Though Broadway’s “Avenue Q” says, “The Internet is for Porn,” in real life the answer is harder to come by. A trial is scheduled in Pensacola, Florida which will question that statement of collective net wisdom. Clinton Raymond McCowen is the defendant. He’ll be happiest if his adult web site doesn’t get him sent to jail. He hopes the answer is yes, porn is what the Internet’s for.

Deciding what is pornographic or not has always been a tough call. It was Supreme Court justice, Potter Stewart, who said “I know it when I see it.” Love that. In 1973 (Miller v California) we thought the issue was finally decided when the Supreme Court ruled porn would be defined by, “applying contemporary community standards.”

That gave us a new problem. What exactly are community standards and how do you measure them? McCowen’s attorney, Lawrence Walters says community standards are easy to measure today because we’ve got the Internet and we’ve got Google! This is an extension of a strategy he used in another pornography case. There, he compared the number of hits from porn terms like orgy with the number of hits from contemporary concepts, like University of Florida quarterback Tim Tebow. Sorry Tim, you lose. And, so did Walters’ client.

This time around the strategy gets a twist. Attorney Walters will show what Pensacola been searching for using Google Trends. He’s also subpoenaed Google, asking for more detailed results than those available online. Google hasn’t responded yet.

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