Is Google Changing Community Standards For Obscenity?

Posted by Eriq Gardner

The Los Angeles federal case against adult filmmaker Ira Isaacs has received all the attention as the season's must-see obscenity trial, but a Florida case is quickly rising as a hot ticket.

According to the NNY Times, the defense team in the case is planning to use publicly accessible Google search data to try to persuade jurors that the community standards yardstick needs to be re-examined. After all, how can a pornographer be held to a high moral standard if the jurors' neighbors are searching online for smut?

Not a bad point. Gawker has a bit of graphic fun with this idea, using Google Trends to track the popularity of the terms, "apple pie," “surfing," and "orgy."