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16. In Mishkin v. New York 383 U.S 502 the Court removed the test of the average person by saying that if the material is designed for a deviant sexual group, the material can be censored only if it appeals to the prurient interest in sex of the members of that group when taken as a whole.

17. The United States of America has recently enacted a statute regulating obscenity on the internet i.e. Communication Decency Act, 1996 (CDA) which prohibits, knowingly sending or displaying of "patently offensive" material depicting or describing sexual or excretory activities or organs, in any manner that is available to a person under 18 years of age using an "interactive computer service". The constitutionality of this statute came to be challenged before the Supreme Court in the case of Reno v. ACLU 117 S. Ct. 2329 (1997) wherein it was argued that the aim of the Government while enacted the said statute was protecting the children from harmful material. The Supreme Court observed that the words of the statute were vague and uncertain. It further held that the provisions of CDA lacked the precision that the First Amendment requires when a statute regulates the content of speech. The governments' interest in protecting children from exposure to harmful material was held not to justify "an unnecessarily broad suppression of speech addressed to adults". The court observed that the undefined terms "patently offensive" and "indecent" were wide enough to cover large amounts of non-pornographic material with serious educational value. In relation to the internet the "community standards" criterion was held to mean that any communication available to a nation wide audience will be judged by the standards of the community most likely to be offended by the message, though in the case of New York v. Ferber 458 U.S 747 child pornography was recognized as an exception to freedom of speech guaranteed under the American Constitution.

21. Justice Windeyer settled the test for obscenity in Australia in Crowe v. Graham (1968) 121 CLR 375.

Does the publication...transgress the generally accepted bounds of decency?

...where "[c]ontemporary standards are those currently accepted by the Australian community.... And community standards are those which ordinary decent-minded people accept.

22. It is well established that this community standards test will be applied to sexual, violent, criminal and certain religious matters. These are the very concepts often explored in art. The courts while answering the question in particular cases relating to visual art and obscenity as to whether the artwork offends contemporary community standards have taken in consideration the following factors into account: the circumstances of the artwork's publication (including any evidence of its limited circulation); the target group of the publication (including whether the target audience was narrowed physically or by appropriate warning signs about the content of the artwork); and whether or not the artwork has artistic merit (taking into account any expert evidence on this point). There is not, however, any absolute or partial defense of artistic merit.

a. Everyone shall have the right to hold opinions without interference.

b. Everyone shall have the right to freedom of expression; this right shall include freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds regardless of frontiers, either orally, in writing or in print, in form of art, or through any other media of his choice.

46. Nevertheless, there is an inseparable connection between freedom of speech and the stability of the society. This freedom is subject to Sub-clause (2) of Article 19, which allows the State to impose restriction on the exercise of this freedom in the interest of public decency and morality. The relevant portion of the same has been reproduced below:

64. Public decency and morality is outside the purview of the protection of free speech and expression, and thus a balance should be maintained between freedom of speech and expression and public decency and morality but the former must never come in the way of the latter and should not substantially transgress the latter.

Test of ordinary man

65. The test for judging a work should be that of an ordinary man of common sense and prudence and not an "out of the ordinary or hypersensitive man".