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Jury Decides Artist's Gory Images On Website Are Art
New submitter wilbrod writes "A Quebec special effects artist charged with corrupting morals has been found not guilty in a case that tested the boundaries of creative expression and Canadian obscenity laws. He was charged with three counts of corrupting morals by distributing, possessing and producing obscene material. During the trial, Couture argued his gory works, roughly a thousand images and two short videos that appeared on Couture's website, Inner Depravity, should be considered art. The material in question depicts gruesome murders, torture, sexual abuse, assaults and necrophilia — all with young female victims."
The material in question depicts gruesome murders, torture, sexual abuse, assaults and necrophilia â" all with young female victims.
"Art" perhaps. But I'd keep an eye on this guy. Of course it's only my reactionary opinion, but I think people that have an obsession with this sort of thing have a problem, and I'd want to make sure they don't "jump" to exercising a more "real world" form of their entertainment.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
Good thing he didn't get dragged to the US for an obscenity trial
When the foot seeks the place of the head, the line is crossed. Know your place. Keep your place. Be a shoe.
Probably both together.
Thats Quebec for you.
His work was in line with movies like Saw.
While clearly not for everyone, it was indeed art.
Hopefully, his career as a makeup artist will pick up even more steam and will allow to recover his legal costs quickly.
Why do we even have obscenity laws? They're so incredibly ambiguous and wrong that they shouldn't exist to begin with. No, asshole, you don't and cannot "know it when you see it."
He was considering a series with male models but his career took off (he works in the television industry now) and he simply didn't have the time to follow-up
I don't know the meaning of the word 'don't' - J
is not to give publicity to these attention whores.
I submitted this story yesterday.
It's really frustrating that it's still on roughly the first page of the "submissions" page, but a "dupe" was accepted.
Note, I don't bear any ill feelings towards user "wilbrod" for also submitting it, it's just that I feel I wasted my time bothering to. And it isn't the first time this has happened. And, IMHO, my submission was a bit lengthier and contained a bit more relevant info for the Slashdot crowd.
And, since I'm on a caffeine deficient rant-binge, where the hell are my mod points? I comment, submit stories, rate the submissions of others (to help relieve the deluge of spam, etc.), and not a single mod point in months and months, whereas before that I was getting 15 at a time(!) and they reappeared almost as soon as I used them up (sometimes even before).
*off to get some coffee and food into me*
Funny that nobody post a damn link to the website. Can I have one please? I'd like to see by myself what is it that caused a trial. You know, first hand experience instead of just reported.
I don't care if I'm wrong. I only care about everyone obtaining something from the discussion.
And "victims" is used in the sense of "models wearing makeup".
If you take this guty to court, how about all the Saw/Hostel/etc.; all the dozens of slasher/splatter movies made every year? See, e.g. http://bloody-disgusting.com/
Distasteful is not criminal.Dressing up is not crime.
I've never seen the art, I don't plan to see the art, and I don't care what it's about. It could have been anything. It could have been stock footage of pebbles of gravel for all I care (can't say that 'I couldn't care less if it was horribly violent looking', since that's evidently what it was... so a different example appears to be required)
But the fact that it's allowed makes me smile just a little bit at Canada (which has been getting pretty hard for me lately, with Harper destroying the shit out of this place).
Freedom of speech today just took slightly less of a beating than it's normally been getting. Mind you it's still getting beaten within an inch of its life... but being beaten within an inch of its life with softer gloves this time.
Isn't the fact that his site is called "Inner Depravity" enough of a warning? I think you could make a pretty good argument that the "norms" that should be used to judge such a site should include only those people who would go to a site after seeing that name.
Software sucks. Open Source sucks less.
I guess I'm still kind of ok with it. I'm just worried about the people who are drawn to this site.
Some of the research out there is starting to show that consuming pornography over time changes the reward centers in our brains and impacts our ability to have relationships with the opposite sex. Some of it even suggests that over time there is a need for kinkier pornography because the normal stuff no longer has as much of a dopamine release as it once did. This applies to both men and women, and not just with visual pornography (reading erotica can be an issue as well). I'm not trying to make a case for a blanket pornography ban, but those who imply that consuming explicit media "harms no one" are starting to slowly find themselves on the losing side of the science.
I guess I'm still kind of ok with it. I'm just worried about the people who are drawn to this site.
Why does the porn nature change your opinion of it? Isn't gruesome murder pretty high on the intolerable scale already?
