Slashdot Mirror
Australian Judge Rules Simpsons Cartoon Rip-off Is Child Porn
An anonymous reader was one of several to note a bizarre story in which an Australian judge ruled that drawings can be child porn. In this case, it was knock off drawings of the Simpsons doing naughty things. Good thing they're going to be censoring the Down Undernet soon. Who knows what damage this could cause.
During The Simpson's movie, it showed Bart's junk while he was skateboarding. Does this mean the movie depicts Child Porn?
The greatest revenge in life is massive success.
I guess under this precedent they'll have to indict and convict Groenig himself and everyone who worked on the recent "The Simpsons" movie for his depiction of Bart skateboarding naked through town?
This sure sounds like one really steep and slippery slope.
This is totally insane. There is a thread over at Whirlpool about this: http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum-replies.cfm?t=1101155 A child has not been abused. The rational behind the child porno laws is to prevent children from being abused... Or so I thought.
This just isn't fair. Lisa never ages...after 20 seasons at 8 years old she has to be fair game by now...who hasn't fantasized about Maggie flying in through your bedroom window naked?
Technically, all the characters are over 18 by now, whether or not they're drawn that way.
Without certified birth certificates, I wonder how they determine the legal ages of the "children" in those images?
If "She looked old enough." isn't a valid defense, then "They don't look old enough." cannot be a legally valid position either.
NetInfo connection failed for server 127.0.0.1/local
That the new London 2012 Olympic logo will be banned; it does like like Lisa Simpson doing something rather rude.
However it was also to deter the production of other material, including cartoons, that could "fuel demand for material that does involve the abuse of children".
This is the same question you can find in discussion about violence in games: will it fuel a natural tendency or will it serve as an escape valve?
When a goverment makes laws that can not be enforced, people lose respect for not only the law, but the goverment itself.
This means that any figure, that some judge deems is drawn to represent a person under the age of 21, must be considered juvinile. Therefore, if this drawing is doing something that may be construed as 'adult' in nature, the drawing is now up to the judge's intrepretation as to the age and content of the drawing.
And people are supposed to sagely nod their heads and say "ye wise man, thou knowest my inner-most thoughts and thy punishment is just".
As a note to myself, henceforth all my stick figures will sport mustaches (yes, both male and female stick figures). The beard on the females will indicate that they are post-menopause - just to be safe.
Used to be illegal, Supreme Court threw out the law.
ASCII stupid question, get a stupid ANSI
Oh, you innocent!
Populus vult decipi, ergo decipiatur...
"Force shits upon Reason's back." - Poor Richard's Almanac
So how long before Anime is child porn down there? Oversexed adolescents are the typical fare so it probably is fodder for these guys. It really sounds similar to the case involving the suicide we had recently, the law just HAD to do something because it was "OBVIOUSLY" wrong to begin with. In other words, law based on the whim of a government employee.
It is a cartoon, no one real was harmed, so now inanimate objects have rights or is that entirely dependent on what they represent? I mean, can you get busted for making a parody where the statue shits on the bird? After all its "naughty bits" might be showing.
Who would have thought the real prudes wouldn't be over zealous religious players and instead dowdy old government goons
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Bart: Hey guys, just so you don't hear any wild rumors, an Australian judge has ruled that some drawings of us are considered to be child porn.
Homer: Pfff. That's no reason to block the TV.
THE HONOUR OF THE KNIGHTS - CC Licensed Sci-Fi Novel
I'm sure that the children who are actually being abused around the world are enormously happy that at least their favourite cartoon characters are safe.
I'm sorry if that's a little too cynical, but don't these people have important things to do?
no it doesn't make you a pedophile for seeing something online, if however you liked it and wanted to try something similar with a under age boy or girl, then that would make you a pedophile.
-Ours is the wisdom of Solomon, the magic of Merlyn, the fall of Icaris.
It's only a matter of time before this judge goes after Groenig for the murder of Itchy and Scratchy.
... possibly paedophiles themselves but don't want to admit it and so make a big deal out of everything that could possibly turn them on? I'm not trying to be frivolous , but it days past (and probably still) you'd often get violently anti gay men who in the end turned out to be gay themselves but couldn't accept it - that anger was actually self hate. I do wonder these days with a lot of people seeing child porn everywhere whether these people themselves are paedos and are getting turned on by pictures of peoples kids on the beach or whatever and so to try to prove to themselves that they're not perverts they do a 180 and try to ban everything.
