In two later trials, one in Australia in 1964 and the other in the UK in 1971, the magazine's editors were acquitted on appeal, after initially being found guilty and sentenced to harsh jail terms.

The original Australian editorial team included university students Neville, Walsh and Sharp, and Peter Grose, a cadet journalist from Sydney's Daily Mirror.

In succeeding issues (and in its later London version) Oz gave pioneering coverage to contentious issues such as censorship, homosexuality, police brutality, the Australian government's White Australia policy and Australia's involvement in the Vietnam War, as well as regularly satirising public figures, up to and including Australian Prime Minister Robert Menzies.

In mid-1963, shortly after the publication of issue No.3, Neville, Walsh and Grose were summoned on charges of distributing an obscene publication; the shock of the charges caused Walsh's deeply religious father to suffer a serious heart attack, so their family solicitor arranged for the case to be adjourned until September 1963 but he advised the trio that, as first offenders, they could avoid having their conviction recorded if they pleaded guilty.

"The Stiff Arm of the Law" (which became a regular feature on police misconduct) featured a parody of a police report in which incriminating sections of a supposed account of an officer's real actions in a gay-bashing incident were crossed out and replaced with far more anodyne language, e.g. in the line "I was at Phillip Street Station in my homo hunting togs", the words "homo hunting togs" were crossed out and replaced with the handwritten words "plain clothes", "this little bastard" with "a youth", and "I myself punched him several times" was amended to read "I was punched several times", and so on.

As a result of this perceived slight to their integrity, police seized 140 copies of Oz from a Kings Cross, NSW newsagent and took them to a magistrate, who ordered them to be burned.

One was Martin Sharp's ribald satirical poem about youths gatecrashing a party, entitled "The Word Flashed Around The Arms"; the other was the Oz No.6 cover photograph (pictured at right), which depicted Neville and others pretending to urinate into a wall fountain created by sculptor Tom Bass, which was mounted in the street facade of the Sydney offices of the P&O shipping line and which had recently been unveiled by Prime Minister Menzies.

[citation needed] To the dismay of the Oz team and their friends and family, Locke decided to make an example of them, sentencing them to three to six months in prison with hard labour, but they were released on bail pending an appeal.

Their supporters decided to raise money for the defence fund with a benefit concert, which was held at the Sydney University Theatre on 15 November 1964, featuring Sydney garage-punk band The Missing Links, members of the popular satirical TV sketch series The Mavis Bramston Show and actor Leonard Teale (then starring in the popular TV police drama Homicide), who recited a "surfie" parody of Clancy of the Overflow.

Oz revealed this in a subsequent issue, which contained extracts from the minutes of a confidential meeting of Sydney detectives, held on 1 December 1965, which had been leaked to the magazine by an underworld source.

Contributors included Germaine Greer, artist and filmmaker Philippe Mora, illustrator Stewart Mackinnon, photographer Robert Whitaker, journalist Lillian Roxon, cartoonist Michael Leunig, Angelo Quattrocchi, Barney Bubbles and David Widgery.

Several editions of Oz included dazzling psychedelic wrap-around or pull-out posters by Sharp, London design duo Hapshash and the Coloured Coat and others; these instantly became sought-after collectors' items and now command high prices.

In 1970, reacting to criticism that Oz had lost touch with youth, the editors put a notice in the magazine inviting "school kids" to edit an issue.

It was created by 15-year-old schoolboy Vivian Berger[5] by pasting the head of Rupert onto the lead character of an X-rated satirical cartoon by Robert Crumb.

[citation needed] However the British trial was given a far more dangerous edge because the prosecution employed an archaic charge against Neville, Dennis and Anderson—"conspiracy to corrupt public morals"—which, in theory, carried a maximum sentence of life imprisonment.

After being turned down by several leading lawyers, Dennis and Anderson secured the services of barrister and writer John Mortimer, QC (creator of the Rumpole of the Bailey series) who was assisted by his Australian-born junior counsel Geoffrey Robertson; Neville chose to represent himself.

The charges read out in the central criminal court stated "[that the defendants] conspiring with certain other young persons to produce a magazine containing obscene, lewd, indecent and sexually perverted articles, cartoons and drawings with intent to debauch and corrupt the morals of children and other young persons and to arouse and implant in their minds lustful and perverted ideas".

[8] John Lennon and Yoko Ono joined the protest march against the prosecution and organised the recording of "God Save Us" by the ad hoc group Elastic Oz Band to raise funds and gain publicity.

[10] Defence witnesses included clinical psychologist Lionel Haward, artist Feliks Topolski, comedian Marty Feldman, artist and drugs activist Caroline Coon, DJ John Peel, musician and writer George Melly, legal philosopher Ronald Dworkin and academic Edward de Bono.

At the appeal trial (where the defendants appeared wearing long wigs) it was found that Judge Argyle had grossly misdirected the jury on numerous occasions and the defence also alleged that Berger, who was called as a prosecution witness, had been harassed and assaulted by police.