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Man in Court Over Simpsons Porn
Ever get the urge to look at pornographic drawings of famous cartoon children? Neither do I, but 28-year-old Kurt James Milner did, and that's what got him registered as a sex offender. Police received a tip about the pornographic material and eventually found images featuring child characters from The Simpsons and The Powerpuff Girls on Milner's computer. Back in 2008, a Supreme Court judge in Australia ruled that cartoons in which child characters engage in sexual acts is child pornography. Milner said he downloaded the images to show them to his friend 'because he believed they were funny.' Guess it's not so funny now.
All your hentai are belong to us.
Ridiculous.
Marge clearly showed her tits, please move on to other types of porn.
This is not what got him registered as a sex offender: he was already registered as a sex offender from a previous case, in which he had been found guilty of actually having child porn (with images of real children) on his computer. The prior conviction is reason for the severe response to the cartoon images. This being the case, his claim that he didn't get sexual titillation from these images rings rather false.
The best part of this story... "Officers discovered the computer would no longer turn on but a year later police forensic experts recovered 64 images of cartoon child exploitation material in the machine’s recycle bin." So, it took officers a year to mount the hard drive in another system, and take a look in the recycle bin.
I guess you didn't read the article, which is no big surprise.
It's his second offense. The first involved real children.
depicting sexual acts with people under the age of 18 years.
Technically, even Maggie is over 18 now.
I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
If you ask me, he should have the book thrown at him. Not for the animated stuff, but for having had -real- pictures. How the hell was he let off the hook the first time?
Scientists point out problems, engineers fix them
altslashdot.org: The future of slashdot.
Well, the police were likely just being cautious. After all you never know what a system might do to a newly found hard drive. I think Windows offers to immediately format the drive, doesn't it? It's been too long since I had a Windows machine at my place. A good Linux hacker could have dissected the file system and had whatever they were looking for in a few minutes, probably from a bit-for-bit copy made to another drive. (to keep the original safe.)
So ... if someone has 20-year-old pictures of a 10-year-old being raped, it's okay because now the child in question is 30?
While I don't see the harm in cartoon-sex, you can't really expect the "but technically $person is over 18 today " defence to work or even be acceptable.
If you can, what's wrong with killing people? Technically they're already dead by the time you get to court over it, and there's no point in crying over spilt milk.
Interesting... a cartoon character rises to the level of person now. Whoever knew.. I suppose it is the next logical step.
How do you measure the 'age' of a cartoon character, I wonder.
Is it whatever age the author says it is.... or does the jury have to make some sort of subjective determination based on carefully examining the imagery to make a judgement on the appearance of the images filed as evidence?
With careful consideration as to not be prejudicial against midgets and people who appear much younger than their actual age.
Next step is to extend the law to include imagery depicting violence as well.
And then expand the age a little bit... age under 21 instead of 18.
And then extend the law to include images depicting not just porn and violent acts, but drug usage also
Then extend the age rule a little bit... persons under age 25 instead of 21.
Then expand the scope a little bit... images depicting any crimes or hostile activities at all against such persons.
Then extend the age rule a little bit... persons under 30 instead of age 25.
Then expand the scope a little bit... images depicting or showing anything the least bit offensive to community values to persons depicted.
Then remove the age limit entirely.
Then expand the scope a bit to include anything disruptive to the civil order, government business, or disparaging to authority.
Next make it retroactive, include text, writings, blog posts, opinion columns, as well as images. And anything offensive to even dead people or non-governmental highly-regarded entities. Increase the penalty for some years of confinement to permanent imprisonment, and eventual execution.
Wow, instant censorship (in 10 steps)
I thought the point of harsh laws against child pornography were meant to prevent the exploitation of children. Child cartoon characters are not actual people and thus were not actually exploited. Clearly he should have been arrested for copyright infringement instead.
Old News from 2008
That's really sad. They sat on the evidence for a year before processing it.
I guess what would be worse would be if they confiscated someone's equipment, sat on it for a year, and found nothing. I'd be a bit pissed if my computers were taken for a year before they found that I had nothing illegal.
My mother-in-law's computer was taken as evidence in a case where a roommate may have used her computer in relation to child porn. They imaged the drive and gave it back the next day. I assume a block by block copy of the drive, so they could try to recover any deleted information. Needless to say, he was quickly invited to not be a roommate any more. This may have been because she wasn't a suspect, but they needed her assistance to look for further information.
Her case turned out out to be nothing except a lapse in judgement that didn't quite cross any legal boundaries (but came very close), and he did nothing on her computer. From what I knew of the case from the investigator and my mother-in-law, the police were perfectly justified in their pursuit of evidence. I had worked on her computer between the time he used it, and the time they collected it to process, so I gave a detailed report of what I had done. Unfortunately, that had been clearing the browser cache and history, scanned for viruses, did some housekeeping, updated a few things, and defragged the drive. They may have been able to recover some things, but it was less likely after my cleanup. I wish they had called a few days earlier, and they may have found something more.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
It wasn't officers. It was forensic experts. And it took them a year to pull the data off? WTF, was the drive encrypted or something, or were they just that dumb?
Any fool with a drive formatted in FAT32 or NTFS can recover data with Recuva.... fucking morons!
Oh ya, linky to the utility in questions. http://www.piriform.com/recuva
It's not a 20-year-old picture. It's a new picture of a character that has existed for 23 years. If a new picture of a person who has been alive for 23 years is legal, so should a new picture of a character that has existed for 23 years. The logic is actually fairly sound; if a cartoon character is going to be treated as a person, it must be fully treated as a person, and therefore if the character has existed for more than 65 years, it should also qualify for social security.... Anything less is just absurd. Anything more is also absurd. Indeed, the entire nature of the question is absurd....
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
As an Australian working in Digital Forensics who works in the private sector but worked in the public sector, Law Enforcement Digital Forensics folks are woefully trained in my experience and under-resourced.
Wow, this argument got taken too far. Their point implied that the characters in the Simpsons look more or less the same today. So those drawings are technically up-to-date depictions of characters that are over 18. The intent of child-porn laws (I hope) is to protect people who are under a given age, so even if the cartoon characters had real emotions (boy, I sound stupid), the law would not apply.
Why you tried to stretch an argument about cartoons and apply it to real human beings is a mystery. Uh... but now you've got me doing it.
Maybe he plea bargained to the lesser offence of "possessing images of child exploitation".
This was his second offense but something doesn't really make sense with all of this. If these laws are put in place to protect then why is he not 'dangerous' enough to be taken off of the streets? This is starting to sound like parking or speeding tickets where they just do it to make a point but not really make a difference. It's not like I personally view 'cartoon porn' as something that serious although it is fucked up to get off of anything related to kids but obviously the courts see it the same way since their ruling was not much more than a slap on the wrist. So either the first conviction was too much or the system is all wrong becuase how can you say how much of a sex offender someone is? I would either think you are a threat to society or you are not how can you be kind of a sex offender?
A loop, by its nature, continues. If that didn't make sense, start reading this sentence again.
If they just connect drive to other system, they would corrupt evidence.
That was the original intent, yes. The original idea was that children are not fully developed individuals mentally as well as physically and thus need adults to protect them against various things. As such laws were created that say that children can't enter in to a contract on their own. Likewise, it was decided that children lack the understanding to consent to making porn. So it was outlawed to keep adults from exploiting them for that purpose.
However now it has become more or less a witch hunt tool. The laws exist only to further themselves and to punish indiscriminately. Best example is two teenagers who were convicted of sending naked photos to each other. They made no effort to distribute the photos to a wider audience and were both under 18. However, they were successfully tried and convicted on child porn charges and that conviction has since been upheld on appeal. After their prison stay, they'll both have to register as sex offenders.
Clearly such a situation is not designed to protect them from anything. While they may cause themselves harm by sharing nude photos, that harm has already been caused. The harm of going to prison and being labeled a sex offender is far, far worse. So they aren't being protected, they are being punished. There is no point, other than strict enforcement of the existing law.
There is very little sense to what goes on with regards to these laws at this point. It seems to bypass people's ability to think logically and start off a witch hunt mentality.
> What's wrong with sexual titillation from a drawn image of imaginary characters?
You're asking the wrong question, IMO. You should have asked:
"Why is it any worse than pure textual depictions of fictional children having sex?" (which AFAIK is not considered child pornography in most jurisdictions)
Would ASCII art depictions of child-like figures having sex, which are simultaneously textual erotic fiction about children having sex, be considered child pornography?
You could, of course, go in a different tangent and come up with the question:
"Why is a simulated depiction of the sexual abuse of children any worse than simulated depictions of other heinous crimes?" (AFAIK there are no other crimes for which possessing a depiction of them is also a crime. No, wait! Under the DMCA, a depiction of copyright protection circumvention which is sufficiently detailed to aid in circumvention itself could be criminal. Oops, no. Even there, mere possession is not criminal, distribution might be.)
He's already had the book thrown at him for potentially promoting the harm of children.
Now, he's just in trouble for watching cartoon images of other people's depictions of his sexual fantasy.
Surely there is a slight disconnect...
This seems obvious to me, but I'm not hearing it from anyone else, so I'm just going to be the voice of reason here.
Guy downloads real child porn (I'm going to assume deliberately). Get's busted for it, because law makes the argument that he's contributing to actual child exploitation.
- I don't agree with this, but it could be argued
Guy downloads cartoon child porn. Get's busted for it, because law makes the argument that he's contributing to actual child exploitation?
- Hard to argue the benefit to society here.
Only possible explanation: It's been made into a thought crime. They just need proof someone has been thinking sexual thoughts about children. And apparently that's been made illegal.
If a guy tries to abide by a law he got busted for by looking at cartoon child porn instead of real child porn, my first reaction is to support him. Am I crazy?
So he threw the pictures in the recycle bin then blew the power supply. Very smart.
Then again, that doesn't speak very well of the police forensic experts who spent a year trying to connect the hard drive to another computer to read it. Or maybe they just couldn't find the RECYCLED folder. I'm not surprised though, government efficiency and all that.
This guy sounds like a less than savoury character, and genuine (ie. real, as in, with real children) child pornography is not excusable, but I'll bite for the ethical argument.
Question: Why is child pornography illegal?
