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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.
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?
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.
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That the new London 2012 Olympic logo will be banned; it does like like Lisa Simpson doing something rather rude.
... 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.
"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
"...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
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
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.
It's in the southern hemisphere - did you try right-clicking?
Dark Reflection
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?
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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'
And there is the fallacy of all child pornography laws. Women hit sexual maturity around 13-15 and according to the law hit mental capacity to give consent at 18. There is an entire genre of porn where women of legal age who look much younger than they are pose nude for men.
Men find the unadulterated idea of women attractive since they can believe they are virgins(google "teen virgins" if you need proof). Another issue with censorship laws like this is that its impossible for a man to look at a picture of a woman and know with any certainty how old she is. You can dress up an 18 year old to realistically make her appear 12, and you could probably realistically dress up a 14 year old to look 18. Theres no way to know. To illustrate this conundrum, consider these scenarios:
A 15 year old girl poses nude but the photograph has a photoshopped head of of an 18 year old. Is it immoral to look?
A 18 year old girl poses nude but the photograph has a photoshopped head of a 15 year old. Is it immoral to look now?
What if all these numbers were reduced by 5? Immoral now? Quite obviously, but in the two scenarios above the answer isn't at all clear cut. In the second scenario, this must be illegal since there is copious amounts of this type of pornography scattered across the web. Simply google "Miley Cyrus nude" for proof.
Any argument that a cartoon which includes no photorealistic elements is child pornography is faulty. Since the laws were designed to protect children, and there was no children harmed, this merely exemplifies a flaw in the law.
You can't legislate goodness. Let each to his own destiny, by will of his freely made choices.