In the US our FCC makes sure that producers can show babies being killed on TV, but babies being made is strictly forbidden. One school of thought says that this is entirely consistent with training a population to be 'at peace' with continual war.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Elsewhere in the world, specificly The People's Republic of New Jersey, school officials cannot determine the difference between a real, and drawn automatic weapon. (wonder why the US has education problems)
Its good to see at least somewhere(Canada), the Enlightenment lives on, and people can continue to release that drawings don't come to life and hurt people.
Can anyone guess what we will hear in a few years about this "artist"?
I cant understand how this isnt understood. Whether it be graphic violence, nudity or a michael bay movie if you dont like it then dont look at it. Its really that easy.
If more people in this country would focus on things they like instead of things they dont like we would all be much happier. And it would help if people minded their own business as well.
But thats the problem with you people, you feel the need to complain and condemn others just because you dont like what they like or have a different opinion of others. Everyone is fine and dandy till they see something they dont like and go ape shit over it.
And to all the parents out there: If you dont think something is fit for kids and morally wrong then be a parent and dont expose your kids to it. Worry about your own kids. Instead of trying to remove everything you dont agree with try and realize the world doesnt start and stop with you. Youre lazy, you dont want to parent, you want everything to be removed you dont like so you dont actually have to be involved with your children and do any work with them.
Does Canada have something like the "SLAPS" test that U.S. law has? For background, in the U.S., we have a litmus test from Miller v. California, 413 U.S. 15 (1973), that says that a work has to lack "serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value" in order to be considered obscene. This standard is so broad that it's even been used to strike down some of our child pornography laws, Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition, 535 U.S. 234 (2002). Rarely does our government even bother trying to prosecute such speech any more because they know that virtually anything can pass this test.
Liberty in your lifetime
Whereas it's not a good thing for the artist himself to be victimized by the State like this, from a pragmatic perspective, prosecutions like this are a good thing for freedom of speech. All they do is popularize the "obscene" art. I had never heard of this guy. I'm sure the vast, vast majority of people have never heard of him, either. Now we have. Now he's a cause célèbre among free speech advocates. And now I'm going to check out the guy's website and see what kind of "art" this guy has produced, and I'm sure hundreds of others will, too. And some people will probably be inspired to create similar art. And so on and so on.
It's the Streisand effect with the entire Canadian government in the role of Streisand.
The best thing the State could do when people make art they don't like is to ignore it. But instead they try to suppress it, drawing an enormous spotlight to it, and they fail, leaving the art behind untouched---but now with a huge spotlight pointed at. Good job, guys.
Liberty in your lifetime
You know, people who keep guns in their homes seem to be more likely to shoot people than people without guns. So I think we should keep an eye on anyone who has a gun. What do you think of that idea?
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
Scene at future patent trial:
Microsoft Lawyer: Your Honor, their patent on virtual intercourse clearly infringes on our patent from 2012.
Opponent Lawyer: But your patent was on hugs, not sex.
Microsoft Lawyer: Yeah, 'hugs'. (Winks at judge.) I think everyone knew what we were claiming.
Judge: I find for Microsoft.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
I just went and watched one of his movies over here http://www.break.com/usercontent/2009/5/inner-depravity-726742 and all I saw was something quite qeneric. Not very disturbing. Not that good. But definitely art.
Nuff said.
The outside world doesn't know it but we Canadians are actually legally required to be nice. Eh! Ya didn' think we were nice because we liked you?
Slashdot, and none of the "News" outlets even bothered to list the Website in question. Yet another example of shameful and incompetent journalism (that appears to care more about political correctness than about accurate, comprehensive and informative reporting).
I don't get paid and I don't have anybody to fire me so I'll give you people the "controversial" Web site:
http://www.supportremy.com/
Seems like politicians, and especially the religious ones, are more interested in promoting violence through gun rights, war and a police state, than they are about a peaceful demonstration of art.
We need to be encouraging artists like this instead of demonizing them.
He was charged under a law that makes it illegal to possess & distribute material that depicts pornography with a violent component.
He was found not guilty because the work in question depicts violence & murder with a sexual component ... ie: the primary component is the blood & gore not the sex; therefore he's not guilty of anything other than bad taste. It's a subtle difference, but an important one ... it means the law isn't invalidated, just that it doesn't apply to his brand of "art" .
All the puritans clearly think violence is absolutely fine while anything vaguely sexual will ruin the nation's morals, if it had any. This in a country (the US) with an enormous sex industry and where minors are routinely depicted as sexual beings in the fashion and advertising industries and in beauty competitions.
