Slashdot Mirror
Manga Images Depicting Children Lead to Conviction in UK
An anonymous reader writes with this news from the UK, as reported by Ars Technica: A 39-year-old UK man has been convicted of possessing illegal cartoon drawings of young girls exposing themselves in school uniforms and engaging in sex acts. The case is believed to be the UK's first prosecution of illegal manga and anime images. Local media said that Robul Hoque was sentenced last week to nine months' imprisonment, though the sentence is suspended so long as the defendant does not break the law again. Police seized Hoque's computer in 2012 and said they found nearly 400 such images on it, none of which depicted real people but were illegal nonetheless because of their similarity to child pornography. Hoque was initially charged with 20 counts of illegal possession but eventually pled guilty to just 10 counts.
inquiring minds want to see
Now maybe we can finally move on to locking up those with pictures of people illegally downloading music or drawings of addicts using heroin.
MILFs with tentacles?
Similarity to child pornography? Is there really someone so stupid that they cannot tell the difference between a cartoon drawing and a real child?
This is when people just go too far.. It's a f-ing drawing, it's not real..
This just tells me the people who made these laws are really in need of some psychotherapie if they think these drawings should be forbidden.. What's next, put people in jail just for what they are thinking?
thought crime
Children at Halloween trick or treating dressing up like gangsters are similar to real gangsters and as such should also go to jail. When do we get rid of stupid police and stupid judges?
Soon enough it will even be a crime if your girl friend is petite and looks young; her actual age will be irrelevant.
Monsters
I'd
Like to
F
The laws against child pornography should be aimed at protecting children from exploitation, not in making morality statements. Cartoon drawings of children engaging in sex acts certainly indicate people with pretty sick imaginations, but no children are hurt in their creation or consumption. I have seen worse on walls in public washrooms.
Yeah, this is stupid. You can't sentence people for drawing and using a paper and pen, whatever the content of their drawing, or fapping it out to imaginary drawings that have no relation to any real person.
1984 would like to have a word with the UK. But then again, UK sentences people over tweets and facebook posts, so it doesn't surprise me.
Censoring art, whether you agree with the content or not, is a slippery slope towards thought policing, which is bad any way you look at it.
This also connects to the "violence in video games leads to real life violence" thing. So long as they don't stalk and harm real children (and some aren't even interested in real children but in drawings [you can't explain fetishes, fetishes just are],
they can fap to whatever drawings on paper they want and create whatever drawings they want.
Should Australia also ban many Renaissance statues and artworks, and those of ages before it, because they feature females with small breasts? ["Obscene media/art" portraying small breasts being disallowed or something in Australian law, some Ausia elaborate for me please].
But she is older than the universe!
What is Photorealism, Alex.
I'll choose Think of the Children for $500.
Is shota misogynist too?
What proof did they have that the animated characters were under age? Maybe they just looked young.
So somebody who has never done anything wrong writes an offensive cartoon. How is this different than a cartoon depicting a murder, also offensive? In fact, what about all those Hollywood movies depicting murder? Should the writers of those movies go to jail as well?
Nonce-sense.
England, Japan, the result of centuries of inbreed.
Christopher Handley
Let's do a thought experiment. Start with a blank piece of paper and some colored pencils. A person begins drawing a picture. The page begins as a completely meaningless object, and as marks are made on the page, it gains meaning gradually. A line on paper is not illegal, or at least it shouldn't be by any moral or ethical standard. Two lines, three lines, and so on. Each are probably completely innocent individually. If these scribbles were forming letters and words, they would be clearly protected expression, until they formed some kind of credible threat. At least, that's how I understand it.
But this isn't a written message, just a picture. A head takes shape. Eyes, nose, mouth, and hair. The subject starts to emerge. Still this is a legal drawing by any measure. Eventually enough marks are made on the page that the subject has context. Clothes, background... and actions. At some point the scene depicted by this collection of lines and smudges becomes forbidden. What was an figment of someone's imagination is now a very real crime.
How does that happen, and when? Who specifically does this law protect? Is the person who drew it a criminal, or is it only a crime when someone buys it? Is every viewer of the picture a criminal or just the ones who enjoy it? How do you tell which is which? What about the imagination that spawned the picture? Would the artist have been a criminal if they hadn't put their mental image to paper? I find these questions very difficult to answer in a way that makes sense for a society. Every seemingly obvious answer can lead to some very harmful laws.
But the main motivation is one of greater public good. A scribble that harms nobody is made illegal because by locking up the people who like the scribbles, they cannot remain free to eventually harm real people in the same way. It's a noble cause and perhaps an effective law (I have not seen proof one way or the other). However it is also disturbingly close to pre-crime. I'm not entirely comfortable with that.
