pushed her through the system. In her plea agreement she gave them whatever they wanted, i could not believe she just laid down like that.

I am not a legal guru i am a site owner and i do my best to understand all of this.

What i have done is i have edited all of the stories of the site to remove even the smallest suggestion that anyone in the story is of any age under 18. I dont want anyone to misinterpret the stories. I have also added this statement under each story.

Quote:

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Regarding Title 18 united states code section 1462 (18 USC § 1462) and Under the Supreme Court's 1973 decision in Miller v. California. We (site management) hereby validate the above fictional text story as being legal and within the guidelines established. The story meets the requirement depicting artistic, literary or scientific merit, and falls under the protection of the 1st Amendment. It is here by perfectly legal to post.

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I dont know if that statement legally holds water and or if it should be reworded to be more effective. Or even to cite another section. I wanted a general statement to cover us in the event that someone should be concerned about the stories legality. Any suggestions would be helpful thanks.

Her stories involved what was, essentially, child pornography.

That's Karen's issue. Not pornography in general.

Agreed and thanks, yes its her issue and as i said i dont agree with her content. But word text cannot possibly be even in the same ballpark as CP. They are two dif beasts entirely. One has victims one does not. One is non fiction and one is fiction. On the same note one is actual fact and one is someones interpretation and artistic description of any said event that never happened.

My whole point here is that if they can say the written word can be considered Obcenity then where does it end? All they have to do is change the meaning of obcenity to mean walking down the street in shorts, or being barefoot someplace or some other silly thing and guess what the sillyness just gets sillier.

They did not charge her the CP because it was not, they charged her with Obscenity. So what about southpark and novels which speak of same such obcenity. Southpark is on national tv with many of the same topical themes. Maybe not as graphic but not far off either. And they have never been charged.


My whole question here is i want to address this: If you look at 18 USC § 1462 and 2 which is what she was charged with, then most adult websites on the internet today fall prey to that, even many not adult websites are in violation if they decide to split hairs and play word games. Any one with an agenda could use that to just about mean anything because its all based on what society considered obcene at the time in most cases.


Basically i wanted to work with this statement below and come up with something general i could post on my stories to be able to help fend off the over reactors and what i call the moral extremists. And i want to try to protect my rights. Can anyone tell me if the statement holds any water at all and if it could be used as a general footer to the stories page. I dont know real legal terms so i could be making it worse by posting it.

Regarding Title 18 united states code section 1462 (18 USC § 1462) and Under the Supreme Court's 1973 decision in Miller v. California. We (site management) hereby validate the above fictional text story as being legal and within the guidelines established. The story meets the requirement depicting artistic, literary or scientific merit, and falls under the protection of the 1st Amendment. It is here by perfectly legal to post.

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I cannot find anything that says that Erotica Fictional Stories are Illegal in the USA or in my state. I guess this upsets me so because people seem to post all the gore they want on the web of people getting killed but yet i cant post Fictional Adult Erotica which has no victims without the possiblity of being harrased by the obscenity law. Im looking for more clarification here. I thought that Erotica was a legal form of literature as it is classified currently.

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Spend yesterday reading and reading and to be honest, im almost more confused than i was when i started. I dont think even they (feds) know what the real deal is anymore lol. From what i gathered there is a main guidline but that changes depending on the obscenity or acceptance of the topic in the state, then in the county, then in the city and right down to the very district. So for example what may NOT be acceptable in southern las vegas, may be fully acceptable in vegas city limits.

I am doing my best to comply and do this legally.

So here is all i could come up with in addition to the statment above regarding title 18.

This is my footer.

Quote:

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Adendum - story is of legal nature as it does not include detailed specific references to minor children and is a writers artistic fictional depiction of adult amature erotica which is a legal and accepted form of literature.

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