EFF "Legal Cases - US v. Thomases - Amateur Action (AABBS), Memphis" Archive

Files in this Archive

aabbs_decision.article

Brief article on the verdict in the AABBS case.

aabbs_case.docs

Documents regarding Robert and Carleen Thomas, residents of California, who were charged with distributing obscenity in Tennessee when Memphis law enforcement downloaded sexually explicit material from the Calif. BBS to Tenn. computers.

eff_aa_041995_amicus.brief

Amicus Brief of Thomases v. United States (the Thomases appeal of the original US v. Thomas & Thomas case)

effector.newsbyte

Article regarding the Thomas case where two sysops were arrested under Tennessee obscenity standards when pornographic pictures were downloaded from their BBS in California.

obscen_virtcom_stds_godwin.article

"VIRTUAL COMMUNITY STANDARDS: BBS Obscenity Case Raises New Legal Issues", an article by Mike Godwin describing the relationship between the laws of various states regarding pornography and the internet, focusing in particular on the AABBS case. This 1994 article appeared in the _San_Fransico_Examiner_.

us_v_thomas_appeal.decision

(Unfavorable) decision in the US v. Thomas appeal. The appeals court ruled against the AABBS sysops on all counts, citing a presumed ability of the Thomases to figure out which jurisdictions are more conservative than their own, and deny access to users from those jurisdictions. It is clear that the judges do not know enough about the nature of computer networking (not to mention presume almost psychic predictive power on the part of the accused to decide which jurisdictions are litigiously conservative.)

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Directory of information containing the virtual Amicus Brief written by the EFF with regards to the Thomas case, and other outdated material preserved for historical interest. (The virtual draft brief became a real brief when the appeal was filed in 1995.)

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