"Here Lies Philip J. Fry, named for his uncle, to carry on his spirit"
In Japan, you can purchase magazines with cartoon drawings of schoolgirls doing things to themselves sexually. You have what the U.K. calls postcards outside the shops in Japan and inside you purchased the magazines. They are drawings they are not people. I know the U.K. and the U.S. are in serious trouble but I don't think they would go this far I don't believe this story it's silly. They are drawings and what's more you can see under age images of people performing sexual acts in any European Art Gallery. P.S. In Japan on the postcard they have a telephone number so you can telephone the drawing and it is a prime number and the woman putting on the schoolgirls voice will listen to you masturbate. In reality she is just a old lady doing a part-time job with a pleasant voice.
While we're in the UK...
Percy: You know, they do say that the Infanta's eyes are more beautiful than the famous Stone of Galveston. ... What? ... from Galveston.
Edmund: Mm!
Percy: The famous Stone of Galveston, My Lord.
Edmund: And what's that, exactly?
Percy: Well, it's a famous blue stone, and it comes
Edmund: I see. And what about it?
Percy: Well, My Lord, the Infanta's eyes are bluer than it, for a start.
Edmund: I see. And have you ever seen this stone?
Percy: (nods) No, not as such, My Lord, but I know a couple of people who have, and they say it's very very blue indeed.
Edmund: And have these people seen the Infanta's eyes?
Percy: No, I shouldn't think so, My Lord.
Edmund: And neither have you, presumably.
Percy: No, My Lord.
Edmund: So, what you're telling me, Percy, is that something you have never seen is slightly less blue than something else you have never seen.
Percy: Yes, My Lord.
Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.
I always wondered how something like photo-realistic drawings of pedophilia should be handled. Cartoons have an obvious lack of reality that makes it easy (or easier) to say "it's just a drawing" but what about high-quality rendered images that are almost impossible to differentiate from photographs?
Is the sole justifiable argument against pedophilia photographs that a child was sexually abused creating the photographs, or are their legitimate arguments to be made against them on grounds that sex involving children is inherently immoral?
Is there any science that demonstrates that exposure to this imagery reduces or decreases acting out on pedophilic impulses?
School girls are common place and in tons of Manga - older girls still dress as school girls in sexy outfits, and they look young - so what? If they are seriously making a slippery slope argument here I'd love to see the data.
What's next, people with foot fetishes? Bondage? Interracial couples? Dating 3 years younger than you? I mean, let's all join the party and be jack-offs about slippery slope.
Yeah, this is stupid. You can't sentence people for drawing and using a paper and pen, whatever the content of their drawing, ...
Sure "you" can. This was in the UK. They don't have First Amendment protections, so the law is what's passed and enforced.
Last I heard, some jurisdictions in the US have some similar anti-pornography laws, banning drawn images. In the US the anti-pornography laws are justified against the clear prohibition on such laws in the First Amendment by claiming the purveyors of pornography are part of a conspiracy with the pornographer who abused an underage child by photographing her.
Obviously this justification is bogus when the image is drawn. So while the prohibition is on the books, I understand the authorities are reluctant to actually enforce it against anyone who has enough money to appeal it. So they tend to use such laws only when they can't find (or plant) any actual child pictures on a target(s) they've raided, but still really want to jail them and seize their assets, or as a "pour on the counts" measure when knocking the law down wouldn't do much for the accused.
(I think the underage are underripe and have no personal interest in such fare. So I don't follow the issue closely, except when someone threatens to post such stuff on a system I administer. Maybe somebody else, with more reliable and/or up-to-date knowledge, can comment?)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
I have to wonder how the judge draws the line between something like this conviction and, say, the Simpsons Movie, where Bart is rocking some full frontal on the big screen.
There's a difference, for sure -- one is funny and clearly a cartoon, whereas one sounds like it's purposefully sexualizing children. So the conviction could be grounded in intent. But it's a hell of a slippery slope.
--------------------- -me, Crusher of those who are Foolish (don't be foolish)
Everyone who comes from a country that runs prisons for private profit can can just shut their fucking gobs.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Australia passed a minimum cup size to work in pornography.
I'm curious, with all these super ridiculous laws and rulings happening in the UK especially the last year, has there been a jump in emigration rates?
Obvious troll is obvious. 0/10 for lack of effort.
That is not how the real world works. Here, there is the law of unintended consequences.
Sometimes the law results in good things - for example, the existence of internet porn has pretty much ended bestiality. Before the internet, farms had an estimated fifty percent bestiality rate. Around 8 % and 3% for the general population. After the internet, all of those numbers dropped like a stone. Why? Because a pretty picture of a girl is more satisfying than bestiality.
