| The general rule is in fact that you can read anything you can get your hands on, which is one reason people like Prince Harry who come from different legal traditions consider the First Amendment to be nuts. "Just for starters, we regularly ban books at the state level." We really do not. We sometimes ban them from public school libraries, more usually at the local than state level. A bookstore can sell you any book you care to read including those with written depictions of child sexual abuse, with the limited exception that a locality might try to declare things obscene as being contrary to local standards of decency (but in practice in modern America rarely does). "See libel." Libel of public figures requires knowing falsehood or reckless disregard for the truth and even then is a civil offense. There are vestigial criminal libel laws but it's doubtful they're constitutional and no one gets convicted. You can't go to jail for it and no one gets in trouble for reading it. "See classified materials" Unless you have a security clearance, you can read all the classified material you want if it's published. You can be punished for disclosing it if you have legal access to it, but not in practice for publishing it in peacetime (see the Pentagon Papers) and you cannot be restrained from publishing it before the fact unless doing so presents a clear and present danger to American public, a standard almost impossible to meet in peacetime. "illegal materials such as CSAM" In general you can read all the CSAM you want. You can't look at pictures or video. |