I'd argue the primary reason is the obvious trauma, emotional and often physical, that such pornography involves. Occassionally you hear claims that it may be consensual (think 13 year olds consenting to the acts), but there's the reasoned argument that a person of that age is probably not mentally developed enough to fully appreciate what they are getting into. Those who download child pornography can be considered an accessory to the crime, to the extent they are perpetuating its continued existence by providing the market. However, in the case of animated/drawn child pornography, who's been hurt? These characters don't exist, they are a pure fantasy, they feel no more than the Doom monsters I killed thousands of as a child.
Legally, who's the victim? Who's been harmed? Society has a habit of working itself into an absolute frenzy whenever child pornography and pedophilia comes up; it could well be the only thing that trumps terrorism in sheer levels of hysteria. But from a rational perspective, why should I care if the creepy dude next door likes to wank to Lisa Simpson? If those activities enter into the real world, then yes, we have a serious problem, but I've "murdered" a lot of beings, both alien and human, I've yet to do that in the real world, but I'm not stigmatised by society and labelled a, what, "murder offender"? My point being, I find the notion of prosecuting and convicting someone for what they have thought, versus what they have actually done in the real world, seriously disturbing; put simply, if someones actions don't cause any harm to others or themselves, I don't view it as my business to intrude. Bluntly, I think a lot of people have very creepy fetishes, it's just children have that particularly special status.
What's sad, is that so few people will stand up in these kind of cases, for fear of themselves being labelled a closet pedophile or similar. I mean, what decent human being could possibly want to side with a pedophile? So people stay quiet and just let governments legislate against this sort of stuff. Child Pornography has been one of (if not THE) argument for the mandatory internet filter the government intends to implement down here in Australia, despite the fact, anyone with an ounce of grey matter can tell you it isn't going to work to stop the distribution of this stuff for a multitude of reasons, one of the most obvious being, it can only filter HTTP traffic. But, pointing this out to others can be difficult thanks to the pedophile invocation.
Then maybe I'll invest in a flock of pre-schoolers and a cryogenics lab.
Wow, censorship in 10 steps
ftfy.
Actually, every one of those steps is censorship.
What's in place now is censorship, too. It's just milder - for now.
Also, art censorship in Australia is nothing new. Internet censorship is coming in. The government has even enacted laws that allow them to censor political representatives' reports to their constituents.
This guy is obviously a pedophile, the article points out he has a prior conviction of posession of actual child pornography. His defense that the images were just funny is a total lie -- and other people have pointed this out.
The problem I have with this case is that the guy is disgusting, his motives were obvious and so it is very easy to support his conviction. But with Cartoons, it could be argued that there is _no victim_ at all. And as much as I hate pedophiles, and I do - I don't believe that the images, real or cartoon, actually encourage pedophile tendencies.
Images of children being exploited sexually have been banned all over the world because the children have to be protected from those images remaining in circulation for their entire lifetime; images of children being exploited sexually encourage other pedophiles to exploit more children on camera for the purpose of trading images, etc. BUT with the case of a cartoon -- none of these reasons hold true, and more importantly, at best - they encourage pedophiles to draw cartoons of children being sexually exploited which, as i said, doesn't create any victims. Distributing actual child porn may encourage the creation of child porn, but it doesn't turn otherwise normal hetereosexual people into pedophiles. You have to be a pedophile to begin with to even want it.
Now that this guy has been charged, and this is obviously a precedent setting case - it will be easier to charge and dole out harsh sentences for people found posessing cartoon porn even if it is their first offense and they really aren't pedophiles. I mean, cartoons are sometimes funny and in the case of Simpsons porn - I know I've seen a few cartoons featuring Bart and Lisa that were funny and.... at least to me, not sexually exciting at all. I mean christ, they're cartoons.
It seems to me that they've gone after an easy person to hate, with a history of child porn collecting - to blindside people to the over zealous and really very useless law they've just created.
Ace
I guess I need to draw some clothes on my stick figure man just to be safe from now on.
So ... if someone has 20-year-old pictures of a 10-year-old being raped, it's okay because now the child in question is 30?
While I don't see the harm in cartoon-sex, you can't really expect the "but technically $person is over 18 today " defence to work or even be acceptable.
If you can, what's wrong with killing people? Technically they're already dead by the time you get to court over it, and there's no point in crying over spilt milk.
Except Maggie, Bart, and Lisa are not real people. They do not have human rights. They are not children. They are cartoon characters.
Child Pornography is illegal because it violates the rights of the children contained therein -- the right to consent, amongst others. The Simpsons "kids" have no such rights because they don't exist.
Treating this material differently is merely a way to punish people modern society considers "creepy." That's all.
He was convicted of not staying the hell away from that sort of crap after he was shown to be prone to it to begin with. Maybe they only found the cartoons, but...
It's sort of like associating with known felons while on parole. It's a sign that you haven't learned your lesson and are going to get in trouble again.
Clearly he should have been arrested for copyright infringement instead.
Copyright infringement? In which episode did the child porn appear in?
How the hell was he let off the hook the first time?
Maybe because it was a first offence?
And how serious was the nature of the "child exploitation material" the first time, given this is also classifed as such?
OTOH wanting to throw the book (or something even heavier) at him for looking like that I can understand!
Better to be despised for too anxious apprehensions, than ruined by too confident a security. --Edmund Burke
...defined.
Our species fails it here... big time.
A government is a body of people notably ungoverned - AC
I will drink no Aussie Beer aged ten years or over. Make that however long it takes to get to the stores in the States plus a week or two.
So everyone who owns or has seen the Simpson's movie is liable for child porn? Is it me or didn't Bart go skateboarding naked in the movie, including showing his "talent". If I draw two stick figures in a suggestive manner, is that child porn? How old is a stick figure?
I'll wager that it's the under-resourced that was the limiting factor, since it doesn't sound like it took major effort. Given that California has something like a decade of unprocessed DNA rape kits due to lack of resources, it wouldn't be the least bit surprising if data forensics had a year long wait before they even got around to touching a new case.
Aren't the children of The Simpsons, like real old by now? They were like under 10 back in 1989. Wouldn't they be at least 30 by now?
no, they wouldn't. not if they mounted the drive read-only. i do it all the time because I do not trust linux to write to ntfs partitions without corrupting them.
It's bad enough that partial nudity is starting to be considered porn.
The whole idea of "partial nudity" is silly anyway. Anyone who isn't covered from head to toe is "partially nude".
Treating this material differently is merely a way to punish people modern society considers "creepy." That's all.
As we rightly should! If today we allow this, then tomorrow it might be acceptable for fat guys in beards to dress in sailor moon outfits. And when we start to allow that, then humanity's slide into depravity will be unstoppable.
Scientists point out problems, engineers fix them
altslashdot.org: The future of slashdot.
Ppl are allowed to get off any any "fuqed up" thing they want. If no one is hurt (a cartoon) then who really cares? His business.
And btw, I think you are a threat to society for thinking about how fucked up you think cartoon child porn is because you thought about (and imagined) it. Shame on you.
Isn't this basically the same arguments people make to ban violent games? You get excited from killing fake people.
Pretty insightful if you ask me, especially the part about stick figures.
If dude has a lawyer worth his/her weight in whatever, the jury will get the same or stronger arguments.
And no, I didn't rtfa.
But of course, having pictures of murdered children (cartoon or otherwise) is perfectly legal.
The characters have been active for 23 years, not in suspended animation. You could genetically modify some preschoolers so they never grow up if you want. Having sex with them would be perfectly legal. The genetic manipulation, not so much.
More likely it took a year for the prosecutors to get around to submitting the drive for analysis.
All hail the Pedo Finder General!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UvsoVdvtZC4
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.
Aren't the Simpson kids all in the their 20s now? The show passed a 20th anniversary. I'd like to see the prosecutor make the perpetually 10 argument. I've got no idea the ages on the Powerpuff Girls but I'm guessing in their teens. I'm all for locking up child molesters for life but this is nuts. I might consider the guy dangerous if he had other kiddie porn or had a massive collection of cartoon kiddie porn but a few downloaded images fits his excuse which doesn't make him a child predator just some one with tacky tastes. Didn't they go after Pee Wee Herman over some coffee table art books that happened to have naked kid photos in them? The police will at times bring up some one on charges just to avoid looking bad. I more than once had cops try to find something else to charge me with over bogus traffic stops. They used to pull me over for a busted tail light as an excuse to search my car knowing they had the tail light to fall back on if the search turned up nothing, which it never did. I once got pulled over for driving too fast past a crime scene and my car got searched. The irony being the road was a washboard and I was driving 20 mph in a 25 mph zone. It was just an excuse to search my car.
Well, The Simpsons is ~21 years old. That makes the kids at least 30 years old.
I don't get it. I just don't fucking get it.
Goverment trying to take away your privacy? Meh.
Corporations and wealthy people gaming the legal system for fun and profit? Yawn.
Corrupt politicians rigging elections? *snore*
Government trying to take away the 'right' to cartoon child porn? Holy shit. It's time to take up arms and mobilize the civilain milita and fight this freedom infringing evil.
Don't give me that BS that it's a victimless crime. It does not change the fact that you're a dereanged weirdo that is spanking off to kids.
I'm fairly sure the first drawing of Lisa is WAY older than 18 years by now, which makes her an adult by all legal standards.
What? It's silly to the extreme already, why not kick it up a notch?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
The relevant Australian law requires a depiction of a person that is, or appears to be, under 18. Maggie/Lisa/Bart satisfy this definition by any 'reasonable person's' standard (which is what the law looks at in interpreting this kind of stuff).
I consider it way creepier that the legal system considers cartoons real enough to protect their "human" rights.
That's creepy!
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Child Pornography is illegal because it violates the rights of the children contained therein -- the right to consent, amongst others
That's a strong argument against creation, but a weaker one against distribution. (You could still argue that distribution does further damage by embarassing the child, so it's still a valid argument - just not as strong)
Treating this material differently is merely a way to punish people modern society considers "creepy." That's all.
I think you'd find the powers that be phrase it differently. For instance argue that gratification from cartoons leads to or encourages real world abuse.
I'm in 2 minds about this, but I do think we should save harsh punishment for harsh crimes, and destroying someone's life and imprisoning them definitely qualifies as a harsh punishment where as having a giggle at immature cartoon porn that may involve depiction of child characters I find difficult to classify as a harsh crime. People and the laws they make have no sense of proportionality as soon as the word sex is mentioned. The dichotomy of laws like this with prolific sexual material and the legal sexualisation of children through idiotic kiddie pagents and the like is disturbing. It's a sign of a truly sick society that's lost it's way.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
It mentions that the first offense was of actual kids. That means it was real kiddie porn. Under those circumstances you should only need one offense to get thrown into the slammer.
