Manga Images Depicting Children Lead to Conviction in UK 475
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.
Good riddance. (Score:5, Funny)
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Weird Al [youtube.com] is goin' to jail?
Re:Good riddance. (Score:5, Insightful)
or imagining a crime happening...or writing a novel about it...or drawing it...oh the horror
Already happened in the USA (Score:3)
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...
Re:Good riddance. (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually Government ministers have stated a desire to extend the law to written materials.
Since the laws on images include scenes of bondage, the moment they extend it to written materials I'm bringing around 400,000 private prosecutions against women that own 50 Shades.
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Does the law also ban books or stories about underage sex acts?
No, I don't think so. According to Wikipedia, UK child porn laws [wikipedia.org] only ban indecent images of children under 18, where "image" can apparently be a drawing, as well as a photo. A book or story without images is not illegal. But IANAL.
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No, I don't think so. According to Wikipedia, UK child porn laws only ban indecent images of children under 18, where "image" can apparently be a drawing, as well as a photo.
It should probably be pointed out that this is the primary difference between UK and US in this regard.
Some years back -- maybe 6 or 8 years ago, I guessing, I don't really remember -- they U.S. Supreme Court ruled that for something to be "child pornography" it had to be recordings of real children (i.e., picture or video) and it had to be real pornography.
Now, IANAL either, but I believe States can regulate something like that as "obscene" material, but not child pornography. And they would risk the
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Moral Imperialism (Score:5, Insightful)
Similarity to child pornography? Is there really someone so stupid that they cannot tell the difference between a cartoon drawing and a real child?
Re: Moral Imperialism (Score:5, Insightful)
There appears to be an entire united kingdom whose legal system is populated with such people.
Re: Moral Imperialism (Score:5, Interesting)
Just FYI, the rule against illegal cartoons exists in the USA too. The Supreme Court struck down attempts to use CP laws in this way as being obvious nonsense, so Congress just went ahead and amended the law to make it explicitly illegal as opposed to implicitly illegal.
Unfortunately a lot of crap like this ends up being brought into otherwise sane legal systems thanks to pressure from the USA to "upgrade" national laws to meet the "latest standards". Japan has been pressured for years to tighten its CP laws, being publicly named and shamed etc - the primary justification for not doing so was fear of false positives. Like this one. And like the notorious cases where two teenagers can legally have sex but not photograph themselves doing it.
Fact is, politicians love being able to say they made the law tougher on paedophiles. It's a sure popularity winner. So it's inevitable you end up with idiocy like this.
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so Congress just went ahead and amended the law to make it explicitly illegal as opposed to implicitly illegal.
How is that anything but a violation of the first amendment?
Re: Moral Imperialism (Score:4, Insightful)
The bill of rights is a myth. The very people who they are supposed to limit are the ones in charge of interpreting said limits. As soon as the supreme court gave itself the power of judicial review (despite no such power existing in the constitution), it was over. The US constitution was an interesting experiment, but it failed.
Re: Moral Imperialism (Score:5, Insightful)
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"This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding. . . . [A]ll executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution." If the constitution is the supreme law, and the judges must support its supremacy, the only way I can perceive of upholding this is by way of judicial review. It might not be explicit in the constitution, but this is a very strong implication.
<emotion>
Fuck your implication because
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
It is The People's job, or perhaps the State's, to decide if abridging our freedom of speech, including yelling "Fire!" in a crowded theater, is Constitutional.
Since the 10th is being ignored, then who the fuck cares what the rest of the Constitution says? The Constitution says that no law can abridge the freedom of speech. But we now have definitions of what is "protected speech" and what is not. Some of it is covered by the Constitution, and some is not.
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Only because they said so (Marbury v. Madson, ca 1802 -- they made it up out of thin air.) The constitution says they have judicial power. That's guilty or not, assign punishment if so. Not "the law is whatever I think it is today."
The constitution is crystal clear about many things that the judges, in explicit violation of their oaths, have made mean something else entirely. Previous poster is quite correct. The experime
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The very people who they are supposed to limit are the ones in charge of interpreting said limits. As soon as the supreme court gave itself the power of judicial review (despite no such power existing in the constitution), it was over.
