All 50 states and the District of Columbia have laws governing obscenity, child pornography, and harassment.
All states have laws governing the distribution of obscene materials.
Generally, these statutes prohibit the sale, lending, renting, giving, publication, exhibition or other dissemination of materials, with general knowledge of their obscene character and content. Drafted before an electronic age, many states define materials as covering any writing, written matter, picture, pictorial representation, film or motion picture, or sound recording. Of course, what constitutes the relevant community in on-line environments without geographic boundaries is an open issue. In a very few states, obscenity laws cover the dissemination of tangible material only, a matter of some importance given the debate in other areas of the law whether computer software or other information in digital format is tangible or intangible. Similarly, many states prohibit the distribution of electronic or electrical reproductions of obscene material.