A federal court case in Pennsylvania will determine whether a California company violated obscenity laws when it distributed pornography in the Keystone State.
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported Sunday that in the case of United States vs. Extreme Associates begins March 16.
The owners of Extreme Associates, which makes pornography featuring scenes of rape, torture, murder and defecation, are accused of sending their products to Pennsylvania, violating local standards of decency.
The newspaper reported that jurors in the case will have to decide whether the materials are patently offensive and whether the materials they have any serious artistic, literary, social or political value.
The questions have to be viewed through the lens of "contemporary community standards," the newspaper said, noting that when the U.S. Supreme Court established current obscenity law in its 1973 decision in Miller vs. California, it did not go about defining those standards.
H. Louis Sirkin, an obscenity lawyer who represents the defendants, says the standards of cyberspace rather than community standards of western Pennsylvania should be used to gauge his clients' conduct.
"We just think it's an outdated concept with the Internet," Sirkin said. "In 1973, there was a difference between New York and Jackson, Miss.