Why do I bring this up? Because outlawing behavior doesn't stop it. Some people are and and will be attracted to kids. You can't turn off sexuality (ask any gay man or lesbian woman from an anti-gay tradition). Better that they read manga than buy actual child pornography.
Just as we use a lesser opiate (methadone) to treat addicts, we should use Manga to treat others.
Manga looks to me like a great way to:
1) wean them off child pornography
2) protect real children from being hurt by the industry
3) slowly shift their sexuality from kids to something more acceptable.
This should be required treatment for people interested in children, rather than outlawed.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
They are a jury of your peers after all. I dunno how england manages this. Common law is english, tho, yes?
Onward. If a HIGHER court see a problem with rights or procedure it can fix it.
But. The guy is weird even for a brit and if he is monitored until the end of his time, all the better.
Commission a drawing of the man in question serving time.
Is it illegal in UK as well, because midgets are similar to children?
"The case is believed to be the UK's first prosecution of illegal manga and anime images."
Except for the other cases involving the exact same thing and England that were also on Slashdot years ago. Seriously, England got famous for being the first country to crack down on it and 4chan and deviantart and other famous communities got pissed.
The extreme ridiculousness of this article leads me to believe it is more about political expediency than solving any "Sex crime".
In the US, all you have to have happen to be jailed for CP is to have it found on your computer. Just found, there is no burden of proof that you knew it was there or any due diligence on the part of the accuser to prove anything other than it being found.
So if you are a business owner (one whose employees hate him for being a slave driver, hypothetically) and a disgruntled ex employee uploads CP on your computer and the authorities get an "anonymous phone call" about it, that business owner goes to jail for 5 years over doing nothing wrong than pissing someone off, whereas the actual "crime" was committed by the employee, who downloaded and distributed the CP in the first place.
Where is the justice in this exactly?
How do we know that political authorities might not use this to discredit whistleblowers, political opponents or common citizens who know too much?
The implications of this article do not pass the smell test.
And again , CP is something that is a crime against children, and child pornographers and child abusers should go to jail for life! I am not arguing that, but the stigma around it is used for so much more evil against innocent citizens under the stupid "think of the children" mantra.
This is the same country that inspired 1984 and V For Vendetta, so it seems there's a long running propensity for criminal overreach.
Why would an adult man want to see a little girl's vagina, real or drawn, anyway? We have a real problem with supposed adults who can't seem to grow up. Whether or not you agree with the law, these men who get off on this stuff should not interact with society.
Hey, uk, fix your GROOMING PROBLEMS first, ok? When you manage to protect REAL CHILDREN, you may move on to protecting imaginary ones. Ok?
That word isn't child, it isn't anime, it isn't pornography. It is computer.
And anyone who thinks about it for a moment and doesn't see this for what this is, class warfare , the spreading of the meme terror and population control, is standing in the way.
is it ? The thought police is just getting there one item at a time. SJW are as morally corrupt than gun-trafficking gun-control democrat nuts (Obama (via Operation Fast and Furious), Clinton, Senator Lee...), or other "big shots". Individual freedom is their enemy. Covers like Virgin Killer, Nevermind, Blind Faith are just unthinkable today...
Today's also the day that the guys responsible for prosecuting child pornography offenders stated that they lack the resources and would only prosecute the highest priority cases - leaving around 50,000 alleged offenders uncharged.
So that's up to 50,000 people that allegedly have images of actual child sex that wont be charged, and one person with cartoons that's been found guilty.
Fucked up situation indeed. Interesting that it's his second conviction for breaching child pornography laws without ever being found in possession of child pornography. And people wonder why I refuse to browse porn sites these days..
Just make sure the first picture you draw of your underage-looking manga pornstar shows her holding up her vehicle operator's license (or other gov't approved photo ID). Also, make sure to draw the ID so it indicates that she's legal.
do not read this line twice.
Someone who does not having a fictional outlet. Let them jerk off to cartoons and leave the real kids alone. Dumb fuck.
Let's not forget that the only reason he's been convicted is because he pleaded guilty.
That said, drawings are not children.
If you have a problem distinguishing fiction from reality, then maybe you should seek help.
Except all of them run the united kingdom. Jimmy Savielle's ties to the royal familiy and the powers the be go very very deep, and there are dozens/hundreds more like him in the UK government who haven't been caught.
The UK did this to make an example out of this guy to show "they are against pedophilia", when in fact the UK government is a huge pedophile ring.
For anyone who doesn't know, female ejaculation is illegal in the UK because it's classified as "urination," which is illegal under the antiquated obscenity laws...
I have to wonder how the judge draws the line between something like this conviction and, say, the Simpsons Movie, where Bart is rocking some full frontal on the big screen.
There's a difference, for sure -- one is funny and clearly a cartoon, whereas one sounds like it's purposefully sexualizing children. So the conviction could be grounded in intent. But it's a hell of a slippery slope.