There's not much to be said on this topic that hasn't already been said - particularly on Slashdot. Sure, this man is probably a threat to society. But my mate Mickey is more of a threat to society when he goes clubbing on a Friday night. It may be a witch hunt, thoughtcrime, whatever you want to call it. But really, it represents nothing more than the upper limits of human reasoning capability. Humanity is becoming reliant on abstract in the extreme - look at the financial systems which only exists in databases, cartoon "exploitation", IP law, and so on.
The truth is, these kinds of problems represent a breakthrough in the way we perceive our reality. They are the subtle beginnings of a major leap forward. Laws have always progressed through a further legislation of intention - prosecuting what we believe is in someone's heart rather than their actions. The more we legislate these incremental steps in intention, the more we realise our interconnectedness - that one's actions lead to another's, that we are all subservient to our respective environments, and that no single person is in control.
This is the path that our wise men have called 'Beito'. And through this increasing restriction of law upon law, which we are realising in its negative aspect, humanity will take itself into the next phase of human evolution.
"In the absence of the ability to establish the attribute of truth they tried to establish the noble attributes."
When I think about this issue, I come to the conclusion that the real reason for simulated depictions of sexual child abuse being criminal is something which no judge would ever admit to: society wants to criminalize people who are sexually attracted to children, even if they have never committed any such crime, and because of their psychological makeup are even unlikely to ever commit such a crime in the future, because society is afraid of such people.
All this "slippery slope" BS is just beating around the bush. My guess is that simulated child pornography will continue to be illegal even in the far future when it will be trivial to produce, so trivial that only the very, very stupid would consider producing it using real children (assuming, of course, that the only goal involved is the production of the pornography; I'm not talking about the case where a pedophile wants to film his illegal acts).
BTW, your argument that he's a horrible poster child seems weak. His first offense was for actual child pornography, rather than simulated child pornography. If anything, he seems to be slowly climbing up that slippery slope.
So, it took officers a year to mount the hard drive in another system, and take a look in the recycle bin.
the other system was running Vista
or that Japanese dude who married his Nintendo DS last year >.>
ass backwards...sounds like a job for bureaucracy man
Milner said he downloaded the images to show them to his friend 'because he believed they were funny.'
But now at least Milner knows that his "friend" really isn't...
It mentions that the first offense was of actual kids. That means it was real kiddie porn.
My parents have old pictures of me as a kid, taking a bath. Should they go to jail?
It's idiotic beyond belief to think that nude pictures are by default harmful or exploitative. It's like saying that, since guns are harmful, pictures of guns must also be harmful. If my government decided to make it a crime to own pictures of firearms, it wouldn't surprise me a bit - it would be perfectly in line with the policies they've been following.
Yes, child-porn can be harmful. But there is a world of difference between pictures which depict simple nudity, and ones which depict child abuse. Not only do many governments not distinguish between these, but they apparently don't distinguish between reality and fantasy, either. They seem to feel that it's ok to arrest people for drawing a cartoon. When the Chinese do that, we rightly criticize them for oppressing their citizens; when we do the same thing, well ... it's For The Children!
How can any thinking person defend these types of policies?
Bart, get out! I'm piss!
(NWS http://bit.ly/bTTvBz NWS)
If they're going to do that, they should at least do it right and extend it to persecute goths, emos, frat boys, politicians, and lawyers.
I mean, if we're just going by people that are fucked up.
In my experience, they use ProDiscover and FTK. It was probably just sitting in storage for all that time.
Treating this material differently is merely a way to punish people modern society considers "creepy." That's all.
Hehey - Let's jail republicans!
It's also legal to possess pictures of children that were rape victims. So what should be questioned is whether a picture showing how a child is being murdered is legal to possess.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
We use Hardware Write Blockers (Example), we're not allowed to use Software based Write Blockers (Eg: mounting it as read only)
Dokuro-Chan!
think of the children
Who modded this guy a 5 for posting a slippery slope argument.
There is a fallacy on the 4th step at least, probably the 2nd, and-in America at least-the 1st (as an American I can attest to being quite the fan of violence in media. We would never give that up.)
It's even worse. Using steganography, any content whatsoever which you save might contain child porn. Including text (if it's long enough).
I thought it would be only a few states but it turns out EVERY single US state allows people under 18 to get married: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marriageable_age. In some extremes as low as 13 for females and 14 for males (there's another oddity, why are the ages different? especially younger for the female).
So riddle me this, how can a sexual picture of a 17 year old be considered exploitative when they are allowed to get married (and consummate the marriage)? I'm seriously confused now.
And just for interest:
I guess Australia doesn't know how good http://www.sexylosers.com is.
Ignoring the fact that the drive could be backed up first via a duplicator, your argument is seriously that it took them one year to figure out the "No" button?
I'm sorry you misinterpreted what I was saying but saying I imagined something when you have no fucking clue might bring point out some type of insecurity, maybe you are the threat?
A loop, by its nature, continues. If that didn't make sense, start reading this sentence again.
The movie. Check for the scene showing Bart's doodle.
Unless you were copying huge files to the drive or running 'wipe free space' or 'eraser' type programs, it's highly unlikely you destroyed any possible evidence.
Shh, don't give them the idea that copying the ways of the Chinese communist party and the ultra nationalists of Turkey don't lead to disruption of civil order and government business, and to general disparaging of authority.
1. Cryogenics != genetic modification
2. Simpsons ARE animated, and in that animation they ARE suspended in time.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
They have copyrights though.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
Yes but considering how truly insane the laws have gotten now I wouldn't trust TFA. Does it say what ages these kids were? I know here in the US they can be 17 years and 11 months and you would still get treated like they were 5, even if you had no way of knowing. And of course we have bullshit like this were we are talking about ink on paper, no actually kids involved.
To me this kind of horseshit just cheapens the charge against those actually involved with really kiddie porn crap, because we have all heard stories like this, of the law going totally apeshit, that you have no idea if the person was busted for something real or "save teh kidz!" horseshit. We here in the US need to throw out any politician who pulls this "save teh kidz!" bullshit and bring sanity back to our laws. Hell the way the laws have gotten so fucked up you could have nothing but over 18 porn and STILL go to to jail because some judge decides it "looks lolita" and gets you for simulated CP. This shit is gone past crazy three exits back folks.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
+1. Why does it feel like there is so little sanity left in the world today?
Locking someone up for possessing non exploitative pictures of naked children that are NOT creating a market for child porn is perfectly analogous to being locked up (or worse) for being a homosexual many years ago.
I'm not as brave as you are though and always post AC on this topic.
I demand the right to vote for all 5000 of my stick figure characters!
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
It looks quite silly at first glance why a "drawn" image of a child engaged in a sexual act should be illegal. The problem was/is that this was used as a way to step around the laws by turning real images into "paintings". Photoshop works wonders here, you can easily turn your real picture into something that looks like a colored pencil drawing. That was the foundation for outlawing painted kiddy porn. And given the advances in 3D art, I wouldn't even deem it impossible to make a rendered movie that is barely distinguishable from a real one.
It again stepped past the border of absurd when it was blanketed across ALL painted pictures. I guess nobody could in any way consider a cartoon drawing (especially in the style of the Simpsons) something that could somehow be based in reality. The same applies to pretty much every anime/manga I know.
So I could follow the train of thought that affected those "real" paintings. It stops being understandable when we're getting to paintings and styles that simply CANNOT be based on reality simply because the figures don't follow the laws of the human body. In shape and behaviour.
The underlying problem: Porn laws are by their very nature in the realm of thought crimes. IIRC porn is actually defined as something meant to be sexually arousing. It does nothing but cause something in the viewers brain. If that's not thought crime, what is? If defined sensibly, child porn should not be outlawed because it excites pedos. It should be outlawed for two reasons, because a child gets hurt in the process and the childs decency and dignity gets damaged permanently. That's what SHOULD be the reason.
And the same should apply if a child is forced by his or her parents to do something "cute" but degrading on camera and they post it on YouTube afterwards.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Some people get into some pretty whacked out interests. No question about it. I once saw some show where a guy was a collector of vomit... but it had to come from women. There are all kinds of interests out there; some funny, some disgusting, some make you worry.
I think we have to draw a line between right and wrong when it comes to punishing people for their likes and dislikes alone. We don't throw people in jail for WANTING to rob a bank. We don't throw people in jail for being obsessed with TV shows about murder or rape or other crimes. Why do we throw people into jail for wanting be with children? It doesn't mean they did or ever will. It just means they "might." There are a lot of things that people might do... drinking and driving is something that people might do.
We seriously need to stop "protecting children" and start being civilized and rational about how we administer justice.
I'm not saying that being interested in children sexually isn't bad -- it is. I'm just saying it shouldn't be considered criminal until a criminal act is carried out. Until an actual person is harmed (even "harm" is often rather subjective) or at least involved, it should be treated as a mental illness at the very worst.
And let's be honest about what we find more disturbing. There are people out there who get off on sicker things than teenage girls. There are people who get their kicks from crime scene photos that include murder, suicide, mutilation and dismemberment. I find that to be EXTREMELY disturbing. Why, then, aren't these people being charged with some sort of crime and putting these freaks away? I find our justice systems are seriously inconsistent.
The guy is fat...
And he looks like a pedophile.
So, he must be one, right?
Your right. Its far more serious. Its copyright infringement!
If information wants to be free, why does my internet connection cost so much?
So here is my thing, the show is a very old show. If the characters were created more then say 18 years ago... wouldn't it be legal.. The show was first a series of shorts in 1987.. making the characters 22 years old by date of creation... Sounds legal age to me.
the victims of this heinous crime? If I was a lawyer I'd insist on testimony from them!
again, did he produce/order/pay for this real child porn? Did he promote abuse of children, did he do anything that would entice someone to abuse children?
Aren't those the questions, not whether he had pictures of child porn? If he actually abused children, if he paid to have porn produced, if he gave someone incentive to produce child porn, then I would agree with you, otherwise this is a witch hunt.
You can't handle the truth.