I don't understand the logic here. The Framers intended a set of checks and balances. If the Supreme Court lacks judicial review, doesn't that mean Congress has basically unchecked power to pass unconstitutional laws? How could a set of rights last very long when the people could just elect a bunch of representatives who might ignore those rights, e.g. in a time a crisis?
SCOTUS may be far from perfect, but they did in fact hold some lines checking federal power until roughly 1936-38, after which they b
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It's perfectly reasonable for the Supreme Court to have the power to review laws and strike them down as unconstitutional. The problem enters when they presume to declare a law constitutional, or when failure to strike down a law is taken as affirmation of the same. An unconstitutional law is void whether or not the Supreme Court rules against it. It is not within Congress's authority to pass such a law, nor does the Executive have the authority to enforce it.
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I hate to burst your bubble, but even as a Canadian I know that's total crap. Only the legislature is required to have powers enumerated. The executive and judicial powers are not required to be enumerated, they are legislated. Article 3 Section 1 of the Constitution gives the power to the Supreme Court. "The judicial Power" - not part of it but the power in its entirety is given. Section 2 of the same enumerates some of them them and includes "all Cases, in Law and Equity, arising under this Constitut
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Firstly: the first amendment is for the painter of the cartoon, not for the one watching it.
Secondly: the first amendment refers to the USA not to the UK.
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Firstly: the first amendment is for the painter of the cartoon, not for the one watching it.
That's nonsense. Part of being able to send messages is allowing others to receive them. Obviously the government can't just destroy people because you spoke in front of them. There's no point to free speech if others aren't allowed to hear you speak.
But even if that weren't true, in the US, the government can only do what the constitution says it can. If the constitution doesn't say the government can prohibit this material, then it can't.
Secondly: the first amendment refers to the USA not to the UK.
You failed to read the post I responded to.
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If the constitution doesn't say the government can prohibit this material, then it can't. :D
However the constitution does not say that
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So that means a person can paint such images, but cannot look at them or possess them? That does not make any sense. Like most of these laws.
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It is like having a file under unix with an x flag but no r flag :D
Yeah, ofc it does not make real sense.
Re: Moral Imperialism (Score:5, Informative)
Just FYI, the rule against illegal cartoons exists in the USA too. The Supreme Court struck down attempts to use CP laws in this way as being obvious nonsense, so Congress just went ahead and amended the law to make it explicitly illegal as opposed to implicitly illegal.
You apparently missed some important details. I have highlighted them for you.
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Follow the thread. Remember discussion starts with the article but rarely ends there.
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In other words, you're opposed to freedom of speech and want government thugs to be able to ban material that is subjectively deemed to be 'bad' by a subjectively vague group of 'sane' people for the ambiguous "public good" that you can't even scientifically define. Good to know that 'the land of the free and the home of the brave' is willing to sacrifice fundamental liberties for safety, and false safety at that.
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All law is subjective. The test for this stuff is well-hammered-out. To restrict something, the state must show both that there's a compelling state interest in doing so, and that the ban is the least-restrictive means of achieving that. Restricting commercial sale of something "harmful" is completely within the remit of government. That's different from outlawing the content itself, which is the core of the First Amendment. "Time, place, and manner" restrictions are legit.
This is much like the distinc
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Repeated assertions are not argument. "Yes they are!" "No they aren't!"
There's a world of difference between content-based restrictions and time-place-manner based restrictions - do you agree? Are you okay with someone shouting their political speech through a bullhorn at your window at 3AM? Their non-political speech?
Do you believe "dry counties" are constitutional? Can a local government restrict the sale of anything the democratic process dislikes? No restrictions at all? Remember, what's "subjecti
Re: Moral Imperialism (Score:4)
To a court, what is "scientifically valid" other than the testimony of scientists as to what's valid?
The puritanical obscenity laws were backed with "scientific studies" showing that society would collapse if people watched porn, or some such BS. Ultimately, the court just injected its own personal opinions. The current extreme laws against CP (beyond obscenity laws) are based on just such an argument of direct harm due to the content - an argument the SCOTUS bought. Are those arguments actually compelling enough to justify banning CP under obscenity laws (a lower bar)? I dunno, I didn't spend that much time looking into it, but it's not unreasonable to think it might be so. Does that extend to drawings? I'm highly skeptical.
