 The ACLU lost an important press censorship case when, in 1957, the Supreme Court upheld the obscenity conviction of publisher Samuel Roth for distributing adult magazines. As late as 1953, books such as Tropic of Cancer and From Here to Eternity were still banned. But public standards rapidly became more liberal though the 1960s, and obscenity was notoriously difficult to define, so by 1971 prosecutions for obscenity had halted.