The tragedy is that the judge simply decides, somehow, based on his/her own guesstimate, which is affected by everything starting from his/her own beliefs, sexual orientation and paraphilias, childhood fears, adolescent fears, adult fears, up to whether he/she slept well or had a good/bad dinner, and such decision then becomes a precedent.
(I'd guess that the judge will be especially harsh if he/she him/herself is a paedophile, or has another sexual deviation; because then it will be like a holy war inside his/her own mind, and he/she will feel victorious if the punishment will be as hard as possible.)
Are they sure that they have should do this after the Rotherham scandal?
Seriously?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotherham_child_sexual_exploitation_scandal
Where they use an adult woman who looks and pretends to be underage? I used to be into that quite a bit when I first got into porn. Also, what do they do with Google search results that seem "suspicious?"
I don't live in the UK, and it looks like I'm lucky for that.
Probably at the European Court of Human Rights. Then this will never be spoken about again.
8======D
Are you viewing an illegal depiction of a child's genitalia?
8====D
GG Slashdot gonna be shut down soon for hosting illegal pics.
To the western eye these cartoon images resemble children but in the nations of origin the drawings represent adults. The nature of the art is to draw the image with as few lines or details as possible and to westerners that somehow is seen as a child like image. School girls may well be college girls etc.. We are in one of those nonsenseable frenzies where everything is seen as a sexual threat. The system is irrational and needs to be limited.
A 39-year-old UK man has been convicted of possessing illegal cartoon drawings of young girls exposing themselves in school uniforms and engaging in sex acts.
What if they write a sequel with a plot twist where the girl was actually a Taiwanese 25-year old police woman who was undercover in the school trying to find illegal song downloaders? Will he get out of gaol retroactively?
~Loyal
I aim to misbehave.
...we can still masturbate to the fullly naked, 12-year-old Brooke Shields in the 1978 movie Pretty Baby.
broke the law plain and simple
Appeal to law. Law != morality, so this is irrelevant. If your point wasn't to equate legality with morality, then your point was worthless, as everyone here already knows about this crappy law, so you don't need to tell them that the law was broken or that they can campaign for it to be changed.
Would you want someone doing this with your kids?
Appeal to emotion. Even if I wouldn't, that is no excuse for infringing upon a fundamental right like freedom of speech.
You're an authoritarian to the core.
Some of whom have been later convicted of sexual assault against the children they painted.
Some humans are murderers, therefore all humans are murderers. Nice hasty generalization, there.
Furthermore, freedom of speech > safety. Take your "Think of the children!" garbage elsewhere. Dailymail, perhaps?
There is a big problem with the number of paedos in this country, already the police admit there are just too many too arrest.
Fearmongering nonsense. For one thing, a pedophile is simply someone with a sexual attraction to prepubescent children; an individual pedophile isn't necessarily a child molester, and vice versa. You are using incorrect terminology.
Second of all, society is safer than ever before; you need only look at crime statistics. If you're scared of child molesters, then you should never get into a car again, as it's far more likely you'll die in a car accident.
I fond it odd that anyone is defending this on the grounds of free speech......
Why is it odd to defend free speech on the grounds of free speech? What's odd is people who want government thugs to have the ability to subjectively determine that certain content is unacceptable for subjective reasons and then have it banned. That should be frightening to anyone who cares about freedom.
Imagine you could track down everyone who had ever had sex with anyone under 18 as an adult, thought about doing it, or looked at pictures of doing it. Then imagine that you had clearance to just kill every one of them. Bang. Dead. Never mind that you'd have a frighteningly large number of corpses on your hands (including more than a few that had never, technically, broken any laws in a "first world" country) . . . in very short order, you'd have a whole new crop of pedophiles to deal with.
Why would that be?
Put aside, for the moment, the pedos that go after pre-pubescent children that mostly have no idea of what sex is or why anyone would really want to have it. All the world over, there is a very large percentage of children aged 14-17 that are sexually active, and a significant number of those are actively having intercourse of some kind with adults aged 18 or older. The prevalence of this phenomenon swings upwards or downwards for a wide variety of reasons, but one common thread remains: minors have sex, even during and shortly after puberty.
So, what would a bunch of underaged kids with a taste for older adults do when their lovers lay on the floor, their brains splattered everywhere by the pedo police? One would hope some of them would be troubled by the loss of their lovers, but as it stands, a great many of them don't seem overly-troubled by the same sort of people just going to jail or going on probation (and becoming registered sex offenders for the rest of their lives). Current anti-pedophile laws make for an awfully-convenient way for a minor to get rid of a boyfriend or girlfriend once they have become a problem. But that is besides the point, and also not the case in the majority of such relationships, either (or so I would think).