I just believe in doing what's right. Oppressive laws and tyrannical regimes only prosper when good people do nothing. Most of the people of Afghanistan didn't WANT their women to be chained up in a Burqa and kept locked up at home, but they kept silent because their society was ruled by a bunch of theistic maniacs who'd gladly put a bullet in your head for trying to defend your daughters right to lead a normal life.
That's what makes "free speech" such a sacred right, in my eyes; it allows us to freely discuss anything, including what kind of moral and legal standards we want our society to have. I'm truly sorry to hear that you are too afraid to openly take part in that process. While anonymity may be a godsend in that regard, it's unfortunate that people in free nations can still be cowed into not exercising their freedoms.
On the other hand, in this case you're overstating my supposed "bravery" since I am effectively anonymous on here anyway. Yes, some people could figure out my real identity from my slashdot username, but I'd be quite surprised if anyone bothered. While I have no problem taking part in these types of conversations in the offline world, I've got to admit that even the limited anonymity provided by a handle tends to make the process a lot easier. And while I'd be willing to stand behind my statements if someone confronted me offline, I'm in no hurry to identify myself.
Actually, they're not suspended in time. The show generally takes places in whatever year a particular episode was produced, so a Simpsons episode from this year will have modern gadgets, the family has upgraded to an LCD/plasma TV and touches on current events, but if you look at an episode from one of the first seasons it is current to its era and not to today. The characters don't appear to age though, but technically they could just as well be said to be their age in the first episode of the show plus the number of years the show has been running.
/Mikael
Greylisting is to SMTP as NAT is to IPv4
Your honour, in my defence... GET OUT BART IM PISS!
We are obviously moving towards a Taliban version of society in which all human flesh must be covered up and no depiction of the human form will be encouraged.
It isn't a surprise that this has happened in Australia, a country whose government reminds me of the one depicted in the film Idiocracy (no offence to ordinary Australians who).
So this poor man got a _real_ penalty for an imaginary crime committed against non existing persons. This is nothing more than thought crime, and he is a thought criminal, happy new year 1984.
New law bans 'extreme' depictions of murder, including the murder of minors, the murder of animals and nonconsensual murder.
As a compromise schools will still be allowed to show WWII documentaries, but they will be redacted so all Jews are at least D-cups and are not implied to suffer any injury or discomfort.
Lolita is already illegal, it's the next logical step.
What he did or did not do the first time shouldn't be a complicating factor in what will now be an ever-present bit of legal precedent. Henceforth all depictions of conceivably minor characters in sexual scenarios will be a dangerous thing to approach in Australia. Where this gets interesting to me, as an artist, is in the realm of commercial art where certain criteria indicate youthful features, but only the story itself is any reasonable indicator of the age of the character. Look at the females in Japanese animation and very often height is the only indicator of age.
Regarding the subject line I'm replying to. Cartoon porn is still porn, but cartoon children are not children any more than E.T. is an alien. I'm not going to push to have people who saw E.T. brought up on charges for torturing some poor alien just because I think people might watch that movie and decided that's what they want to do.
Did I miss this? Aren't Mangas just another kiddy porn depiction? Are they now illegal in Australia? Are the authorities arresting every Japanese with Mangas in their suitcase as they try to enter the country?
I believe that the cartoon clause are there because child pornographers used photoshop filters on real child pornography to make it look like cartoons To avoid prosecution.
Max M - IT's Mad Science
So essentially, they wanted to throw the book at him and this was all they could find, and it happened to artificially fit the definition of a law that is really only randomly enforced. The guy may be a perv, but he did his time and this is no reason to put him away.
Religion is what happens when nature strikes and groupthink goes wrong.
I thought the point of harsh laws against child pornography were meant to prevent the exploitation of children.
I wonder what gave you a crazy idea like that.
Tell me, do you also believe that the drug laws are there to protect the health of the citizens?
Actually this is likelly much worse. I suspect they didn't found anything real and they probably just grabbed the Simpsons erotica from the browser cache in order to land a conviction.
I vaguelly remember some website or other (I believe it was one of the P2P search engines) where at least once I got an advert where members of the Simpsons family where doing some hardcore acts on camera: quite possible one of the pictures had Bart or Lisa.
If I lived in Australia this would probably be enough to get me convicted as a sex offender.
Interesting... a cartoon character rises to the level of person now. Whoever knew.. I suppose it is the next logical step.
Well, corporations already have the status of persons.
Who's up for voting-rights for corporations and cartoon characters?
I don't understand the commentators that think there's nothing inherently wrong with the "Simpsons porn" but still think this charge is all okay because he's been convicted of having child porn before, as if that makes all the difference. If what he's doing isn't wrong, it shouldn't matter what he's done in the past. If what he's doing is wrong, it still shouldn't matter. I can't see any way to logically arrive at the conclusion that justice was served here solely on the basis that he had done wrong before. They say Justice is blind, etc etc. Look: he was probably ordered to stay away from schools, jobs involving children, etc. If he has violated that, he would be charged with breaking parole or something similar (whatever the antipodean analogue thereof is) and we would never hear about him. Instead, this is something it appears he was not told not to do, is not normally illegal, and wouldn't be considered wrong if someone else did it... but yet he's being charged with a crime ONLY because he had committed a previous crime. I can't see this as anything other than the Australian authorities on a witch hunt to target anyone classified as a "pedophile". I (admittedly) don't know much about Australian law and politics, but if this were the US, it would almost undoubtedly be some prosecuting attorney wanting to demonstrate that they are "tough on crime" to further their career. On the other hand, since I having a daughter a little over a year ago, part of me can completely understand the knee-jerk reaction against pedophiles (if anyone hurt my daughter, I can't say what I would do to them)... but I just can't see having that reaction against this guy. I don't think he hurt anyone here. He may have contributed to hurting minors in the past, but it appears he's served his time for that. The law says he's served his time and that's over with (if you want to argue that he should have been punished more, go ahead, but that's irrelevant to the case at hand). He apparently hasn't hurt anyone since. There's no reason this should be held against him. In short: I've seen a few Simpson's porn pics in my day. Most everyone who's been around on the internet this long has. I've seen most every cartoon, tv show, comic, book, etc Rule 34'ed. I laughed and continued my day. I don't think there was anything wrong with me doing that, and I don't think there's anything wrong with anyone else doing the same thing, even a convicted child porn trafficker. This is a misapplication of the law.
I was amazed to find out Bart's voice is a woman.
I know one case where the Dutch police confiscated a server with more than one hard drive, clearly too much for them. It was returned a year later... missing one hard drive, they'd removed just one and completely missed the rest :S Also took a year to process.
I can watch the news every morning and see dead people from the Haiti earthquake.
That makes me a murderer.
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
2 years probation for his first offence. Hell of a book.
Czech language for absolute beginners
Now is there anybody on this planet, who, upon first hearing that something like that exists, did not have a look out of sheer curiosity?
I mean we even tried to find out what Goatse etc. was. And it’s hard to argue that we did do that because we liked what we saw. ^^
It’s that old problem again: Intention.
Intention is the line between good and bad.
It’s the difference between someone who looks at child porn, to check if he can righteously identify and convict the guy in front of him, and someone who looks at it, to see if it’s worth paying the rapist in the picture for his “service”.
The problem is: How do you find out the intention?
Up to now, we simply can’t.
So the most basic of all laws applies: “Not guilty until proven otherwise.”
Which means, investigators have to prove it, or GTFO.
Well, maybe in the future we can prove intentions reliably.
But even then, we face a bigger problem:
There is no such thing as good/bad. There is no such thing as being guilty.
It’s all cause and effect. Every action can be tracked back to another “evil” action of a “guilty” one. Until you end up with wars, prehistoric conflicts, and natural selection / fights for resources themselves.
And then what? Punish nature? For causing it all?
The whole theoretic base makes no sense. And only trough sheer ignorance can we, in face of those facts, still go “But he did it, he is guilty, punish him!”
In reality, nature has only one resolution for such conflicts: Separation.
Nature does not know retaliation and revenge. If two animals are in conflict, the one chases the other one away, and done.
The same thing naturally applies here, and nicely fits in our community structures:
If anyone does anything that in your own system of values is not acceptable, you end any contact with him.
If someone does something that is not acceptable by the rules of your community (e.g. country), you throw him out of the country.
One example of this, which shows how well this ends, is Australia. ;)
It was a British colony for criminals. And now? Next to nobody there is a criminal. They became a valuable part of our global society. And the children are not responsible for the faults of their parents anyway.
I say, let’s do this! Let’s just throw convicted criminals out of the country, and prevent them from coming back.
E.g. with a “Wanted: Dead! $100,000”. There is no reason coming back, if you can just start a new life else where. And other countries certainly won’t let him/her in. ^^
If there is no land left, I say we make space. In Sibiria. Or in some crap place in the mountains. Hell, most of Australia is unused anyway.
As long as they can heal the huge line of cause-and-effect that created the behavior, and live a working society again, this is a good thing.
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
Clearly he should have been arrested for copyright infringement instead.
That might have been harder to prove if it were in the US.
Some years back, a guy used Barbie and Ken dolls (and their accessories) to make and photograph tableaux of Ken bending Barbie over the hood of her convertible and buttfucking her, as well as many other sexual scenes -- Barbie blowing Ken off, etc.
It was deemed to be satire and the guy was acquitted of any IP violations.
"and nonconsensual murder."
erm, what?
nine out of ten of the voices in my head tell me i'm insane. the other happily hums the tetris theme.
Why you tried to stretch an argument about cartoons and apply it to real human beings is a mystery. Uh... but now you've got me doing it.
Australian law takes logic applied to real human beings and applies it to cartoons. Itchy and Scratchy episodes are snuff films and Who Framed Roger Rabbit obviously promotes bestiality.
Well, one could argue that after a year they HAD to find something. I also wonder how the fact that he was a repeat offender played into the judging of these pictures. It sure did for me, although it should not. Once he has done his time, he should have the same rights as anyone else.
I forget the case, but some judge already convicted a guy for the possession of "sexually-explicit e-mails" -- literary depictions of child pornography. If I recall, it was a case that had to do with a guy that had a shit-ton of shota manga, and he was convicted for the possession of child pornography over the manga and the "sexually-explicit" e-mails (which contained no images or ascii art -- just text).
It's amazing how quickly the constitution is shred into a fine pulp and turned into toilet paper when one doesn't have a good lawyer, or when the "child" prefix is applied to a crime.
