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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.
Similarity to child pornography? Is there really someone so stupid that they cannot tell the difference between a cartoon drawing and a real child?
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].
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?
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"
or imagining a crime happening...or writing a novel about it...or drawing it...oh the horror
My God can beat up your God. Just kidding...don't take offense. I know there's no God.
You joke but it creates a legal nightmare. What is "illegal" imagery and what is not? Whether the judge finds them "repulsive" or not? How do you determine the age of a drawn character? How realistic does it have to be? (ie: do stick figures count?) Is a sexual act/"nudity" required or is suggestive imagery enough?
By the ambiguity of the law/ruling something as simple as Sailor Moon could be illegal.
I'm confused about one thing, though.
How can you reliably determine the age of a cartoon character? I mean, they're cartoons, you could say "this girl-like-looking drawing is actually an 1000-year old witch". Furthermore, I found difficult to reliably determine whether some manga characters were of lawful age, because most look like they're not, I assume this is intentional but can't be sure.
In the absence of a well-designed "lawful age" metric, one should either ban all manga or ban none.
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
3) slowly shift their sexuality from kids to something more acceptable.
That's just absurd.
This should be required treatment for people interested in children
What? Just leave people alone. What is wrong with you people? If they haven't raped anyone, you have no reason to harass them with your ideas of what is "acceptable."
Like I said yesterday:
I've said it many times before, and will say it again. The UK is not what it used to be. It used to be the bastion of European freedom, the saviors against Hitler.
At this time, they're exactly the opposite. They're on the front-lines of oppression, limiting freedom of speech and monitoring online and offline behavior all in the name of "save the children".
I'm not a complete idiot... Some parts are missing.
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.