Back to the main point: a bunch of sexually-active minors would go looking for new lovers. All it takes to become a pedophile is to agree to some minor's advances (that isn't the only way, but it is *a* way). Don't think they (the minors) haven't figured out how to manipulate people into getting what they want. Most children figure out manipulation strategies by the age of two or three, depending on their personality. They (that is, minors aged 14-17 or so) may be too young and naive to fully understand all the danger inherent to pursuing such things, but inevitably they will try anyway, and history shows us that some idiot adults will go along with it, perhaps all-too-willingly. And, surprise surprise, some of those minors will enjoy themselves, have orgasms (shocking, I know), and generally be riddled with endorphins more often than their chaste peers. Increased self-confidence and social standing may result, especially if they are male, though females of all ages are finding ways to be sexually active without losing social standing in this modern era (at least in some Western countries anyway). Or they may become emotionally unstable, abused, or just bored. There are many potential outcomes, not all of them good or bad.
Within a few generations of a Great Purge, there would be many new cases of children having sex with adults, and those same adults would have to go to jail (or be purged again, I guess) for the same reasons as before the Purge. Those that escaped prosecution would probably form the same subcultures that exist today, and over time, an active preference for this sort of activity would begin to emerge in some groups. Some might even "push the envelope" to greater and greater extremes, seeking relationships with younger and younger children. Others might begin to use coercion and manipulation of their own to ensnare minors that are not so blatantly interested in sex. Minors who had continued to be sexually active might grow up to become adults who themselves develop a preference for minors. Before long, you'd have the same old situation you have now.
You don't have to be a born pedophile to become one in action. You don't even have to become one in action to be declared one by the state. Many government
We are close to see situation where having a charged gun in the street full of peoples including children, all seeing massive amount of murder involving gun while watching movies, TV, games, cartoon, anime, streaming, since there are young is considered as nothing wrong despite a lot of documented massacres, but seeing a manga along on his personal computer for self consuming fantasy is a crime.
My point of view is that regardless of the subject there will be a tiny amount of peoples developing problems discerning differences between fantasy and reality, including inability to control there actions. For sure any society have advantage to identify this few peoples and to do something to protect the vast amount of normal peoples. The bad new is that historically societies are close to there end when there make rules disconnected from the reality...
>broke the law plain and simple
So did Alan Turing. So did Rosa Parks. So did the mistresses of slave owners who educated slaves during the slavery period.
>Would you want someone doing this with your kids? Or a manga or anime of your children being raped?
I'd have no problem with that, as long as they don't take indecent photos or videos of my kids. Or try to fuck them.
But then you'd have to prove that the drawing is of my kid.
>There is a big problem with the number of paedos in this country
You seem to be under the impression that being a pedophile is a crime. Or are you perhaps synonmizing that with child pornographer or child molester?
She is a teenaged werewolf princess from the Netherworld. Does this apply to wolf/cat/doggirls?
Is it just me, or does anyone else here think that the UK is seriously confusing the issue on why child porn is bad, and subtituting resolution for the victims of crime, with good ol' fashion morality, which is on the edge of a very slippery slope. Child porn is illegal to protect children from being exploited. Cartoon characters are not real people, and have no rights as such, and I'd really hate to live in a world where even the law cannot tell the distinction.
This is a slippery slope, because cartoon characters have no actual birthdays, so they have no actual age, and there is no distinction between an "18 year old toon", and a "13 year old one", or with any variant of non-human, or un-realities that cartoons depict, there is really no standards, and this can be construed to arrest anyone for any cartoon depiction of sex.
Lets call this what it is, a moral outrage, and not a real protection of anyone, child or otherwise. Someone went to jail for someone elses morality. This opens up the door for more morality based arrests.
considering Tex Mex (the porn name for the Rei Heiroe of Black Lagoon fame) has done this with some of his works for, they may do that at the end of every book, just to fuck with the censors and give the audience a cheap laugh.
How does the court determine the age of the girl in the drawing? That's impossible to prove. It seems like a reasonable defense would be "it's a drawing of a 20-year-old who suffers from dwarfism."
27 or is she 8?
I don't really like the arguments that a character drawn looking like a human child could be older according to the story, but I do think the opposite is a minefield. Loads of manga/cartoon porn features adult-looking characters that are underage in the original non-porn story and (I'd assume, lol) lots of people fap to these without knowing or caring that the original wasn't 18.
In addition there's a lot of hentai where many wouldn't think twice about the risk of someone being underage but looking more carefully at it one could make a fairly convincing argument someone is under 18.
A Swedish case had the entire court room laughing when the prosecutor claimed a manga character giving a blowjob was obviously underage because of the undeveloped boobs when it was actually gay porn.
