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Miller test
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==History and details== The ''Miller'' test was developed in the 1973 case ''[[Miller v. California]]''.<ref>[http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/printer_friendly.pl?page=us/413/15.html Text of the decision and dissents], from findlaw.com</ref> It has three parts: *Whether "the average person, applying contemporary [[community standards]]", would find that the [[Work of art|work]], taken as a whole, appeals to the [[wiktionary:prurient|prurient]] interest, *Whether the work depicts or describes, in a [[patently offensive]] way, sexual conduct or excretory functions<ref>The syllabus of the case mentions only sexual conduct, but excretory functions are explicitly mentioned on page 25 of the majority opinion.</ref> specifically defined by applicable state law, *Whether the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious [[Literature|literary]], [[art]]istic, [[Politics|political]], or [[Science|scientific]] value.<ref group=note>This is also known as the ''(S)LAPS test''- [Serious] Literary, Artistic, Political, Scientific.</ref> The work is considered obscene only if ''all three'' conditions are satisfied.{{cn|date=June 2021}} The first two prongs of the ''Miller'' test are held to the standards of the community, and the third prong is based on "whether a reasonable person would find such value in the material, taken as a whole".<ref>''Pope v. Illinois'', 481 U.S. 497, 500-501 (1987).</ref> For legal scholars, several issues are important. One is that the test allows for community standards rather than a national standard. What offends the average person in one community may differ from what offends the average person in another community.<ref name=GodwinReason/> Another important issue is that the ''Miller'' test asks for an interpretation of what the "average" person finds offensive, rather than what the more sensitive persons in the community are offended by, as obscenity was defined by the previous test, the [[Hicklin test]], stemming from the English precedent.<ref>United States Department of Justice. (2021, November 9). Citizen's Guide to U.S. federal law on obscenity. Citizen's Guide to U.S. Federal Law on Obscenity, at Par. 1. Retrieved February 13, 2022, from https://www.justice.gov/criminal-ceos/citizens-guide-us-federal-law-obscenity Archived:https://web.archive.org/web/20220213222619/https://www.justice.gov/criminal-ceos/citizens-guide-us-federal-law-obscenity</ref> In practice, pornography showing [[genitalia]] and sexual acts is not ''[[ipso facto]]'' obscene according to the ''Miller'' test. {{why?|date=February 2022}} For instance, in 2000, a jury in [[Provo, Utah]], took only a few minutes to clear Larry Peterman, owner of a Movie Buffs video store, in [[Utah County, Utah]]. He had been charged with distributing obscene material for renting pornographic videos that were displayed in a screened-off area of the store clearly marked as adults-only. The Utah County region had often boasted of being one of the most socially conservative areas in the United States. However, researchers had shown that guests at the local [[Marriott Hotel]] were disproportionately large consumers of [[pay-per-view]] [[pornographic]] material, accessing far more material than the store was distributing.<ref name=wallstreet>{{cite news|last=Egan |first=Timothy |author2=Gary Ruskin | date=24 October 2000|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2000/10/23/technology/23PORN.html |title=Wall Street Meets Pornography |newspaper=The New York Times }}</ref>
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