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Do Floridians search more passionately for "bukkake" than "ethanol"?. Nobody thought to enter that data into the public record until Clinton McCowen, the proprietor of CumOnHerFace.com, was slapped with obscenity charges by the State of Florida, and his defense attorney turned to Google for aid. Last week, when the defendant settled out of court and accepted a three-to-five-year prison sentence, it seemed like the Google Trends defense was dead in the water. But McCowen's lawyer, Lawrence Walters, still believes Google's positive response to his subpoena — soliciting the frequency of sex-related search terms by community — bodes a shift in American morality. Simply put: Google has forced us all to confront just how kinky we are.

Is this a license to freak out? Walters says no:

The ultimate purpose for this analysis was to demonstrate that “community” for the McCowen prosecution was quite a bit more receptive to, and accepting of, sexual subjects than the prosecution either suspected or wanted to ever admit.

Should the Google Trends obscenity defense get its day in court, it's not likely anyone will be taking the stand, defending their sexual interests after being presented with a Google Doc breaking down their search history. What the frequency of search terms could reveal is that one's neighbors are searching for the same things, no matter what they tell their spouse. Just looking up how to hire an escort, for example, doesn't mean one's going to do it. But prosecutors may not be able to claim that a sex act disgusts a community when computer logs show no one can stop Googling it.

Everyone agrees that an individual's sexual curiosities should never stand trial. Overwrought privacy fears, however, shouldn't stop us from using anonymized search data to define community standards accurately and scientifically. A judge can no longer declare that he knows indecency when he sees it. Thanks to Google, we now have real data on the subject. Not using it seems obscene.