United States v. Thomas

The United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit upheld convictions of defendants Robert and Carleen Thomas. Defendants uploaded photographs taken from sexually explicit magazines as .GIF files onto a BBS which they operated from their home. From this BBS, member-subscribers could download and print visually provocative photos. The district court found defendants guilty of knowingly using a means of interstate commerce for transporting obscene, computer-generated material across state lines in violation of federal statutes. Though the defendants argued that the statute did
not apply to intangible articles, such as binary code, the court of appeals held that the computer files were within the purview of the statutes insofar as the manner in which the images move across state lines does not affect their ultimate ability to take on a tangible form upon being reconstituted in the distant state.

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United States v. Thomas Decision