CASE NO: 28/2002 – etv VS HOWELL AND OTHERS – PORNOGRAPHY – APPEAL AGAINST ADJUDICATION

Appeal against adjudication – legal test for determining complaint that feature films violated clause 7.1.1 of the Code – complaint that same pornographic because they where indecent or obscene or harmful or offensive to public morals. 

Held, that the legal test in determining whether material can be categorised as such, is not what is offensive to an individual or whether members of a community themselves might be offended by seeing it, but what the community will tolerate, and what member of such community would not abide other members seeing because it would be beyond the contemporary South African standard of tolerance to allow them to see it – it is the standard of tolerance, not taste that is relevant.