You bring up a good point, Bart and Lisa are clearly depicted as children, in spite of being decades "old". But what about all those Manga girls? Are they 18 (or whatever is legal where you are at)?
Stupid ruling, and one that easily can infect other nations for no reason other than it sounds like it "protects the children".
"the mere fact that they were not realistic representations of human beings did not mean that they could not be considered people", said Justice Michael Adams.
The jury of peers, consisting of Popeye, TinTin, Andy Pandy, Bob the Builder, Elmer Fudd and Captain Caveman all agreed. Popeye was heard to say, "I yam what I yam, and if I yain't a person then what yam I? Just a cartoon figure? I thinks not yukyukyukyukyuk".
So, how bad does a drawing have to be before Adams considers that it is not a person? And isn't there something just a little worrying about the sanity of a Justice who believes that a drawing has the same rights as a person?
----------------------------------- My Other Sig Is Hilarious -----------------------------------
"Justice Adams said the purpose of the legislation was to stop sexual exploitation and child abuse where images are depicted of "real" children.
However it was also to deter the production of other material, including cartoons, that could "fuel demand for material that does involve the abuse of children"."
Firstly, child pornography is generally produced by people who wish to profit from such material or trade it with others. The belief that non-commercial demand encourages production is based on the assumption that child pornographers produce such images to distribute freely, which clearly contradicts claims that child pornography is a multi-billion dollar industry.
The idea that viewing child sex cartoons encourages child pornographers to abuse actual children takes this argument to an even more ridiculous level. If someone can download child sex cartoons in order to get their fix, they are less likely to download real pictures of children. If commercial child pornographers make an increasing amount of money from child sex cartoons, they're more likely to draw cartoons than use real children. If there is an increasing demand for cartoons amongst people who trade child pornography, those who produce images for trading will be more likely to draw cartoons than use real children
There is no mechanism by which viewing child sex cartoons can lead to real children being used for child pornography; this is yet another example of blind moralism being placed above the welfare of children.
"To the future or to the past, to a time when thought is free" ~ Nineteen Eighty-Four
In Latvia, where I live, you can get 3 years in jail for creating, sharing or downloading such thing. Creating includes writing too.
"...the mere fact that they were not realistic representations of human beings did not mean that they could not be considered people."
Those cardboard cutouts of Homer & Marge in the passenger seats? Restricted commuter lanes, here I come.
Oh and the cardboard cutouts of Bart, Lisa and Maggie? Dependents when I file taxes.
The tape that holds them together? That's a medical expense.
I've lost all my marbles except one & It's fun to test angular & centripetal acceleration in my skull
thoughtcrime.
I really am scratching my head over England and Australia. It almost seems like they see the US going down a path and are racing each other to beat us to the end.
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
What is the argument against drawings of child porn? That showing the act is as much criminal as the act itself?
Then why are action movies legal that show killing people? Is it less criminal to show how to kill someone than it is how to rape someone? Is it me or is this logic a wee bit flawed? It's legal to show how a person is getting disembowled, with blood and guts flying while a chainsaw rips through their body (yeah, of course special effects, but hell, that's REAL people acting, I'm not even talking some splatter anime/manga here!), but it is illegal to draw something?
Could anyone explain to me the logic behind that? I'm sorry, I don't get it.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
There have been two big news items about child porn regulations 'gone wild' recently - this, and that business in the UK about images on Wikipedia. It was hard to trump the UK's absurd regulation, but Australia did it!
I'm absolutely against "child pornography" for reasons that I think I share with many others. However, that term is clearly very broadly interpreted.
The reasoning for child porn regulations is pretty reasonable:
Since most people agree with 1., we should prosecute those who produce and sell overtly sexual images of real children. If we just consider 1., I think it's fairly straightforward to delineate between acceptable and unacceptable images; pictures of children taking a bath or running around naked (which children do, and which parents find charming for some reason) were clearly not taken in circumstances where children were exploited.
