#373: Porn and the First Amendment

Tech Policy Podcast

TechFreedom

Technology

4.8 • 45 Ratings

🗓️ 25 April 2024

⏱️ 54 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

It’s the episode you’ve been waiting for: TechFreedom’s Corbin Barthold and Ari Cohn talk about pornography and free expression. Topics include: - The Founding Fathers: epic porn fiends (j/k) - Obscenity law, a brief history - Do conservatives still want to ban James Joyce? - “I know it when I see it”—Worst. Legal standard. Ever. - Is there a moral case against porn? (Spoiler alert: No) - The Fifth Circuit botches internet speech law Links: Tech Policy Podcast #360: Red States vs. Every SCOTUS Internet Precedent (https://tinyurl.com/4y4fwb9j) A Reagan Judge, The First Amendment, And The Eternal War Against Pornography (https://tinyurl.com/2ba82bbe) Texas Legislature Convinced First Amendment Simply Does Not Exist (https://tinyurl.com/4x8vyjkh) Is Porn Harmful? The Evidence, the Myths and the Unknowns (https://tinyurl.com/59fzrxvd)

Transcript

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0:00.0	In 1921. In 1989, the journalist Nat Hentoff wrote a column about the eternal war against pornography.
0:34.2	He observed that every so often, a new drive to curtail erotic material emerges like
0:41.3	Excalibur rising from the lake.
0:45.1	Usually, it's a push by conservative Christians.
0:48.8	Sometimes it's a push by liberal feminists.
0:52.5	Sometimes it's both at once. It's a seasonal thing, driven by these
0:57.9	strange bedfellows, so to speak, that is bound to pop up periodically into the indefinite future.
1:07.0	We've been here before. We're here now. We'll be here again.
1:13.4	There are some lessons we can glean from the past. Here are two. First, opposition to pornography is protein.
1:23.6	Opponents are always thinking up new excuses for regulation.
1:28.8	Second, no one has a clear idea of quite what they want to regulate.
1:35.0	The history of obscenity law is, among other things, a history of the struggle to define what obscenity even is.
1:43.7	This is the tech policy podcast.
1:47.4	I'm Corbyn Barthold.
1:49.5	I'm pleased to kick off this long promised episode on porn and the First Amendment with
1:55.1	my pal Ari Cohn, free speech counsel at Tech Freedom.
2:00.2	The spur for this episode is a ridiculous ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth
2:05.5	Circuit upholding HB.1181, a Texas anti-porn law.
2:12.0	We will get to that.
2:14.2	But before we do, Ari and I have some bigger questions to ponder.
2:19.1	What is pornography?
2:21.4	How has the law governing it evolve?
	...

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