I find the hypocrisy simply astonishing. For the life of me I cannot understand how everyone doesn't see this. Are they all blind?
All those so-called Christians out there should remember: the only thing that ever made that Jesus of Nazareth totally lose his cool was *hypocrisy*. He despised hypocrites more than anything else. He much preferred socially-reviled sinners who were up front about it: prostitutes, tax collectors, lepers, persecutors ... If he were here today he would be hanging with pedophiles and Ponzi scheme administrators for example.
And there's Gilbert and George in the UK (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilbert_%26_George) who like to photograph their anuses. That's been around since the 1980s and no-one rightly gives a shit. They are high profile artists in the UK.
It seems natural, at least to some, to recoil in horror at the notion of fantasizing about homicide or mass homicide. I am reminded of a scene from Inglourious Basterds
Spoiler Alert
Near the end of the film, it shows Hitler and a bunch of Reich VIPs watching a movie of the death camps and laughing, and we, the audience, are meant to recoil in horror (and we do). In the very next scene, the heroes slaughter Hitler and the VIPs and Tarantino frames it as a comic scene, and it made me laugh at the slaughter.
So there I was, whipsawed from moral outrage at someone for laughing at mass homicide on film to laughing at mass homicide on film in a matter of seconds. Now, obviously, we all prefer to see Hitler & Friends killed than innocent victims of genocide, but the laughing at mass homicide switchback remains. And it was all happening within a work of cinematic art.
Tarantino shot a scene of people laughing at holocaust victims, and it is art. He shot a scene that causes us to laugh at mass homicide, and it is art. He juxtaposes those scenes, and it is poignant, incisive art. If we can laugh at mass homicide, and see laughing at the holocaust as art, it would be very challenging to objectively define the moral limits of art.
Horrible things are a part of the human condition. If we are to be free to know ourselves, our artists must be free to explore the darkest corners of our beings.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
The material in question depicts gruesome murders, torture, sexual abuse, assaults and necrophilia — all with young female victims.
Basically, a Wednesday afternoon on 4chan /b/.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
> The material in question depicts gruesome murders, torture, sexual abuse, assaults and necrophilia — all with young female victims.
I'm not a serious horror buff, but aren't most slasher films all of the above (save perhaps the necrophilia) directed mostly at young female victims? It's practically a definition of the genre.
I'm trying to imagine how it could be a crime for Couture to stage these scenes, and a multi-million-dollar enterprise for a studio in Los Angles to do exactly the same thing.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
I'll leave certainty to the forensically qualified, but I would *think* that a site such as described would - at a minimum - not be so much an issue of corrupting public morals (a charge nearly impossible to objectively define) and instead raise a much more basic question of whether the artist du jour was unhinged enough to be out creating corpses for his/her art or was worthy of being trusted with dangerous objects like rubber spoons.
Because making sex 'no big deal' would also make it 'a lot less fun to fuck in the back seat of a car', or whatever floats your boat.
There are advantages to trivial things being 'taboo'.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
Is there a link to this artists website please?
In the US our FCC makes sure that producers can show babies being killed on TV, but babies being made is strictly forbidden. One school of thought says that this is entirely consistent with training a population to be 'at peace' with continual war.
I think you hit the nail on the head with this!
1) Educate prior to puberty.
2) Test, then license, just like a car license.
3) Got a license? You can consent, because that's the metric for informed. No license? Piss off.
The bottom line is that there are people over 21 who should never be allowed to use their genitals for anything other than pissing, and there are people under 15 who know exactly how to avoid pregnancy, STDs, and are engaged in perfectly reasonable undertakings of a sexual nature.
The "age line in the sand" doesn't serve society well at all; on the contrary, it causes endless harm of relative innocents, in the sense that they certainly were harming no one, including themselves.
It should be valid as soon as she understands the potential consequences, just like anything else. Informed in the metric. Not your "horror" at contemplating something YOU wouldn't do. Females -- most definitely including teens -- regularly have surgery done on their ladyparts, and for that matter, they pin and pierce and otherwise muck about with their faces, too. As do fellows. Others like whippings, etc. I am MUCH more comfortable with them having the choice to engage in such things, than I am with YOU having the option to tell them they can't.
Funny thing, but I just don't see where you have the right to not be offended, or along another line, where you got the right to tell others what they may or may not do to and with their own bodies, presuming it doesn't, as a founding father put it, "break your leg or pick your pocket." It seems to me, in fact, that YOU and people like you are the problem, insofar as there actually is one.
