Judges and jurors who must decide whether sexually explicit materialis obscene are asked to use a local yardstick: does the materialviolate community standards?
That is often a tricky question because there is no simple, concrete way to gauge a community’s tastes and values.
TheInternet may be changing that. In a novel approach, the defense in anobscenity trial in Florida plans to use publicly accessible Google search data to try to persuade jurors that their neighbors have broader interests than they might have thought.