Which is that the Slashdot "editors" desperately need Australian stories for their quota.
Any stories.
Even if they aren't really stories.
It's all about maintaining an Australian presence on the front page.
Patriotism at its finest, people!
tl;dr
rewriting history since 2109
One might be able to make a stronger case against drug use. If the drug is strongly addictive and at the same time destroys one's ability to legally earn a living, it makes it likely for the user will do other criminal acts to obtain the drugs. OTOH, if they were legal, they'd probably be cheap.
A second argument against drugs is that the person will end up wasting precious health care resources after they ruin their health with drug use. Many people who I know who are for legalizing drug use make this a condition --- anyone who does drugs voluntarily gives up society's obligation to give him health care. Even with that, one could make the argument that not treating these people leads to a devaluation of human life.
The weird thing is that in the case of (not totally realistic) simulated child porn, I have the gut feeling that consuming it (for the purposes of masturbation) might even lessen the probability of someone actually attacking a real child. But then, I'm just shooting off my mouth, here. I'm no expert in pathological psychology. And for such a "hot" topic, I'm not sure that anyone who claims to be an expert is actually going to provide me with anything close to "objective truth".
Maybe it's drawn too poorly, but this is an actual depiction of Bart and Lisa engaging in taboo acts of a sexual nature!
>+o
>+o
the sad part is that I am posting anonymously because.... what if?
All we need now is government-mandated scheduled doses of Prozium and dudes in Nehru style suits pistol-whipping heavily armed military personnel, and we'll be in the ideal society!
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
it was real kiddie porn. Under those circumstances you should only need one offense to get thrown into the slammer.
That will fill the jails with overweight boys, at enormous public expense - they eat too much. it would be more efficient and economical to have immediae executions. Given the political climate, it appears a public hanging would be appropriate. Charge for tickets and convert the jailing expense into a profit. All the organs of offenders could be sold beforehand, even transplanted immediately, and thereby create some more social good, lowering the market demand for stolen organs. The state could earn a profit, finance more policemen, making more arrests and executions possible. It could even finance a whole new business sector, by privatizing arrests and executions, generating thousands of jobs.
Build your own energy sources from scratch. http://otherpower.com/
Is it just me, or does that guy bear more than a passing resemblance to Comic Book Guy?
Also, talking about Simpsons porn, will Australia make the London 2012 Olympic logo illegal?
You can't win Darth. If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine
My parents have old pictures of me as a kid, taking a bath. Should they go to jail?
Of course, and you for taking part in the production. You sick, sick man!
Under the equivalent UK law, if any aspect of the drawing looks under 18, it's illegal. So you can potentially be convicted of possessing child porn for (say) a drawing of a 23 year old with really tiny breasts.
I don't know about you but if someone showed me a gif of Lisa Simpson fingering Comic Book Guy in the ass I wouldn't be rushing to pick up the police child porn hotline. So perhaps there's a bit more to this than meets the eye.
And damn, them Power Puff Girls is hot. Is it illegal to masturbate while watching Nickelodeon now? Its hard to keep a steady rhytm to avoid jizzing when Dexter is on screen!
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
I haven't been able to look at the 2012 Olympics in the same way since reading this: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/11/29/olympic_logo_lisa_simpson/ Potentially they could be in trouble then?
there have been some cases of consensual murder. There was a famous case of one guy who wanted to be eaten by another guy
Religion says (unrationed) sex is bad and violence spreads faith. In that Christianity resembles Islam.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
I'm imagining CP right now, I'm hurting so many children ;_;
Feel free to mod me down, just know that unlike some Anonymous Cowards I'm not afraid to express my views as myself.
i'm all for enforcement of child porn, prostitution laws, and drug laws. as long as it includes arresting public authorities everywhere - especially in DC - who routinely engage in all kinds of sick stuff. as long as all the tough law enforcement is on humble people who can't pay for powerful lawyers as well as get "special treatment", the law is one-sided, corrupt and far from justice. laws are to guide public behavior, just as the example from those who make the laws. their example however shows that you're supposed to do as you please, then do your best to evade the law, and that's what many people do.
Build your own energy sources from scratch. http://otherpower.com/
Well, they are Queensland police...
I guess what would be worse would be if they confiscated someone's equipment, sat on it for a year, and found nothing. I'd be a bit pissed if my computers were taken for a year before they found that I had nothing illegal.
If I recall correctly, there is about a 2 year backlog of computer forensic work for the UK police and, even if they find nothing, there is no guarantee that you will get your system back afterwards.
Fear, sadly; IS a major part of why people don't speak up I believe.
Australia does -not- legally protect freedom of speech or expression, many of 'our' laws prohibit us in 'thought crime' style, this however, is not what I think scares people.
The problem is that, if for example, I stood up in public and stated my belief that looking at an image of a criminal act, is -not- a criminal act, most would agree with me. However, when that criminal act is sexual and involves children, wether real or imaginary, the -vast- majority of those same people would label me as a pedophile. This label has many concequences, not just for myself, but also likely for my family, and would effectively end my social life, if not also my career. --THAT-- is what people fear.
People who have children are aiding and abetting child pornographers by producing potential child porn models. They indulge in home porn shows when they bathe their children and offer provoking glimpses of young flesh when they flaunt their kids at the seaside. Outrageous!
Well, I don't see it like that, but with the aid of a twisted mind, I can see how the folks who want to ban cartoons of children might be working towards that conclusion. The ban and control brigade are just as sick as the paedophiles they claim to abhor.
I think you forgot an area of crime. Try again please.
I can do plenty of misschief with just a pen and some paper. It is called fraud. And if I were a better artist, counterfeiting.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
So why don't they make it illegal to possess a picturing of any crime being committed, even if the portrayal is completely fictional? Like, I dunno, people beating up, or killing other people. That should be completely eradicated from movies now, don't you think?
Sheesh...
Sig erased via substitution of an identical one.
The law should really think twice about what it is doing, because it is essentially diluting what it means to be a sex offender.
As recent as 10 years ago, when the state said someone was a convicted sex offender, I immediately assumed they had raped a child or adult, or something else simmilar, and thus feared and was disgusted by them. Nowadays? I basically have to go through all this research to figure out if they actually did anything bad! How old were they/ how old was the other person involve,d if any? Was anyone harmed? etc etc.
At this rate there will be so many sex offenders gone through the system in 10 years that it will be viewed as a case of teenage shoplifting is! I don't see how that is good for anyone.
Those type of images are kinda funny. I've seen them posted on message boards and various places dozens of times over the years. I don't think Simpson's porn is actually created to arouse anyone, it's just for jokes.
I'd like to see a citation for that.
Because it would be retarded in the extreme to go to the risk of producing real CP and converting it to cartoons when the alternative is simply to produce the cartoons.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
It's ok. They're actually 1000 year old zombies, so it's not CP at all.
Seriously. What the hell? The anti-pedophilia laws are there to protect children from harm, particularly from people in a position of trust or influence. That's eminently reasonable.
How does a cartoon - however tasteless - have anything to do with that?
Rule 34...
You know, there's a big massive flaw in your theory: you assume that the folks who passed this law plan that far ahead.
What really happens is much much simpler: Someone proposes a measure that they claim is to "stop child porn", and everyone supports it because otherwise their political opponents could claim they support child porn.
And I should also mention that given this standard, anyone viewing a Greek kouros statue (or for that matter many Madonna and Child paintings) is guilty of child porn in this jurisdiction. I hope none of their art galleries have that sort of thing.
I am officially gone from
I never said they produced CP to convert it to cartoons.
Presumably they would take existing CP and "filter" it.
Max M - IT's Mad Science
The likeness of the characters is copyrighted, not just specific images of them.
What if it turns out that every time a child kneels beside her bed to recite, "Now I lay me down to sleep...", God bellows, "SMITHERS, RELEASE THE HOUNDS!" Then what? What are we gonna do then, huh?
I saw Bart's penis in the Simpon's Movie.
So, what happens if you own this CD?
http://itunes.apple.com/gb/album/y-no-pasa-nada/id111243719
(SFW as it is a bit censored in iTunes... but you can tell what is going on... hint: The one at the left is Heidi (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heidi,_Girl_of_the_Alps), and the ones at the right are Peter and the dog...
I remember seeing it in several stores in Spain.
Actually it makes you an earthquake. You'd be a murderer if you watched pictures of murder victims :)
This "aww poor them, they were ADDICTED, so they HAD to beat their grandma to death" is a load of crap.
True, but totally unconnected to what I meant to say. What I meant was, in the context of your analogy, that a possible argument against drugs is "if we legalize them, Grandma will have a slightly higher probability of being beaten to death", not that we shouldn't punish addicts for their crimes.
The recent case of Michael Jay Thomas in Ottawa... http://www.ottawacitizen.com/news/Judge+jails+wrote+porn+stories+involving+children/2159664/story.html
Thought police in action. This is just a dry run.
Soon there is a device which will sense thought patterns and everyone with a wet dream will go to jail.
Since the prisons can't hold all the convicts private companies will pick up the slack and - $$$$$!
Uups! That was Australia - I thought about the US business model - my fault...
I hear in some countries it's gotten so bad that corporations have the same rights as people!
Whoa, that suddenly became my field of study! You should send your money to me! How much do you have?
Ha-ha!
http://www.beanleafpress.com
I know there would still be a chance of recovering stuff. It's just less likely than if it had just happened and not much else had happened.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
Or a picture of a half-naked 40-year-old, with an undergarment featuring the teletubbies or barney?
So any one with a copy of the movie has child porn?
About 17 years ago when I was in early highschool, about 13-14 years old, the guys in my class had one of these simpsons port cartoons (a single image of lisa simpson sucking off bart simpson, IIRC, with the baby watching on with a dummy in its mouth) on a floppy disk drive, along with other cartoon porn and a slideshow app. A couple of times we viewed it on the computer (a 386 or something) and then all made a copy. I've probably still got that fucking floppy disk drive in my garage with all my other shit that I kept from school. By the ridiculous standards of these anti cartoon crusaders, I (and half the other guys from my yr-8 class) could be just as easily be convicted as a sex offender as the poor sap from this story was.
it is a cartoon.
a colored-in scribble.
the absolute most that should be done in cases like this is to charge someone of indecent or lewd behaviour or something if they go round showing such a picture to children.