I don't feel any attraction to underage women and have never to my knowledge seen actual child porn on the net (Samantha Fox's boobs and Scorpion's Virgin Killer album don't count) but fapping to completely normal manga could technically land me in jail. That's fucking scary. I'll have to fap to non-normal manga for now.
How many museums have art by Botticelli? You know. The art with lots of nudes and cherubs?
Cheers,
Dave
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither safety nor liberty.
Ben
No. In the U.S. cartoon images ARE protected by the First Amendment. This was decided by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2002. (Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition, 535 U.S. 234 (2002)). Sometimes our Supreme court DOES get it right!
Thanks for the cite!
I'm really happy to be proven wrong on this one.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Because the Catholic Church has tacitly endorsed pedophilia for
centuries.
Not cartoons, but REAL PEDOPHILIA.
Let's see the UK grow some balls and take action that actually
matters. I won't be holding my great waiting, though, because I
know what kind of swine make up the UK government.
You are really off base from reality to compare Rosa Parks to a Paedophile. When was your last NAMBLA meeting?
This world is going to hell in a hand basket when a bunch of drawings have more rights than actual children.
This is just going off the "what if" he stopped caring about drawings and moved on to real children.
That kind of sh*t can be linked to ANYTHING.
Someone who love horror movies, what if they decided one day that movies weren't satisfying them anymore and moved on to kill real people?
Seriously, that anyone can be convicted for a bunch of drawings that are not even based on real kids, is disgusting and show how little understanding the human race has as a whole for things they themselves don't like. "You're not allowed to like that which I cannot comprehend".
Lolicon and shoticon are art forms that are illegal in Canada and many other countries. However, it doesn't harm anyone in its creation.
It is simply like any other art, although pornographic by its very nature. Two things bother me about the illegality of Lolicon and Shoticon art. First, the underlining general definition being; an artistic piece depicting an under-age character in a pornographic setting. How can an imaginary character have an age? what if its a midget? What if it's a 2000 year old alien in the form of a 6 year old girl? This is the unlimited nature of imaginary creativity.
If we leave this general definition to be the condition of illegality of Lolicon and Shotacon art, who decides how old an image of an imaginary character is? and how do they reach this conclusion fairly when it's the artist and the viewers that are held responsible depending on the outcome of this conclusion?
Also; when does it become illegal. Any artistic image is brought forth into existence through the imagination and thoughts of the artist, which are expressed and embodied on an artistic piece. At what point should Lolicon and Shotacon become illegal? Should we have thought police? Because the image on the paper is only the reflection of the image in the artists mind. At what point does the thought become illegal? What if someone is sleeping and subconsciously pictures a Lolicon or Shoticon image; should they turn themselves in and be sent to jail? should anyone owning those partially nude baby-angel statues be sent to jail?
From the reasoning of opponents to Lolicon and Shotacon, it would appear they are dancing around the issue. It would appear that this is a moral issue and it would be impossible to be confined to a legal position due to the large grey areas in definition and regulation.
If this truly is a moral issue of how people who are attracted to Lolicon and Shotacon are as evil as pedophiles; should we have mass killings and social-cleansing of the population? It would seem to be the only solution if you start to police people's thoughts and consciousness'. That sounds like a crazy world to me, but you can not change or control peoples thoughts and opinions. Mass-executions of the socially-immoral would be the only solution.
Lolicon and Shotacon are only pornographic art forms that are viewed as taboo by many- however that is a moral and social opinion on the matter and cannot be viably turned into a fluent legal position. Lolicon and Shotacon harms no one, and are fictional creations.
If they truly believe that these people are a detriment to society, then why only 9 months? And why isn't this at least being treated as a mental issue rather than a criminal one.
The legal system has apparently found itself in an awkward position, but not many seem to care.
broke the law plain and simple
Not all laws are legal. For example, in the US various state constitutions have laws prohibiting atheists from holding public office, but those laws are themselves illegal because the US Constitution declares no such test may be made. Also, not all laws are moral. For example, Nazi Germany. Finally, not all laws are effective toward their supposed objective. For example, drug prohibition laws and the absurd amount of money they funnel to criminals, so you're not safer than without said laws.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
In the story underage girls are having sex and getting pregnant. Then there are many classics. I mean exploiting real people is abhorant but characters in stories?? Maybe the legislators need a course in realiaty vs fantasy. Next are we going to arrest people for killing someone in a video game?
I've never heard anyone say this, but the fact is that humans are biologically programmed to be sexually attracted to members of the opposite sex who exhibit the physical characteristics of the onset through completion of puberty. All life is designed to breed and breed well; it's life's nature as a machine. So while our culture has developed such that it is considered undesirable to breed with people under a certain age (and by proxy state of mental development and physical ability to safely procreate), it is against our nature as organisms when the line is drawn past the age of puberty.