Point 2 is where the more broad regulations come from. Perhaps there are people who would be sexually aroused at seeing an image of a child bathing, even if the picture has the most innocent of connotations. I would argue that we need to deal with the disturbed individuals in this case, not parents recording their childrens' lives.
With point 2 in hand, regulators can really go nuts - who's to say what will sexually excite an individual? Pictures of fully-clothed children playing, pictures of aspiring dancers in tutus, pictures of children's shoes, where is the line? Is there some critical number of people who have to be sexually excited to make the image illegal? Even if that is solid reasoning (and I don't think it is), how do you measure that?
I think the important thing to keep in mind is point 1 - we know that the creation sexual photographs of (real) children exploits children, so we must prevent it. Point 2 must be treated with care; we shouldn't abridge our liberties to create content just because there are mentally ill people who would use said material as a call to action. We should be devoting our resources to helping such people.
Another example of lazy, ineffectual government.
njord
Obviously this judge has never watched the simpsons or he would understand the fundamental laws of supply and demand.
Lisa: Dad, I don't want to go with this guy, I think he is a child pornographer... his hat has child porn on it, his boots have child porn on them, and I'm pretty sure that check has child porn on it.
Homer: Honey, some one whose child pornography supply is high is less likely to subject you to child pornagraphy than someone whose child pornography supply is low.
Technically since the Simpsons is in its 20th season Bart is about 30, Lisa about 28 and Maggie is about 20. What you really have here is midget porn.
---- "Excuse me. Where's the children's gun section?"
I guess this dvd is now banned there? Hell, they way things are in the US, I'm surprised they haven't banned it here.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
I knew a guy who claimed to be a time-traveler from the future, sent back here on a one-way trip as a sort of anthropologist. He was going to hide all his research somewhere so people in the 2700s could find it.
Anyway, one of his "predictions" (or, as he would have it, what his history books said) was that Australia would develop into a fascist, Orwellian culture with absolute control on everyone and everything moving in or out of the country, including data on the internet. Later, he said, it would become as isolated and backward as North Korea, but with far greater resources at hand, which is how it was able to launch a nuclear attack against Japan and the west coast of the US. I think all this was supposed to happen by the second half of this century.
Mind you, he was insane. But every time I hear about Australia taking another step down the road to insanity, I can't help but think about him.
End of lesson. You may press the button.
He could have been fined A$0.01 and it would still be a very bad thing.
It's the precedent in this case and not the punishment.
(And they say CHILDREN can't tell fantasy from reality. Apparently we now allow judges with a child-like intelligence.)
So I give this less then a year before something from a video game is now implicated.
Violence towards children too right? How many RPGs have plucky minors doing battle against the forces of evil? Oh sorry that robot hit the protagonist of the game. Child abuse.
Lets not forget that Frank Herberts DUNE, Little House on the Praire, are both considered in several school as examples of C.P.
Paul was roughly 15 in the story and Laura Ingles Wilder was married as a "minor" by today's standards.
The rise of the "Thought Police" right before our eyes. It's good to see the Pre-Crime units taking care of obviously crime-inducing material before it results in a crime...
Lets not forget that last I heard 50% of possession charges in the US still stem from Traci Lords.
Great...
Now animated content eh? Little Mermaid? Too revealing? Will all animated characters have to have disclaimer signs?
And technically Bart isn't a child. Hell he's at least 20 years old now. But if it is the appearance of youth that makes that determination I have a feeling the whole wife\girlfriend\mistress dressing up as a cheerleader is right out now...
The world is going crazy and I blame too many electronic gadgets. Liek geese getting confused when migrating we're going collectively nuts as a results of too much man-made 'noise'in the world....
-=[ Who Is John Galt? ]=-
Under this boneheaded ruling, a lot of anime and manga would be considered child porn. I'm not even talking about the stuff that already IS porn, mind you, I'm talking about mainstream, family oriented shows here, like "My neighbor Totoro" (Tonari no Totoro.) In that movie, you see the father and his two young daughters taking a bath together - as is the norm in Japan.