If they can show true harm, then I think it's fine to ban it. I thought we were talking about obscenity laws, though.
Sure, which keeps coming back to "who decides" what's true harm. That's the heart of all government corruption - the power given to the decider. As much as the US does some screwy stuff from time to time, our systems for deciding have proven pretty robust, relative to all the systems we know about. If the system occasionally spits out stuff like obscenity laws, well, there are far worse failure modes, like what just happened in the UK.
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Actually... No.
Well to be perfectly honest... I'm not that familiar with the american arguments on this subject, but I'm familiar with an argument by european proponents of this type of legislation... And that argument has nothing to do with the harm of the material itself, and this is specifically why their argument simply cannot be defeated.
Why?
Because they don't argue that the material itself causes harm. They argue that the material itself IS THE HARM. (sorry for the capitals, no \emph here)
When they lo
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You seem intent on missing the point that it doesn't matter what system you come up with, that system must be performed by people, and people are very corruptible. If you need the opinion of scientists, then completely complicit scientists will be found or created. There's ultimately no way to makes laws other than "those in power decide," as every system is really that system under the covers - by the definition of "power."
Anyhow, on the subject of obscenity laws, if you haven't seen this yet you'll appr
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Re: Moral Imperialism (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't forget Australia's law where if the person looks young, it counts as CP. It effectively puts a ban on taking pictures of women with small breasts (if they're in their 20s or otherwise look young). http://theweek.com/article/ind... [theweek.com]
What this means is that it would be illegal to take pictures of a young-ish looking 24 year old with A-cups, but perfectly legal to have sex with her 16-year-old sister as long as you didn't take pictures of it.
Remember, laws always exactly reflect what is moral. If it's not illegal, it's not immoral!
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Just FYI, the rule against illegal cartoons exists in the USA too. The Supreme Court struck down attempts to use CP laws in this way as being obvious nonsense, so Congress just went ahead and amended the law to make it explicitly illegal as opposed to implicitly illegal.
True. Then the U.S. Supreme Court struck down [wikipedia.org] that law as well.
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No. But such is the moral panic over child molestation in the UK that no-one dare stand up and defend him.
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Well, yeah, when BBC's Jimmy Savvile, the media just didn't have any nonces left to stand up for the oppressed.
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No. But such is the moral panic over child molestation in the UK that no-one dare stand up and defend him.
I don't think you could build a good case that "moral panic" over child molestation is the biggest problem the UK has in this regard, viz:
Rotherham child abuse scandal: 1,400 children exploited, report finds [bbc.com]
Prof Jay said: "No-one knows the true scale of child sexual exploitation in Rotherham over the years. Our conservative estimate is that approximately 1,400 children were sexually exploited over the full inquiry period, from 1997 to 2013."
Revealing details of the inquiry's findings, Prof Jay said: "It is hard to describe the appalling nature of the abuse that child victims suffered."
The inquiry team found examples of "children who had been doused in petrol and threatened with being set alight, threatened with guns, made to witness brutally violent rapes and threatened they would be next if they told anyone ....
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."
Failures by those charged with protecting children happened despite three reports between 2002 and 2006 which both the council and police were aware of, and "which could not have been clearer in the description of the situation in Rotherham".
No indeed, it appears the "moral panic" you are looking for is not about child molestation.
Rotherham child sexual abuse scandal is tip of iceberg, says police chief [theguardian.com]
There will be more Rotherham-style child sexual exploitation scandals unearthed in the coming months as the “stone is lifted” on the scale of abuse perpetrated on the young, one of Britain’s top police officers has warned.
Children are being abused an hour after being groomed online, Rotherham sex abuse scandal expert warns [telegraph.co.uk]
Paedophiles are abusing children in real life within an hour of grooming them online, the professor who led the investigation into the Rotherham sex abuse scandal has warned.
Professor Alexis Jay, who compiled a report into how gangs of mainly Asian men groomed, terrorised and abused 1,400 girls as young as 11 in Rotherham over a 16-year period said sex abuse went on undetected in many other areas across Britain.
Re:Moral Imperialism (Score:4, Interesting)
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So the "'net neutrality" rules every idiot is screaming for means that ISPs will be required to scan for and block this from being transmitted over their networks.