Where is the need to prosecute people, criminalise them, and place a sex-offender stigma on them for the rest of their life because they looked at or had a bloody cartoon.
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That's a 10 year old's penis and an 11 year old's vagina, having sex. If you separate them, and turn them into flip art, it even becomes animation.
Congratulations, you've all just downloaded child porn. A police officer is on his way to your house.
Depending on where you are (and how well your lawyer will argue for you), evidence of prior crimes may not be admissible for a current case.
Say I was a bank robber. I robbed 2 banks in the past. A new bank was robbed. I was found with one bill stolen in the crime. That doesn't prove I robbed the 3rd bank, it simply proves that through some sort of chance I ended up with the bill. That could have happened all kinds of different perfectly legal ways. For example, the thief could have used it at a store where I then purchased something and received the bill as change.
Now, in this case seems different. It seems that he legitimately was looking for that kind of material and between the time he refused to turn over the computer and the time he finally did, he had an intention to remove evidence, which he did poorly. If I read the article correctly, it wasn't a single cartoon image that got him in trouble again, it was quite a few that they recovered from the Windows recycle bin. In the previous example, that would be like me seeing that the cops were pursuing me, so I tossed the duffel bag with the stolen cash in a dumpster, and then got arrested standing beside the dumpster and trying to deny any association to it.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
What really happens is much much simpler: Someone proposes a measure that they claim is to "stop child porn", and everyone supports it because otherwise their political opponents could claim they support child porn.
Right.. Someone just needs to propose the measure to expand it to include violence. I'm not suggesting anyone planned it, but that it's a series of steps that may happen over some period of time.
Political opponents can claim they support violence against children if they refuse.
Expanding the age group is also easy, by finding a few examples of people who are abused but over the legal age limit, and then trumpeting them out to the media.
As for step 3, that's also easy to achieve. Someone proposes a crack down on drug-related imagery, makes up some bogus statistics about increased drug usage by children exposed to the images.
Opponents have to include ban on drug usage imagery, or appear soft on drugs.
Again, same tactic for age increase... drug usage among young adults. show age 21-25.
As for expanding scope to anything offensive.. this may be done by lax wording of the anti-drug law.
After a generation or so, the public will get used to that ban, and ready to accept the next steps.
If the government can block drug usage imagery, why not other immoral visual imagery? someone will think
Someone will propose a law against allowing kids to see porn
Political opponents cannot oppose it, without getting mocked for not thinking of the children.
Then that escalates the same way in later generations.
As for expanding to crimes aganist a person... this gets called a "Victims Protection Act"
Probably the official motivation is to point to some abuse by the media (for sensationalism) that hurts the victim of a crime. Political opponents can be mocked as not in favor of protecting children who are victim of a crime, from media abuse.
et.c..
Which brings up this: How the hell does anyone know what gender these cartoon characters were to begin with? Did they have genitalia before this guy drew them on? What if the accused drew Bart with a *a*ina and Lisa with a *eni* (sarcastic self-censorship)? Would it still have been porno if he left off the genitals and just drew the characters without clothing? What about if he drew just the genitalia and imagined them as belonging to a Bart Maggie or Lisa? You know, in his head? Would that have been arrestable? I don't particularly want to defend chesters, but this seems little mmm... what's the word I'm seeking? "Nuts" maybe?
You were lucky. My brother was shot in the leg by a burglar and when the police came in to look at the scene they found some pot. Big deal, except they also found plastic bags which to them clearly indicated that he must be a big-time dealer. (Yes, our village cops (without any drug crime experience!) explicitly told us that a few grams of pot and twenty 50 ml plastic bags must absolutely, positively mean he is at the center of a drug ring that supplies all of North Germany with hard drugs.)
So he ended up being under close investigation by the police while the gun-toting burglar, uh, somehow couldn't be found. Yeah. No clues at all, sorry; the witness reports were somehow inconclusive. Anyhow, they go and confiscate some things of his: His mobile (understandable). His computer (again understandable). His wallet (also okay). Some papers (okay...). A shrink-wrapped blank CD-R (wait, what?).
It took months of his lawyer writing them nastygrams before they gave back his wallet - sans an old telephone card, which they somehow determined they had to keep even though they admitted it wasn't evidence. The mobile came a bit later, the papers a bit earlier. The computer and the CD-R, however, were only returned after the lawyer started to threaten to sue them for drawing out the investigations. Of course they didn't find anything of interest but it was somehow important that they kept the computer for over a year even though they didn't do anything with it for most of the time and the forensic expert (probably just the local IT guy) had already looked at it long ago. On of the investigators admitted that it just sat in a corner of his office (and here I thought that they have special rooms for evidence...).
A speedy mirroring of the hard drive might happen if you are under investigation by CSI $BIG_CITY but if you're under investigation by the local village cops you can be lucky if they figure out how to open the case before the processor architecture has become obsolete.
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
You used the phrase "child pornographers". If that doesn't mean the people who produce it, then what does it mean?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
It mentions that the first offense was of actual kids. That means it was real kiddie porn. Under those circumstances you should only need one castration to finish the job.
There fixed that for you.
Seriously. How do you think an otherwise perfectly decent person feels when he/she sees a child, and not just some skanky 15-year old but a child, and gets sexually aroused? I've seen interviews with pedophiles who actually search abroad to find someone willing to do a chemical/actual castration, so they don't constantly have to feel like monsters.
I mean, most people aren't born psychopaths and I bet not all that many are pedophile either, so the number of pedophiles who are actually dangerous should be pretty low. Give medical treatment to those that need/want it, and hunt and shoot/prosecute/lynch the rest. You know.. the dangerous child molesting psychopath/sociopath rapists.
Ok, mod me Flaimbait for suggesting medical treatment for a sexual orientation deviating from "the norm". No, I don't think gays should be "treated". Dendrophiles aren't hurting anyone. If, however, a pedophile wants to rid him/herself of their sexual urges instead of living their lives feeling like complete monsters, then be my guest and respect to you!
Does this mean that everyone who purchased the Simpsons Movie (which contains a nude scene of Bart skateboarding)
is now a sex offender? Doesn't this mean the folks who produced the show should be prosecuted now too?
As repulsive as this guy looks (I damn sure wouldn't leave him around a child for 2 seconds - he definitely looks like the child-interested potential paedophile he is), and as much as he deserved his first conviction for possession of actual child pornography (I don't even download pornography for many reasons, of which this is one - I've actually had torrents that said "Goth Chick Likes Cock" or whatever turn out to be "Goth Chick "Of Very Questionable Appearance In Regards To Her Age" Sucks A Cock" and so I ran the "shred" utility about 5 billion times over that section of disk and pretended that I really didn't see that - I might or might not have downloaded something illegal, but I did not keep it in my possession once I realized what it was, not just because it was potentially illegal but because, of age or not, what it purports to depict is close enough to the real thing that it turns my stomach and makes me want to kill someone that is actually doing the illegal stuff, especially when I think about the number of children that just "disappear" every year in the oh-so-civilized U.S.A. and that it could happen to my friends' children, or my own child one day when I have children), which is almost as repulsive an act as distributing it, which in turn in almost as repulsive as producing it (which is a truly heinous act - the only thing worse than rape is the rape or exploitation of children, both of which I consider to be hanging offences).
But one the other side of this very slippery slope is the fact that despite the fact that this guy is undoubtedly one sick fuck, he hasn't molested any children that anyone knows of (I'd be the first to be baying for his blood if he did) and this is a fucking cartoon. Oh, I can guess very readily at his intent (and, unfortunately what his corpulent corpus was doing while watching it - there is such a thing as having too much imagination, folks...I've just discovered that and am looking around the house for sedatives as I write this) while possessing and viewing it, but that doesn't change the fact that it's a cartoon, any more than the current drug laws allow people to be arrested for possession or distribution of drugs even if they sell someone a bag of oregano or flour knowing that it's oregano or flour - both types of laws are both silly and a distraction from the real problem (the finding and execution of paedophiles, or instituting a drug policy that works, like decriminalization or legalization and regulation). There are (as anyone who has browsed Internet porn or went to a "24-hour bookstore" can tell you) entire websites and sections of most adult bookstores that cater to selling video that depict young women as being much younger than they are. Turns my stomach, but it's legal (and the consequences of making it illegal are not going to change anything that really matters, like getting the people that are making or doing the real thing, not just some play-acting by some fat guy who should have been shot when he was found in possession of actual child pornography).
And if you go after people that aren't actually breaking any realistic laws (or teenagers that post pictures of themselves having sex on camera - something that I and millions of people my age or older did as a teenagers with age-appropriate partners and just didn't have an all-consuming, hungry Internet to post it on or else I probably would have as would have many of my friends, male and female alike - give a teenager a camera, some vaseline, and a hole drilled in a tree stump and there's going to be something sexual getting filmed, that's the nature of puberty) or are spending your time creating or upholding such silly laws, I have to ask : what are you doing about the actual, verifiable crimes that have been committed..what are you doing about those kids that used to be on the side of milk cartons until there were too many of them for any amount of milk cartons to cover? Why does the U.S. alone have something like almost 100K children a year disappear and n
PC moderators can suck my White pierced, tattooed dick. If you think pride == hate, s/dick/Aryan meat mallet/g.
But you only need to do so once, right? Just use your read-only device, copy the complete disk to a disk image on another drive, and then go crazy on copies of that image. Heh, if you intend to use a year to analyze the disk image, you could even get an equivalent (new, empty) drive, write the image to it, and give it to the suspect, and keep the original disk as evidence. If illegal stuff is found, you have the original HD as evidence, and if the suspect was innocent he didn't lose all his data.
So people put disclaimers in their work stating all characters portrayed are 18 or older. This strikes me as amusing for manga that's obviously set in a high school. It also strikes me as amusing when those disclaimers go on manga with no mature content.
My question is this: what if someone brings out a manga with obviously adult females engaging in flagrante tentacloo and then labels them as 16-yr olds? Do we go by how old they look or how old the artist claims they are?
The Japanese are real pervs and their whole lolicon thing is skeevy to the nth degree. I forget the name of the book but there was one with two cyborg chicks, both of legal age but one insisted on using a cyber-body that looked about 11. Yeah, keep rationalizing it you pervs. But what if someone did the opposite? What if the story has a 12-year old girl who was fatally injured and saved by implanting her mind in an adult cyber-body? And what if the tentacle monster attacked it? Would that be illegal? The body may look adult but the author told you it's a 12-yr old girl in there.
