Google Trends vs. Community Standards On Obscenity

Google Trends is being used in a novel way in a pornography trial in Florida. Under a 1973 Supreme Court ruling, contemporary community standards may be used as a yardstick for judging material as unprotected obscenity. This is a very subjective judgment, and so Lawrence Walters, a defense lawyer for Clinton Raymond McCowen, is using Google Trends to show that, in the privacy of their own homes, more people in Pensacola the only city in the courts jurisdiction that is large enough to be singled out in the services data are interested in “orgy” than “apple pie.”