That doesn't follow. Net neutrality doesn't mean they have to stop 'illegal' content from being transmitted.
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So the "'net neutrality" rules every idiot is screaming for means that ISPs will be required to scan for and block this from being transmitted over their networks.
That doesn't follow. Net neutrality doesn't mean they have to stop 'illegal' content from being transmitted.
It's very specific, in many sections, that the neutrality rules apply only to "lawful content". That phrase is all over the proposed rules, as well as the even more troubling phrase "lawful network traffic". So... how do you distinguish between what is "lawful" or not? You must inspect the content (or the protocol, in the case of "lawful network traffic"). The devil is always in the details.
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Right, net neutrality requires you not to discriminate against lawful content. If it is silent on the issue of unlawful content, that would mean you have the option of discriminating against it. It does not mean you're somehow "required" to discriminate against it. You're conflating net neutrality's actual requirement with its inverse.
You assume everythi
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But weren't CP laws enacted to protect victims? and to punish those that abuse said victims?
Since there are no victims, doesn't seem to me to even meet the common-sense definition of a crime.
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The problem is that there are a lot of things some people, sometimes even many people, find not acceptable, but it is still a very bad idea to make them criminal. For example, there are lots of people that do not like atheists. Make that criminal?
And then there is the little problem that all these arguments are based on escalation (i.e. first they look at images then they rape children), while substitution also has merit (i.e. instead of raping children, they just look at pictures). Without a solid scientif
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It sounds like you are thinking the drawings encourage pedophilia when perhaps, allowing drawings protects real children. There is probably a genetic predisposition or sometimes, organic brain diseases that in most cases, won't be "cured" ( http://articles.latimes.com/20... [latimes.com] ). So, if instead we look toward harm reduction, using drawings is a perfect solution because it gives an outlet that harms absolutely nobody and may well serve as an alternative to actually hurting kids for those infected with this di
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"to arouse lust towards children" One could equally say that this satisfies said lust without, you know, involving any real children...
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Excellent. I think we should also throw the same book at all those women in possession of smutty image-featuring faux-rape novels. While at it, we should also prosecute every single store selling them.
Because you know, just because it's faux rape and just because so many women find it enjoyable, it's still clearly a way to satiate those urges to rape. Which is clearly something society finds unacceptable. So jail them all, the filthy criminals.
In real world on the other hand, definition of crime is usually
Ridiculous (Score:5, Interesting)
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?
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If those thoughts can be transmitted to others, then yes. I'm not defending the result per se, I'm just telling you what its like in regards to the possession of sexual images featuring what appears to be children.
Re:Ridiculous (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
thought crime (Score:5, Informative)
thought crime
Distasteful stuff, but should not be illegal (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Distasteful stuff, but should not be illegal (Score:4, Interesting)
The problem is there are not enough pedophiles to prosecute. The state has been forced to "create" pedophiles.
Re:Distasteful stuff, but should not be illegal (Score:5, Insightful)
There are LOADS of pedos out there though.
Pedophilia is actually ridiculously common, going by many research studies.
The problem is if they start imprisoning every pedo they knowingly can find, they will create a problem for themselves down the line because then some people will be like, "right, hang on a minute, why the hell are there so many pedos in prison? Is this right? Is there maybe some deeper cause of this?"
Then there will be further research, will will validate pedophilia at levels like homosexuality is and the prude-types don't want that at all. (despite the fact that some of those pricks in politics were raping little boys in the late years of the last century)
Locking people up for thoughts is stupid.
Locking them up for UNCONTROLLABLE thoughts is even more stupid.
Making their outlet ILLEGAL is INSANELY STUPID, because then it will lead to people getting desperate, and worse, it might even push some people out in to the world to watch real little girls and boys, and the worst ones probably even raping. That is NOT an acceptable solution to this.
Pedophilia can be managed. Very well.
Look at Japan as well. Rape is barely even a blip. But nooo, Japan is evil, all those dirty sick rape games and hentai! Dirty sick evil people! They'll rape everyone!
Oh, wait, no, that never happened.
Here I was thinking the UK were going to not be as stupid as other countries when it came to such things.