I remember I was in a video store one day when this lady came in fuming mad because one of the clerks recommended the movie to her for her kids, and she was shocked and horrified that the movie would depict kiddie-porn. The stupefied clerk tried to explain that in Japan this was considered normal, only to have the woman yell about how it's not right for Japan to force its depravity upon the rest of the world, and demanded a full refund.
On a side note here, would it still be considered child porn if the voice actresses involved were adults or children? For instance, Bart, Lisa and even Maggie are all voiced by adults - not children. Does this make the characters "children" or "adults portraying children"? And what about when your wife/girlfriend squeezes into her high school cheerleader outfit for a bit of role play? Does that make you both guilty of child porn?
If cartoons can be considered people, and the laws apply to all people, can cartoon makers be charged with murder for killing off a character? Can Warner Bros. be charged with assault and battery? What about Bugs Bunny or Wile E. Coyote? If one produces a cartoon depicting a rape, can one be charged with facilitation?
This is an incredibly stupid ruling.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
The difference between art and porn is interesting. The True Teen case out of Utah illustrated it clearly. (I'm at work, so I can't Google for links and details. Feel free to fill in, folks.) In that case, the defendant, a photographer with a web site selling sexy but clothed pics of girls, won in a slam-dunk after the evidence showed that he did not produce the material for his own sexual gratification, an essential element of the crime under the law in that state at that time. IOW, he won because he was able to prove his state of mind to the court. (The details are probably unique...Wish I had links.)
Later, on his web site, the photographer published an essay in which he opined that he could take far more revealing photos and sell them for far more money IF he were to sell in book form, rather than online. His point was that online sales of the material at a reasonable price to the masses meant that the knee-jerk reaction of LEA was that it couldn't be art. Art is expensive; his stuff wasn't. Art is a tangible thing that you hang on the wall or put on a bookshelf; his product didn't fit the profile. Art is printed on paper or something flat and doesn't require electricity; his was just light emitting from a monitor.
He is of the opinion that he could put *anything* (almost) in an expensive, coffee-table-style "art" book and sell it without harrassment. However, he feels that even the most innocent content, if sold online, was a risky business.
I agree with him. I have a copy of Larry Clark's beautiful book "Teenage Lust" in which he reproduces several photo and text essays on growing up, running with the gang, getting in trouble, and getting laid. (I hope I've got that title right; it's been years sinice I looked at the book.) If the thing were a web site, Clark would be in jail for life. But I paid ridiculous money to get it at an internationally-famous art exhibition and it's a BOOK instead of just a computer file. No way anyone is going to get prosecuted over that; the few times that bluenoses have famously tried, they've failed. Sally Mann, David Hamilton and others have been harrassed and have re-located or changed their art, but none of the high-profile investigations of serious artists over the last 30 years (that I'm aware of; please tell me if I'm wrong) have actually resulted in anyone being convicted of this crime.
The lesson for pervs? Just brazenly publish your work in high-quality books with high prices. That should be enough to shield you from any charges.
The lesson for the rest of us? The laws in this area have hinged on thoughtcrime for far longer than most people realize. All pictures of kids are illegal if the prosecutor can convince a jury you got some sick jollies from them.
I have no idea how to protect against that. Burn your family albums, I suppose.
why stop here. I've got book after book on my shelf where fictional characters are killed!
More to the point if you really want to draw attention to the 'wtf' currently underway, possibly we should direct our law enforcement officers to your national art gallery. Undoubtedly plenty of naked underage flesh on display there (in fact just has to appear underaged, so not even that much of a stretch) - hey, who's to say you're not aroused by cherubs anyway?
O
|=
|~O--
|_,|`"`|_
Do hope none of you think my stick-people look a bit on the young side - hate to have my front door kicked down and be put on 'a list'
exploited by an eager beaver prosecutor.
That's kind of what got them in trouble in the first place, don't you think?
(Though I'm old enough to remember it, I haven't heard that term in a couple of decades...the fact that it came up when discussing nudity made me chuckle)
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Related UnNews item: Wikipedia now hosting child pornography NSFW!!!!
What's funny is there is a picture of what looks to be a nude (except for nylons) prepubescent girl in a provocative position (with the genitals covered by a price tag), and as UnNews and teh Uncyclopedia are actually hosted by Wikipedia, it's true.
In a manner of speaking...
Free Martian Whores!