Hell, we could take that back to American cinema. You have a Freaky Friday story, mom and daughter swap bodies. Now assuming mom is divorced and they're both dating, what if they have sex with the boyfriends in the swapped bodies?
I would like to think that everything I said here shows the absurdity of the line of reasoning but I sadly think judges would be scratching their chins in thought.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
Everyone is so quick to pass judgment on sex offenders; yet there are no sources for finding help before a crime is committed. Where is the 1-800 number to get help if you might be struggling with sex issues? You can go to AA if you're an alcoholic, but what if you have an odd sex fetish? Just looking for help and you're already guilty of a crime, which by the way makes it less likely to look for help turning the deviant inward away from help where they are more likely to commit a crime. Sex offenders are just acting on a basic need (eat, sleep, reproduce); they just can't control a primal instinct. Most just need some help dealing with hormonal imbalances, some so much so that they need to be locked up, but that is a very small minority.
People are so offended by the act that they are blind to real issues. The sex offenders need help just as much as the victims; but where is the outcry to help these people before they commit a crime? Everyone just wants to string up these people, who in many cases are productive members of society and can be helped. This grand inquisition on the internet for pedophiles is actually causing more harm as it shames people away from the help they need. I'm not saying the act isn't horrible, but I'm saying the offenders need the help as much as the victims. If you helped the offenders you could save many, if not most, of the victims from ever being abused in the first place.
If I were this guy, this would be my defense...
The Simpsons have existed for 20+ years. Yes, they may have childlike features, but they are all past the age of consent, even Maggie.
Ninjas don't carry tic tacs
I've got the Britney Spears "Baby One More Time" video. Does that count?
Oh, and I believe that in the earliest Jenna Jamenson videos she was 17. It was on the VH-1 special about her. I don't know if anyone has any of those laying around.
Easy: because the idea of going to prison for a small collection of cartoon child porn is ridiculous enough that the prosecutor offered him a good deal.
"Go back a couple of centuries more and they were hardly eroticised at all"
Sources?!?
Opinion:=TMyOpinion.Create(Me);
I'm not fat! I'm big boned, you insensitive clod!
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
Bear in mind that the 12 months includes 11.5 months of sitting in a pile somewhere while it works it way to the front of the backlog, 5 minutes of finding files in the recycle bin, a couple of days of searching everywhere else (you don't stop once you've found one file), and the rest of the remaining two weeks doing procedural tasks (duplication, documentation, etc.) that are required in order for it to be valid evidence.
how can a sexual picture of a 17 year old be considered exploitative when they are allowed to get married (and consummate the marriage)?
Who says that they're allowed to consummate the marriage? The wikipedia page you link to points out that the marriageable age may be below the age of consent; just because you can do one thing that is often associated with another, doesn't necessarily mean that you're allowed to do that other thing.
It's official. Most of you are morons.
Now all of my redneck neighbors can be sentenced for the child pornography on the back of their pickup trucks. By the way that Calvin boy sure likes to pee on stuff.
I read recently that the same has happened in Australia, that adult women with A cups are now illegal in vanilla pr0n. What kind of message does that send to women? That their bodies are so abnormal that images of same are abhorrent threats to social order?
I support the Slashcott and will not be reading or commenting from 2/10/14 to 2/17/14. Beta is steaming pile of dog shit
I haven't found a car analogy I like yet, so I am going to make one. You are walking down the street, and see a car shaped monopoly piece. You pick it up and put it in your pocket. The police then arrest you for grand theft auto. You then defend yourself by saying "it's not even a real car". The judge, jury, and slashdotters respond by say "yes but when you were in high school we caught you stealing a real car, so you must have been meaning to do that now."
It's either false dichotomies, or the terrorists win, you decide.
Since Bart "first appeared on television in The Tracey Ullman Show short "Good Night" on April 19, 1987," [Wikipedia] he is now at least 22 years old. This, obviously makes him an adult. The argument does not apply to the powerpuff girls (unfortunatly).
I was amazed to find out Bart's voice is a Scientologist.
I know this story is not UK centric - but we have pretty insane child porn laws too.
Petition the gov and write to your MPs! It's a small step in the right direction:
http://www.number10.gov.uk/
I'm interested in upgrading my twenty eight point eight kilobaud internet connection to a one point five megabit fibre-optic T-1 line. Will you be able to provide an IP router that's compatable with my token ring ethernet LAN configuration?
"Ever get the urge to look at pornographic drawings of famous cartoon children?" Hibbert: No. Lisa: No. Marge: No. Wiggum: No. Bart: No. Patty: No. Wiggum: No. Ned: No. Selma: No. Frink: No. Lovejoy: No. Wiggum: Yes. I mean, no. Heh.
I also, frustratingly, always post anonymously on this subject - all because I'm concerned about someone in the future (when data mining and connecting online personas with real-life identities becomes easy) finding anything that can be tracked back to me that is related to child pornography. Even intelligent discussions about the ridiculous knee-jerk reaction of society.
It's as if the "Think of the Children" crowd has created an atmosphere of fear around any discussion of the topic. It's as if they're using fear to get people to do give up their liberties (like free speech). I'm reminded of a certain incident involving a Danish cartoon - not to say that the people that foster this atmosphere of fear are intentionally terrorizing everyone else, but there does seem to be a parallel.
So, he has a problem. He recognizes that he has a problem. And he tries to deflect the problem.by using cartoon porn. And he gets thrown in the shitter.
I dunno, if a murderer gets out of prison and gets caught killing people in GTA, do we lock him up for murder due to his history?
The drive wouldn't be mounted R/W In fact, i'm pretty sure that almost all forensic examinations of computer storage is done on a block-by-block copy of the drive, and the original only ever mounted via a read-only interface.
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
No, it has nothing to do with protecting children and everything to do with punishing deviants.
Is it me, or does that situation seem totally the wrong way around?
Evidence of sitting at home looking at pictures from the internet: 1 year backlog
Evidence of actual sexual attack: 10 year backlog.
I know it's different jurisdictions (hell, different countries) but there's something seriously wrong with that latter figure, in any case.
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
I've always thought it would be interesting for a young person to produce pornography of themself, and then attempt to sell it when they are over the age of 18. As much as I'd love to see that one go to court, I'm sure we all know how it would end.
not much, just being forced to manually insert line breaks into my comment
A few of you here seem to think this guy is some type of pervert. Lets get this straight now. They are NOT real children nor do they even look like real children.
The pictures are meant as a joke and just because somebody finds them funny does NOT make them a pedophile.
It's worse than you think. In some countries they have even more rights and are harder to try in court since it's kinda hard to lock them up in a prison. I know a story of a corporation that willfully infected its customers with malware (which would get a teenager nearly in jail and gives him a criminal record) and got off with paying some pocket change.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
The logic is actually fairly sound; if a cartoon character is going to be treated as a person, it must be fully treated as a person.
Wow, that's going to suck for the South Park creators. I wonder how many counts of murder they'll face for killing off Kenny for 13 seasons.
psst... what does that mean?
Pictures like the ones that sent this guy to jail are available right on Google image search.
One search with the wrong keywords will put these in your browser cache, and send YOU straight to jail, too.
Let me make it perfectly clear that in no way do I advocate child porn or identify with anyone sexually attracted to kids, however I do advocate common sense. From his previous history, this guy clearly has serious issues, however he's not half as screwed up as the judge.
The internet is rife with tasteless humour and on occasion I get forwarded emails containing stupid crap like this from perfectly normal friends who I'm pretty certain aren't paedophiles. It may be tasteless and stupid, but its whole intention is to be humour.
Also, porn itself is not illegal. The whole point of banning child porn specifically is to rightly halt a business that is founded on abuse of real children. However in the case of cartoons, where is the harm to anyone? (except maybe the rights-holder of the original character - perhaps this is what this case is really all about).
Even assuming this guy is covering up the fact that he's actually using these cartoons for wierd sexual purposes (which has not been proved) I'd rather paedophiles were allowed to use cartoons for whatever it is they do in place of real child porn. The reality is that no law alone will change the fact that they are actually attracted to kids, so lets accept that and give them psychiatric help and a legal alternative, just like junkies get methodone. This ruling actually sends the wrong message to pedophiles.
The big thing is.
They don't look like real people.
They are clearly a cartoon, and one that is not necessarily physiologically correct.
It's not like he has rendered graphics of children that are hard to differentiate. Or very detailed drawings. It's the freaking Simpsons.
If I remember, Bart skateboards in a scene with his pants down, you can clearly see his cartoon penis...
Should everyone who watched the movie also be prosecuted? What's the legal status of this movie in Australia?
If it's a second "offense", then next time it will be a first offense. I hope you don't have a copy of the Simpsons movie, which showed off Bart's penis in a "lewd and lascivious" manner.
It kind of makes me wonder if one could craft a 'Rule 34" defense. The images being created/possessed not so much for the sake of titillation, but to prove that if it exists there is pr0n of it.
And then defense attorney will ask you to prove that you mounted that drive read-only and haven't put incriminating evidence there.
I am not CSI specialist, but I am pretty sure that there are procedures that must be followed in order to protect people who must be treated as innocent until proven guilty.
You know the saying: "no animals were harmed in the making of this product", well, that's how I feel about these cartoons.
Have kids been harmed in the making of these cartoons? Seriously, unless the artists used live kids doing these deeds to inspire themselves in recreating these cartoons, then these cartoons are just another form of expression, an art form to some, deviant, crude and rude, for most, many will laugh, many will not care and many will be totally offended. But they are not real, they are drawings.
Now, real sex offenders are the ones producing actual pedophilia and/or pornographic material which is NOT made by consenting adults (rape, etc..)
Think of the Iraq war, where Iraqi women were raped by US soldiers or in Afghanistan, were Afghan Soldiers and interpreters are raping young boys. That is sick, that is real, and these are sex offenders.
But viewing these cartoons, to me, well, as long as you don't show them to children, who cares!!
To each his/her own I say. Personally, I don't think they are funny, but that's my opinion, certainly, I wouldn't enforce this onto others.
In my honest opinion, this type of content should be placed in sites restricted to adults. No one should be able to "google" this stuff so easily, should be restricted. Again, to repeat myself, this is my opinion.
