In 1969, the United States Supreme Court ruled in Stanley v. Georgia that people could view whatever they wished in the privacy of their own homes.
The Commission was established to study and report on:[1] Initially, the Commission consisted of Edward E. Elson, Thomas D. Gill, Edward D. Greenwood, Reverend Morton A. Hill, S.J., G. William Jones, Joseph T. Klapper, Otto N. Larsen, Rabbi Irving Lehrman, Freeman Lewis, Reverend Winfrey C. Link, Morris A. Lipton, William B. Lockhart (chair), Thomas C. Lynch, Barbara Scott, Cathryn A. Speits, Frederick Herbert Wagman, Kenneth Keating and Marvin Wolfgang.
Cody Wilson served as Executive Director of the Commission, directing both surveys of existing research and original empirical esearch on the subject.
On November 11, 1970, copies of publisher William Hamling's Greenleaf Classics’ 352-page The Illustrated Presidential Report of the Commission on Obscenity and Pornography were printed, and two weeks later, on Monday, December 13, 1970, went on sale throughout the U.S. for $12.50.
[8][9] Kemp and Hamling were eventually sentenced to prison for "conspiracy to mail obscene material," but both served only the federal minimum.