Via MotherJones: Pensacola residents Clinton Raymond McCowen and Kevin Patrick Stevens, producers of a very NSFW website last week faced a judge in an obscenity and racketeering trial for their work. The interesting thing? The defense planned to use Google search trends to demonstrate community standards.
“Time and time again you’ll have jurors sitting on a jury panel who will condemn material that they routinely consume in private,” said the defense. Using the Internet data, “we can show how people really think and feel and act in their own homes, which, parenthetically, is where this material was intended to be viewed.”
My own Google Ttrends search shows three Florida cities in the top ten nationwide for searches for “sex,” and Pensacola ranks sixth in the state. Even the website’s narrow niche terms (facials, orgies, and gangbanging) rank highly compared to the Florida community favorite NASCAR. I’ll be interested in learning the jurors’ reactions to this.