I was sorely wrong. Fucking stupid. Completely and utterly stupid.
There goes all media in to the bin. GTA is now mass murder. Everyone go home and do nothing. Be a zombie. OBEY.
Re:Distasteful stuff, but should not be illegal (Score:5, Interesting)
The LA Times link above briefly mentions a few rather interesting and salient points about known paedophiles:
Firstly, compared to their peer group, they are on average an inch shorter, their IQ is about 10 points lower and a much greater proportion than is normal are left handed.
Secondly, compared to their peers or even other prisoners, they have a lot less white matter in their brains.
Thirdly, paedophillia does not appear to be learned behaviour; being the victim of a paedophile does not predispose that person to becoming one.
These apparently point to paedophillia being partly caused by a developmental disorder, one which strikes fairly early in life, even before birth. As such, we ought really to be looking for whatever environmental toxin is causing this problem, with a view to removing it. My guess would be an almost-harmless virus, or perhaps a heavy metal of some sort. It would be interesting to know if paedophillia is linked to lead in the environment, as is more general forms of criminality (which are again linked to disrupted brain development).
The final point is a not-so-obvious one. What we need to know is if pornography acts to incite acts of paedophillia, or acts to satiate the desire to perform such acts. The easiest way to tell might be to compare cultures where normal pornography is easy to get, to those where it is very difficult to get, and see if the rates of sexual attacks and deviant acts vary between the cultures. Does anyone know if such a study has been done?
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In a cross-culture study it's going to be very hard to adjust for rates of molestation versus rates of reporting or prosecution.
IQ differences also point towards implies control. The LA Times article does mention this. So IQ might have no correlation with the desire, only with the behavior (or with getting caught). It also says "Not all pedophiles molest children. Nor are all child molesters pedophiles. Studies show that about half of all molesters are not sexually attracted to their victims." For that half
Re:Distasteful stuff, but should not be illegal (Score:5, Insightful)
If the IQ study is the one I think it is, it was based entirely on convicted child molesters, and not on the population of pedophiles as a whole. Therefore if, say, lower IQ causes these people to molest, then it also makes them more likely to get caught.
It'd be really interesting to see studies on the entire population, not just on incarcerated subsets.
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Virtually all studies conducted about pedophilia have a huge, glaring flaw:
They're conducted on convicts.
You can find plenty of information showing that criminals on average have a lower iq, shorter, etc.
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The easiest way to tell might be to compare cultures where normal pornography is easy to get, to those where it is very difficult to get, and see if the rates of sexual attacks and deviant acts vary between the cultures. Does anyone know if such a study has been done?
Comparing different cultures with each other doesn't work, you can't determine weather differences are due to the availability of pornography or to a wide range of other cultural factors.
What you do is compare a single culture with itself, before and after a major change in the availability and content-range of porn. In fact a substantial number of such studies have been done, across a substantial number of countries. The results are consistent. Increases in the availability and content-range of pornography
Pedophilia is not ridicilously common (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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Same as the FBI does with "terrorists" you mean?
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From all the effort to fight pictures and not a lot effort to actually prevent children from being harmed, I conclude that the children are not in any way important to the people making these laws. Hence criminalizing drawings, renderings, text, etc. the same as documentation of actual abuse is just logical.
Thought policing (Score:5, Insightful)
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].
Re:Thought policing (Score:5, Interesting)
Indeed.
So where do I go to file a lawsuit against all them old mansions for 'displaying child porn' with the cherub stonework in full display.
Children abound.. some of them with their dangly bits out... 0_o
http://carvingswithstories.blo... [blogspot.com]
Looks like a sex act t'me guv.
Re:Thought policing (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Constitutions CAN be useful, if honored. (Score:4, Informative)
Dangerous precedent (Score:5, Insightful)
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could he not call it "art" and get out of these shenanigans? it is "art" after all.
Dangerous precedent (Score:3)
This is the same country that inspired 1984 and V For Vendetta, so it seems there's a long running propensity for criminal overreach.
Makes sense (Score:2)
Nonce-sense.
These laws are hard to grasp (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:These laws are hard to grasp (Score:5, Insightful)
However it is also disturbingly close to pre-crime.
