Obscenity is the new trend

In the course of the last few decades, the Internet has revolutionized almost every aspect of… In the course of the last few decades, the Internet has revolutionized almost every aspect of society, from the way we shop, to entertainment, to banking, to national defense. Now, with Google’s help, the idea of free speech might be rethought as well.

In a recent obscenity case in a Florida court, the defense plans to admit evidence from Google Trends, which tracks popular search terms across its servers. According to the defense, the prevalence of the search term “orgy” over terms like “watermelon” and “apple pie” indicates that the community has accepted orgies into the social norm, and therefore the sale of videos featuring these sex acts shouldn’t be considered obscene.

While it’s hard to deny the facts behind the defense’s case – terms like “orgy” and “boobs” are far more common than more mundane search values – it’s not clear that the interpretation is accurate. Without debating whether orgies should be considered obscene, it’s apparent that the issue at the heart of this debate is whether or not the Internet can be seen as a reliable proxy for society at large.

Unfortunately, this isn’t quite as straightforward as it might seem. While the Internet is certainly a huge aspect of society in the modern world, people don’t behave the same in the physical world as they do when surfing the Web.

The main issue here seems to be anonymity – the fact that one’s identity cannot be easily determined online, and therefore people are freer to indulge in activities online than they are in real life. Because of this, something that people might see as obscene if they ran into it on the street, such as an orgy, could be considered commonplace on the Internet.

Because of this discrepancy, people have different expectations for what happens on the street than what might happen on the Internet, despite the fact that both are technically “public.” Even though the Internet is public by definition, people experience it almost entirely in the privacy of their homes.

In this way, what someone looks at online is comparable to whether he smokes cigarettes or drink in his home. Some people may not like it, but it’s not illegal if done in privacy assuming the person consuming the content, either liquor or porn, is consenting and of age.

Because people could easily have the same conception about what they look at on the Internet, it’s not right to stack Google search terms for what people would look up in the privacy of their homes against the “contemporary community standards” that define obscenity.

For example, people probably wouldn’t search for “orgy” on Google if they were sitting in Starbucks or in the library. The expectation of privacy distinctly alters people’s behavior in a way that makes it impossible to gauge public community standards against online activity.

In other words, Google Trends might tell us what people are searching for online, but it doesn’t tell us what they would be okay with encountering it in the outside world. The Internet, while able to indicate what the public may like or is interested in, cannot rightfully be used as a reliable standard for what society as a whole would find to be an acceptable norm.