What do censorship mean

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Literally How to use a word that literally drives some pe Please enter your email address: Subscribe. Discuss these censorship definitions with the community: 0 Comments. Notify me of new comments via email.

Cancel Report. Create a new account. Log In. Powered by CITE. Are we missing a good definition for censorship? Don't keep it to yourself Submit Definition. The ASL fingerspelling provided here is most commonly used for proper names of people and places; it is also used in some languages for concepts for which no sign is available at that moment.

There are obviously specific signs for many words available in sign language that are more appropriate for daily usage. Browse Definitions. Get instant definitions for any word that hits you anywhere on the web! Two clicks install ». Quiz Are you a words master? The second principle is that expression may be restricted only if it will clearly cause direct and imminent harm to an important societal interest. The classic example is falsely shouting fire in a crowded theater and causing a stampede.

Even then, the speech may be silenced or punished only if there is no other way to avert the harm. Many examples come to mind. A painting of the classical statue of Venus de Milo was removed from a store because the managers of the shopping mall found its semi-nudity "too shocking. A museum director was charged with a crime for including sexually explicit photographs by Robert Mapplethorpe in an art exhibit. American law is, on the whole, the most speech-protective in the world -- but sexual expression is treated as a second-class citizen.

No causal link between exposure to sexually explicit material and anti-social or violent behavior has ever been scientifically established, in spite of many efforts to do so.

Rather, the Supreme Court has allowed censorship of sexual speech on moral grounds -- a remnant of our nation's Puritan heritage. This does not mean that all sexual expression can be censored, however.

Only a narrow range of "obscene" material can be suppressed; a term like "pornography" has no legal meaning. Nevertheless, even the relatively narrow obscenity exception serves as a vehicle for abuse by government authorities as well as pressure groups who want to impose their personal moral views on other people.

Justice John Marshall Harlan's line, "one man's vulgarity is another's lyric," sums up the impossibility of developing a definition of obscenity that isn't hopelessly vague and subjective. And Justice Potter Stewart's famous assurance, "I know it when I see it," is of small comfort to artists, writers, movie directors and lyricists who must navigate the murky waters of obscenity law trying to figure out what police, prosecutors, judges and juries will think.

The Supreme Court's current definition of constitutionally unprotected Obscenity, first announced in a case called Miller v. California, has three requirements. The work must 1 appeal to the average person's prurient shameful, morbid interest in sex; 2 depict sexual conduct in a "patently offensive way" as defined by community standards; and 3 taken as a whole, lack serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.