It's not just "disturbingly close"; it is pre-crime. There is absolutely zero evidence that says that someone will commit a crime just because they like drawn pictures of children, and even if there were evidence, pre-crime is absurd in and of itself.
I'm not entirely comfortable with that.
You should be entirely uncomfortable with it.
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Hmm... the Taliban destroyed art that was against their "moral" understanding of things. They punish people just for listening to music or looking at art they described as "immoral".
It get the uncomfortable feeling we are witnessing the birth of the "Western Taliban" that makes as much things "immoral" as possible, and punishing people for looking at it. I am afraid it's just an matter of time before even medieval art becomes illigal (you know - paintings of naked children with wings crawling around an big
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The first part of the situation is best captured by the sorites or sand heap paradox [wikipedia.org]. The problem boils down to a set of input states that need to be classified. If no decision (classification) has to be made, something can remain in its fuzzy state [wikipedia.org]. When a (binary) decision has to be made ('is this illegal?'), an essentially arbitrary cutoff value is used to determine the 'definite' classification.
This is actually a very pervasive issue that lies at (or simply is) the root of many discussions in society (t
If you can't see it how do you know??? (Score:5, Funny)
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.
Photo-realistic drawings? (Score:2)
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
Re: (Score:2)
I'd like to see that (the indistinguishable part, not the actual subject matter).
Rendering has come far, but not far enough that you'd find that kind of art in random porn.
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If no child is being harmed in the process of making such a drawing then it should be ignored. Sure, it's sick drawing them but the CP laws were created to protect children which are "starred" therein, not to protect some moral values. If the drawing is hyper-realistic than IMO the drawer should be investigated whether he or she had children "models" involved to create such a drawing.
- Creating CP should be illegal, buying CP — too. On this we may all agree.
- Downloading and keeping CP is at the very
Simpsons Movie? (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Fantasy based laws. (Score:3)
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.
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Even if the person is never weaned off the images, as long as they never offend against a real person, I'd consider that a win.
Every once in a while a story comes up about a doctor that says that these people should be protected if they come out to a medical professional so they can get treatment, and inevitably in the comments, people scream about locking them up and punishing them right away, even if they've never done anything wrong. As a consequence, these people DO go on to offend because they can't ge
Re:Fantasy based laws. (Score:5, Insightful)
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."
Common sense solution (Score:5, Funny)
not remotely accurate (Score:2)
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.
Doesn't anybody notice the operative word here? (Score:2)
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.
ironic timing (Score:4, Interesting)
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..
take a page from the video pornographers' playbook (Score:5, Funny)
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.
and the UK is confusing the issue (Score:3)
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.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
We could also ban political contributions because that's like bribery.
In all seriousness I do remember an argument against this type of crap in congress that basically said this was a regulation of taste, and if you ban things that are similar to child pornography couldn't you also ban images of women with small breasts because they evoke thoughts of children? (paraphrase)
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...and if you ban things that are similar to child pornography couldn't you also ban images of women with small breasts because they evoke thoughts of children? (paraphrase)
Kind of like Australia, then?
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For pornography, that actually is already the case in some countries like Germany. It is called "Jugendanscheinspornography".
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Re:pics? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:pics? (Score:5, Interesting)
When I was living in Japan, a friend asked me to send him a copy of Inu Yasha volume 1 so he could give it to his daughter. She wanted to use it to help study the Japanese language. It was her favorite anime and she wanted to read the manga. I was about to send it to him and noticed that there is a scene with Kagome (the heroine) bathing naked. She's meant to be 14. Not wanting to get my friend involved in importing child porn, I ended up not sending it. It is a shame that a 14 year old girl can't read her favorite manga because there is a picture of a naked 14 year old girl in it. Laws are laws, though...
Re:pics? (Score:5, Insightful)
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".
Want to know what's worse? (Score:3)
Someone who does not having a fictional outlet. Let them jerk off to cartoons and leave the real kids alone. Dumb fuck.
Re:broke the law plain and simple (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re: (Score:3)
Community can set standards
Sounds like tyranny of the majority to me. A good thing if you don't like individual liberties, but a bad thing otherwise.
But. The guy is weird even for a brit and if he is monitored until the end of his time, all the better.
Why is punishing someone who merely looked at images forever considered a good thing?