Sec. 2. (1) "Contemporary community standards" means the customary limits of candor and decency in this state at or near the time of the alleged violation of this act. (2) "Disseminate" means to manufacture, sell, lend, rent, publish, exhibit, or lease to the public for commercial gain or to offer or agree to manufacture, sell, lend, rent, publish, exhibit, or lease to the public for commercial gain. (3) "Knowledge of content and character" means having general knowledge of the nature and character of the material involved. Knowledge of content and character may be proven by direct evidence or by circumstantial evidence, or both. (4) "Material" means anything tangible that is capable of being used or adapted to arouse prurient interest, whether through the medium of reading, observation, sound, or in any other manner, including but not limited to, anything printed or written, any book, magazine, newspaper, pamphlet, picture, drawing, pictorial representation, motion picture, photograph, video tape, video disk, film, transparency, slide, audiotape, audiodisk, computer tape, or any other medium used to electronically produce or reproduce images on a screen, or any mechanical, chemical, or electronic reproduction. Material includes undeveloped photographs, molds, printing plates, and other latent representational objects whether or not processing or other acts are required to make the content of the material apparent. (5) "Obscene" means any material that meets all of the following criteria: (a) The average individual, applying contemporary community standards, would find the material, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest. (b) The reasonable person would find the material, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value. (c) The material depicts or describes sexual conduct in a patently offensive way.
Mich. Comp. Laws § 752.362
Definitions; C to O
Applied in 5 court decisions — leading case 224 Mich. App. 513 - Jott, Inc v. Clinton Charter Township (1997)
Most recently applied in Coleman v. Ann Arbor Transportation Authority (November 2012)
1984, Act 343, Eff
How often courts cite this section
Court decisions citing this, by year. The dip in the last several years is a data-coverage gap, not a real trend — our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so recent citations are undercounted.
Official source: Michigan Legislature. Reproduced from public-domain Michigan statutes; confirm against the official source for the current text. Not legal advice.