ABFFE Joining With Media Coalition in Fight Over Indiana Law
-- Publishers Weekly, 4/11/2008 8:00:00 AM
After ABFFE announced last month its intent to fight a new Indiana law calling for booksellers to register "sexually explicit" materials with the state, the organization has teamed with Media Coalition in preparing to file a court challenge to the law. Although Media Coalition has not filed the challenge yet, Chris Finan said that something will likely happen in May (as the law goes into effect in July).
Joining the plaintiffs, along with ABFFE, are the ACLU of Indiana and Indiana booksellers. Speaking to the Indiana law, ABFFE president Chris Finan said: "In America we don't let government license bookstores." Media Coalition is a trade group that defends the First Amendment rights of publishers, retailers and libraries.
Earlier in the week, ABFFE helped defeat another bill, this one in Arizona, which would have made businesses financially responsible for ensuing civil suits borne out of any content they sold--books, music, video games, etc.--that contained imagery then mimicked in a crime. ABFFE also helped bring down a bill brought before the Colorado legislature that banned the sale of any materials deemed "harmful," by the state, to minors.
