Using Google to determine community standards for obscenity

NYT: A Florida defense attorney plans to use Google to demonstrate that “community standards”  include what the neighbors are surfing — orgies as well as recipes, dildoes as well as car prices. The attorney plans to suggest that what his client is providing is no worse than what his community is searching for.

Editorial: This approach is not that much different from a law review article from some years back that suggested that the best way to determine the community standard of the Internet for purposes of obscenity prosecutions was to, well, survey it. Focus the survey on a particular area rather than the Internet as a whole, and there’s the Florida attorney’s approach. The law review author wrote, “Survey data may well be the best way to assess community standards, since a jury, absent such data, will likely apply a standard based on the particular beliefs of those twelve individuals.” See Rebecca Dawn Kaplan, “Cybersmut: Regulating Obscenity on the Internet,” 9 Stan. L. & Pol’y Rev. 189 (1998).

2,676 plaintiffs — out of millions who bought Grand Theft Auto

NYT: Rockstar Games has reached a settlement in a class-action suit against their 2004 game “Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas.” A class-action suit could entice only 2,676 plaintiffs from the millions who bought the game. Lawyers’ fees will dwarf the settlement reached with Rockstar Games and its parent company, Take-Two Interactive.

The “Hot Coffee” minigame lets the main character improve a relationship with any of his girlfriends through their offers for him to come to their places for “coffee.” The Entertainment Software Rating Board, in charge of assigning ratings to video games, reclassified GTA: SA in 2005 with an “adults only” rating.

Editorial: Shouldn’t parents who buy their kids games rated “adults only” expect more than mere stomping of pedestrians and fragging of prostitutes and cops?