Pornography, Obscenity, and the Limits of Regulation

Every argument about internet regulation eventually turns into an argument about free speech and pornography. Unsurprisingly, the topic isn’t frequently discussed in undergraduate computer science classes or books on software engineering; I don’t have anything new to add, but here are a few things I’ve learned over the years. Every new form of media has gone through the same regulatory cycle with respect to pornography: initial criminalization, selective and often corrupt enforcement, and eventual legal accommodation. Photography, cinema, videotape, and the internet all followed this pattern without resolving the underlying questions: who is harmed by the production of pornography, who by its consumption, and whether law can address either kind of harm. Obscenity law has a long history, but what counts as obscene has never been stable. The Hicklin test adopted in British courts in 1868 defined obscenity as “material tending to deprave and corrupt susceptible minds”, which was broad…