No, actually we're talking about Canada, which no more has free speech than any other place that has laws that can punish you for what you say, paint, sculpt, perform an imitation of, write, etc.
And yes, that absolutely implicates the USA as well. We're a long, long way from our 1st amendment guarantees because our "justice" system is manifestly corrupt.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
You missed the point entirely. He didn't actually die, if you believe the story, as Christians tend to say they do. Instead, he was brought back and taken into heaven. So some torture, three days of unconsciousness, then resurrection at God's right hand.
The contention is that the aggregate there doesn't meet the standard of a sacrifice that the actual death of a human being does. If you have a counter-argument, by all means, let fly. But don't compare the Christ story with death, because it doesn't describe the thing we know to be death.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
I agree with you in principle, but point 2 would be a nightmare. Imagine trying to compose a test that people would agree shows the maturity to consent to sex. Half the world would demand that one of the questions be: Do you think sex outside marriage is wrong?' and answering in the negative should mean an automatic fail. And don't even get me started on questions about disagreeing with your elders.
Except they can't show babies being killed on TV. They can insinuate it with frame switching, but they are not allowed to show a child taking a bullet in the head or a baby getting knifed.
My kingdom (what little there is of it) for mod points. Couldn't agree more, feel heartened to see other people getting this idea out there.
-
It's even sadder, actually. There were a lot of psychotic idiots back then saying they where the messiah. Everyone just ignored them for the most part.
Sad story is, there never was even a historical jesus either, superpowers or not.
WTF am I doing replying to an AC at 5 A.M on a Friday night?
He did exist. I've seen the documentary http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0311361/
I'm guessing that wasn't on their radar screen...
Breaking Bad showed a kid getting shot.
niggers
I'll reply to you, way down here, because the first half of the entire chain got eaten by the hijacked first post. (offtopic - ever wanna know how to Influence A Thread? Look at how many times the First Post title gets copied without being changed!)
I'm glad this case got settled "right", because any cheap 2-cent murder tale (meant in the fashion of the old days of pulp thrillers from 1920, not as an insult!) would have had this kind of thing, but because it's not *visual* it's suddenly against morals? Really?!
So at least y'all escaped one cheap trick of a trap that could have only turned out badly. If it had been in the US with Shooter CT Mania it might have gone the other way. : (
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
I'm glad this case got settled "right", because any cheap 2-cent murder tale (meant in the fashion of the old days of pulp thrillers from 1920, not as an insult!) would have had this kind of thing, but because it's not *visual* it's suddenly against morals? Really?!
The law actually covers everything. "written matter, picture, model, phonograph record or other thing whatever".
And I believe the current obscenity law is fairly recent. IIRC, it was inserted in 1985 by Mulroney and his "progressive" conservatives to buy favor with the anti-pornography lunatic fringe of the feminist movement.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
Or it didn't happen.
The science and reality based crowd drink from the fountain of knowledge. The superstitious just gargle and spit.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
The camera's looking at the guy with the guy when he pulls the trigger. Then it goes to the kid who just falls over. That's a frame switch. It's not the same as having the gun and the kid in the same view when the gun goes off.
Psychopathy as art? Rather than decide if it is "art" or not, question why it needs to exist.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
I prefer this one : http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1958067/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1
WTF am I doing replying to an AC at 5 A.M on a Friday night?
Bloody Lucky or Prevent-it.ca? Those showed some rather graphic images posed as public service announcements? For a moment, I thought the article was about those and not some pervert with a snuff fetish.
We can license for driving vehicles, we can license for guns, we can license for hair styling, we can license for plumbing... surely we can license for sex.
Such a test would need to be about realities, actions and consequences. The financial consequences of single parenthood vs. both parents should certainly be addressed. I think that could be made to more or less satisfy the religo-tards; it is, after all, a fact that leans pretty hard their way in a society that (for some reason I *really* don't get) still thinks marriage has value as opposed to an informal partnership that amounts to staying together because you actually *want* to.
The fact that we don't license and use such abject stupidity as hard age metrics tells me flat out that we don't really care about the problem. It's mostly about pumping the public for electability; there's very little actual interest in the welfare of young people.
Luckily, my kids are grown, and it's no longer an issue for me either way. They'll have to take care of their own kids. Me, I just have to tolerate watching the rest of society shoot itself in the foot repeatedly, while wondering plaintively why their foot hurts.
What are we discussing here??? YOU SUCK!