As far as labelling anyone a "sex offender" for viewing these things, all this does is make this society one step closer where soon you will be arrested if you have naughty, angry thoughts.
Anybody remembering the "Minority Report" movie?
When a judge at the Supreme Court, decides that viewing these types of cartoons makes one a "sex offender", it's time for that judge to visit ye ol' "Funny Farm" and take a long vacation in a very round room with lots of padding and and have this judge wear one of these shirts where your arms are tied to your sides.
I'm surprised that none of the comments that I've read so far point out the Australian age of Consent, which is 16, as it is in many other western nations.
I'll wait for you to think about this briefly. ...
Right, so it's ILLEGAL to photograph a 16 year old having sex, or DRAW a 16 year old having sex, but it's 100% legal to ACTUALLY HAVE SEX with a 16 year old.
They can consent to the ACT, but they can't consent to the DEPICTION OF THE ACT.
Even worse, with the recent ruling that photographing women with small breasts may ALSO be illegal, depending on how young they look, it means that it's possible that you'd be breaking the law taking a picture of a 25 year old woman with A-cup breasts, but it would be fine to have sex with her 16 year old sister.
(http://www.somebodythinkofthechildren.com/australia-bans-small-breasts/)
How's THAT for internal consistency?
So they didn't find anything, and based on their findings:
1. You effectively punished your room mate (forced relocation) on the grounds of an assumed conviction.
2. You feel guilt that you aided and abetted your room mate because you assume your room mate was going to be convicted.
Why do you feel that someone asking if a crime had been committed means the crime was committed?
It may feel uncomfortable to interact with someone who's been accused of something, but accusations and trial by public humiliation come pretty cheap these days. Accusations don't require verification that any act actually happened, but if you make them loudly enough, you'll scare enough people into providing the punishment without any sort of due process. Your former room mate may be found guilty in the course of time; but, if said room mate is exonerated you are guilty of punishing unjustly. Since your punishment came before it was possible to know that it was appropriate, you are definitely guilty of using your brain as a fear stimulus response machine instead of an instrument of reasoning.
I cannot read your post without laughing at the juxtaposition of your post and your sig. Do you really think that being caught with digital erotica of a child 1 year less than the age of consent wherever you are merits execution and dismemberment in a self-financing police state? Do you really wish to have the same standard applied to you?
I prefer rogues to imbeciles because they sometimes take a rest.
In Australian Law, the "reasonable man" is mentioned a lot in law, as if laws of this nature are intuitive to the extent that the bulk of society agrees, despite that fact that it is entirely unreasonable to assert that one could know what the bulk of society believes. Those who respond from the gut without thinking it through are praised as reasonable in Australia, which merely means things are going to get a lot worse for reasonable thinking people as our collective gut drives the law into absurdity.
What is the ACLU's comment on this case? I'd like to know their stand on it.
Ah, thanks for this interesting example. Of both this side of Canadian law (of which I was unfamiliar), and of how sometimes these laws criminalize people who are of no practical danger to society (although the guy was a jerk for writing it on a computer belonging to his work).
How can any thinking person defend these types of policies?
Most people don't think. And of the few who do, once you throw the world "children" into the mix, they also stop thinking.
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
Really would have appreciated a NSFW tag there. I hadn't heard of that particular company (? - no idea what they are, as I closed the window as quickly as I could), and was not expecting nudity.
I've got all the 12 year old girls chained in my basement deleting my collection of Lisa Simpson pictures at this very moment.
Be advised that Waterston never licensed any of his IP for merchandising. That stuff is all infringement. The artist only authorised books.
This is the "slippery slope", and we seem to be sliding down it. Actually, the Australians don't have the "Constitutional Privileges" like we enjoy here, but the issue is the same. Where do you draw the line on some arbitrary construct that criminalizes behavior? In Australia we see where the line runs. Actually in this case it would appear that the perp may actually be the kind of creep that the law is meant to apply to, but I could also see how this is really a thought crime, and am not so sure punishment is justifiable to anyone but a true blue Ku Klux Kristian. YMMV, but do please tell me where I'm wrong.
The cost of that cleanup, of course, will be borne by taxpayers, not industry.
It's ridiculous, and just one of many serious problems in California. Nothing like legislating everything that seems like a good idea and then walking out without paying the tab. They've been making (or claim they've been making) progress on clearing up the backlog, but it's slow going and many of the kits have been sitting so long that the statute of limitations will prevent prosecution even if they bother with them.
To be completely accurate, it's not that there's a 10-year queue before any kits get processed, just that some get set aside and forgotten for some reason. It's not even a rational prioritization, just half-assed, understaffed work.
If you Google around a bit you can find various stories documenting it. Two years ago there were 7,500 sitting around. They claim it's now under 3,500, and that they'll be done by 2011, but we'll see.... You just have to figure out what other important programs are being overlooked to make way on this!
My parents have old pictures of me as a kid, taking a bath. Should they go to jail?
No, but if they have pictures of other people's kids taking baths, then yes. If they have drawings your dad made of you in the bath while he violates you with a foriegn object, then definitely.
Every character (well most) are at least 21 years (seasons) old. They must all have some disorder where they don't age.
First post! (just in case I am...)
I was horribly scarred by a guy back in the 80's when he showed me a fax of Linus using his blanket to snap Lucy's clothes off and then fucking her.
I am the inventor of the hilarious refrigerator alarm.
Washu is a 20,000+ year old being who takes the form of an older woman most of the time, but also likes to take the form of a 10 year old girl. Are sexual pictures of her child form classified as child pornography?
I'm not sure the courts are ready for all the possible loopholes
While cartoon porn isn't really my thing, I hate to see the civil rights of a real person deprived to protect an imaginary person.
That is a really good question.
Why does this particular crime warrant such a thorough approach when other crimes don't? Last year, one of Australia's most popular TV series was a Sopranos style DocuDrama about an organised crime family.
"Everything is adjustable, provided you have the right tools"
It mentions the first offence was of actual kids
Involved pictures of actual kids, yes it does.
That means it was real kiddie porn.
It means no such thing. Remember that Queensland is the state where someone was charged (and convicted?) for uploading a video of a Russian circus dad swinging his infant son around. We have no basis for assessing the seriousness of the previous charge from anything written in TFA.
That was my point, you are on safer ground judging the guy by his appearance than you are by what the QLD authorities deem to be "child exploitation material."
Under those circumstances you should only need one offence to get thrown into the slammer.
You have no idea of the circumstances. By your thinking I should be imprisoned because the federal government allowed a domain name they had to drop and yesterday in looking up a linked reference to a government report I was led to a truly vile site, owned by some Russian who collects dropped domain names.
Only those not in possession of the facts can be so quick to judge.
Better to be despised for too anxious apprehensions, than ruined by too confident a security. --Edmund Burke
[homer voice]Oh why me???? DOH!!!.[/homer voice]
FragHARD or don't frag at all
I never saw any of her "early work", but I think Traci Lords is kinda hot.
They feared that it could be used to suppress protest or support unpopular rule.
Am I the only /.er around here who remembers
Wally Wood's wonderful Disneyland Memorial?
From what I can see, it involved quite a few "underage" cartoon characters!
Why, when it was published in Paul Krassner's Realist, it practically made Walt spin in his grave... er, tank of nitrogen!
Does this mean I'll be hearing a knock at the door soon for giving this link?
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- aqk
F U
It's like saying that, since guns are harmful, pictures of guns must also be harmful.
Long overtaken by events.
Some guy got onto an airplane a year or so ago, wearing a Transformers t-shirt. It has what looked like a charcoal sketch of a Transformer with a couple of wavy lines representing a gun.
He was given a choice of changing the shirt, wearing it inside out or getting off the plane.
Why? Because "it made someone feel uneasy".
Nation of pussies.
This is ridiculous! What will Australia do next, ban the internet? ...oh, wait a minute.
If you haven't seen the Chris Morris show called peadogeddon, you can see it here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fA07Tw4iEFw
Since Commies as a big threat are gone, public needs another enemy to stay under control.
That's how you get war on terrorism, pedophilia witch hunt and so on.
Well, you have a few mistakes here.
*I* had nothing to do with the decision to ask him to move out. I was 2,500 miles away.
I happened to fly out for a visit with my mother-in-law, who told me her computer was running slow, so I rectified that situation. I had not intentionally done anything to cause the inability to recover deleted data. I was simply doing what any good repair shop would do, without the cost or upsells.
He, on the other hand, had other factors.
He was a substitute high school teacher.
He was photographing girls in class on a less than casual basis.
He had a prior record of inappropriate activities with underage girls in other school districts, which this school district hadn't found in a background check. He had simply managed to not get charged with crimes. This was found by the law enforcement investigators, and would not have normally been released to other schools or companies managing background checks.
He had solicited underage girls for photoshoots, without their parents consent, at locations other than home, school, or the childs residence. It wasn't disclosed to what those locations would be.
He was not a professional, or even practicing amateur photographer. He was a guy with a point and shoot camera trying to solicit young girls for special "photoshoots".
The intent was clearly there. Unfortunately, the word of several unrelated (different classes, ages, and even school districts) underage girls versus an adult, and the lack of any physical evidence, let him walk.
Because of this investigation, he was terminated, and forbidden from working with that district's school system. His file was also red-flagged, so any future school districts who may contact for a work history would be aware.
Basically, he is a predator, but they simply were unable to find enough evidence for a conviction. It isn't a matter of if he's guilty or not, it's a matter of when he's caught.
I honestly hope that this was enough to scare the shit out of him, but knowing how most criminal minds work, he'll just try harder next time to not get caught. Unfortunately, that means there will be more victims, and the crimes may go beyond just photographs.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
Fucking ridiculous.
Glad to see that innocent until proven guilty is so prevalent in society as a whole.
I think there is more to this story than what's being told. local Police probably know more than they can say about this guy in a court of law.
Remember this fellow uploaded real child porn and was charged for doing so. This guy needs to get his head read glad he does not live near me.
It's a tool used to pry your freedom and liberties from your cold dead hands.
Or actually, more like surrender your liberties willingly.
D'oh balls!
It's no surprise Australia used to be a penal colony. That country is full of dicks.
Since most children are abused by relatives or friends, children should all be removed at birth from their parents and raised by robots isolated from all human contact.
Then they will be safe from sexual abuse.
Epitaph: At last! Root access!