While I agree that for practical reasons the line should be drawn somewhere past puberty, I find it troubling that the harmless expression (as in viewing cartoons) of an inherent biological desire will earn you a label of "monster", "demon", "predator", etc. and if you're unlucky a lengthy prison sentence. Channeling our biological impulses harmlessly (like shooting people in CoD, watching a good action movie, or viewing porn) should be encouraged. The alternative is either an unhealthy state of mind or the search for "real world" satisfaction. Until society can openly recognize that we must smartly reconcile the differences between our biological impulses and acceptable behavior we're going to continue to have ridiculous laws, ostracization, self-delusion and hypocrisy.
I can't find the link - my Google-fu is apparently weak - but a couple of years ago a truck driver was arrested crossing from Canada into the US. Reason for the arrest: he had printed stories - fiction, not pics - describing sexual encounters with children. He was arrested for possessing child porn. I don't know what happened afterwards, and finding this online seems to be difficult, given the search terms needed...
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
No, a better analogy would be locking up people for having a drawing of a copyrighted song. Because, you know, people might THINK of hearing the song, and we can't have THAT.
It's. A. Drawing.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
You're being disingenuous here.
We know loud sound and loss of sleep can cause direct physical harm. That's the basis for not yelling, bullhorns, and so on.
There is no sane basis for banning words, drawings, sculptures, renderings, woodcarvings and so on. None whatsoever.
The only sane basis for banning *anything* is it either causes such immediate harm to purse or person, or it is so likely to do so (ex, massively drunk driving) that the activity must be interfered with to lessen the odds of that potential becoming reality.
When speech gets loud or amplified, the legit question is not what was said. Ever. The question is what were you thinking putting people's hearing and/or sleep cycles at risk?
There is no reasonable argument that can justify a "right not to be offended", and there never, ever should be such a thing encoded in law. It should be painfully obvious as to why. If it isn't... oy.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
No, it's because they make sure every word you say is parsed by the government. The government decides if it doesn't like what you said if and when it becomes convenient for them to do so. Not only is your speech free, it's on deposit in special government accounts with your name right on them. You had just better hope it doesn't start earning "interest."
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
There's no such thing as a "well designed lawful age metric." Though I'm not sure you were even implying there was. But in any case:
It's about comprehension, consent, and physical development. Age cannot serve to draw such a multidimensional line effectively. There are obvious cases of young teens who know exactly what they are doing, are doing it carefully, and not in any way coming to harm. There are obvious cases of "adults" who are so unready for sex by the "comprehension" and "informed" metrics that it is painful to even consider it. And everything you can think of in between.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
The report found: "Several staff described their nervousness about identifying the ethnic origins of perpetrators for fear of being thought as racist; others remembered clear direction from their managers not to do so."
I quickly skimmed over the article, since I don't want to get all the horrific details, but I haven't got any clue about the ethnic origins of perpetrators: is it a specific origin? Which one? Why such specificity?
Ephobephilia, exclusive or not , is ridicilously common (10 to 20% prevalence depending on the study). Pedophilia IIRC barely scratch the 0.2 to 0.5%. What is the difference ? Secondary sexual characteristic. See in some country people have been flagging teh attraction to underage male & female NO MATTER THE AGE as pedophilia. But the reality is that pedophilia has a clear definition is the attraction to a child which does not display secondary sexual characteristic. Ephebophiliac on the other hand are attracted to young postpubescent teennager which display such sexual characteristic (for example young 14 year old female girl with breast) but are not at all itnerrested into prepubere children , like a 5 year old.
The problem is that in some country like the USA people are mistaking one for the other. They accuse often ephebophiliac as being pedophiliac. They are not the same category, they ephebophiliac,e xclusive or not, are not even recognized as a pathology, only true pedophiliac are.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
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visit randi.org
We're also very good at moral panics and crusades. The US can only copy: We invented them.
The report found: "Several staff described their nervousness about identifying the ethnic origins of perpetrators for fear of being thought as racist; others remembered clear direction from their managers not to do so."
I quickly skimmed over the article, since I don't want to get all the horrific details, but I haven't got any clue about the ethnic origins of perpetrators: is it a specific origin? Which one? Why such specificity?
Because the locals are in a panic to deflect blame, and nationally the Brits are trying to do the same. If they can blame it on one particular ethnic group (I've seen reports claiming they were Pakistani and other claiming they were 'Asian Gangs') then the problem and discussion of solutions shifts from "Why isn't the government and society noticing and stopping this shit" to "Those fucking immigrant fucks are coming here to rape our children."
