Defining "community standards" in a digital world
June 24, 2008 at 1:34 PM
An interesting obscenity case is developing in Pensacola, Florida regarding a website operator who was hosting pornographic materials. The company's defense counsel is using a novel method to determine "community standards" with Google Trends. Google Trends is a product, created by Google, that tracks search queries based on locale and other criteria. The defense counsel is arguing that community obscenity standards can be determined by this data.
What's Obscene? Google could have an answer -- NY Times
Can Google Trends help define community obscenity standards? -- Law Librarian Blog