You don't quite seem to understand what is going on. To start with, "Asians" or "Asian gangs" would include Pakistanis in British usage. They aren't "in a panic to deflect blame" and "pin it on" the "Asians." It is more the reverse. Out of an excess of political correctness and fear the local government and police did nothing to stop the Asians involved in this. The result of rampant political correctness and fear of associated controversies was a practical license to rape and traffic British children.
In short, you seem to have completely misunderstood the issue.
the following link: google manga+japan+school+porn
Real children != drawn pictures. Ever seen a manga/hentai? They are not photorealistic at all.
So it is silly to say 'manga of your children'.
Also, making it public that someone wanks at these pictures is more damaging to society than the actual wanking in a dark room.
Any act where there is a single person involved shouldn't be a crime! There is no victim!
There was a similar case in Sweden which highlighted many of the problems with current child pornography laws. It was a manga translator who was accused but was finally declared not guilty in the final instance (högsta domstolen). The picture in question depicted a topless (relatively realistic looking) manga girl standing alone on a field.
So what is child pornography exactly?
1) It depicts a child. A child is someone, real or fictional, under 18. This includes an adult pretending to be a child (also called age play). And also an adult looking like a child (willingly or not), for example by dressing in childish clothes. One tool to decide if someone looks like a child is the Tanner scale (which was used in court).
2) It is pornographic. This is of course very subjective and defined as what is commonly perceived as pornographic. An obvious problem with this definition is that something needs to contains adults (or at least teens) to be commonly perceived as pornographic to begin with. So one has to imagine to be a paedophile in order to make the decision. Which is only unnecessary sexualisation of children (for example pictures children playing on a beach becomes commonly perceived as pornographic).
The laws tend to get more and more inclusive to include more and more as child pornography. And no one wants to pull the breaks since it will get them accused of liking child pornography and being pedophiles themselves (an open goal for political opponents). While in reality the real child pornography (with real children being real victims) simply gets dwarfed by the vast amount on cartoons and teens taking pictures of themselves. Which makes it difficult for the police to legally focus their resources.
These laws are expansions of laws against indecent behavior. You are not allowed to have sex in public -> you not allowed to publicly display pictures of people having sex, or other pornographic images -> some pornographic images you are not allowed to distribute -> some pornographic images you are not allowed to possess.
It would make much more sense to instead expand the laws of sexual assault, to forbid images of those. There is not much point in determining of someone may find them pornographic or not (from a legal perspective).
One key question here is of course what the relationship is between child pornography and pedophiles committing sexual assaults. One possibility is that the pornography inspires pedophiles to commit more sexual assaults. Another is that the pornography keeps the pedophiles occupied so they commit less sexual assaults. The studies made on serial offenders point to the conclusion that pornography lessens the risk of repeated offenses. But it's uncertain if this is also true for the first offense (which isn't as easy to study for obvious reasons).
Christopher Handley, a 39 year old comics and Manga collector in Iowa pled guilty in 2009 to an offense under the Protect Act after a shipment of comics he sourced from Japan was opened by customs. He was sentenced to 6 months in prison. With real child pornography real children are abused in the making of the film. The extension of the prohibition to virtual children criminalizes the communication of bad thoughts but the same holds for other types of material, possession of the Anarchist's Cookbook for example. There are lots examples in Labor history of union organizers being arrested for distributing pamphlets. So criminalizing the communication of ideas is not new. The question is where to draw the line.
Child pornography involves a real child that is harmed either by the trauma of the same of getting the photo taken, or by the knowledge that other people are looking at it, or by reputation and stigma associated to it.
A drawing has no victim, but is in fact a artistic representation of something that is very real in the world, in order to tell a story or stir the thought processs, often intended to invoke a sad feeling for victims, or to increase awareness.
The ministers are and have been involved in a crime against freedom, long before anybody drew a picture of a child.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N...
Indeed. Observe violence rates compared with the playing of violent video games. Despite trying to restrict them, studies that look at the long term actually find a negative correlation between violent video games and real life violence. You have to look at very young children shortly after the game to find increases.
I don't read AC A human right
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Marie-Louis O'Murphy was 14 when this nude portrait of her was painted by Francois Boucher in 1752. It seems pretty obviously erotic. (A nude portrait of her caused her to come to the king's attention, and he took her on as another of his lovers.)
I guess anyone in the UK who views this famous painting (which currently hangs in a German art gallery) and thus has the image in their browser cache might get in legal trouble.
Care to point out where he said "Pedophiles are like Rosa Parks."? No, you can't, because he didn't; that was a straw man.
Let me help you understand the situation, since you seem to be too stupid to do it yourself. One guy said that the people looking at these images are breaking laws "plain and simple," as if that in itself was a bad thing. Then, someone else mentioned people who broke the law (Rosa Parks being an example) to show that breaking the law is not necessarily wrong.
There was no comparison. Just someone using someone's stupid fucking logic against them.