This showcases several major problems with our legal system. The first is obvious; cartoons are not children, nor can they be abused. So there is no point in going after people who possess said representations. Not really my thing, but definitely not a federal crime. (How long until any document the Ruling Party doesn't like becomes "obscene"?)
The second problem is more subtle; and something I see as a major threat to the rights afforded to the accused -- ridiculous trumped-up charges, and minimal pleas in exchange for not going to trial. 15 years in prison for owning certain books? Who would risk a fair trial if that's a possible outcome? Much better than submit to the will of the system and take your six months.
Fifteen years should not even be an option on the state's table. 1 year max. Fifteen years is what murderers and rapists get, if they have a really bad lawyer. Is owning books worse than taking someone's life?
Not going to trial means that the legal system never has a chance to strike down these blatantly unconstitutional laws, leaving anyone who owns books open to potential criminal charges. Are you sure the government likes every book on your shelf? With this kind of precedent, you should probably quit reading and just watch CSPAN -- It's What's Best.
Edit: I just realized that many actual child rapists face fewer than fifteen years in prison. So rather than reading a book showing someone who might be underage, it's better for you to just rape children instead. A fine message our lawmakers are sending us.
A few more cases like this, and I'm quitting programming and going to law school. This stuff needs to stop.
Little bit of legal background for you, hopefully it adds something to your thoughts:
The standard for "obscenity" is defined in the leading Supreme Court case Miller v. California, which held that obscene material was not protected free speech. I won't go through the whole test (Wikipedia explains it well), but it generally says that obscene material has to "appeal to the prurient interest" to an average person in the local community, and it has to have no redeeming social values.
So I wouldn't be worried that the "Ruling Party" deems something obscene or not. Instead, I would be worried about what the "average person" thinks. Isn't that a little odd--that your constitutional rights depend on what your neighbors think?
(That was an argument that one of my law professors made, and I think it's pretty compelling.)
Isn't that a little odd--that your constitutional rights depend on what your neighbors think?
In my opinion, that decision was unprecedented and unconstitutional. Traditionally, your neighbors have the ability to give you more rights (jury nullification), but they don't have the right to take rights away. The Miller Test completely reversed that; now your neighbors can take your rights away for no reason at all. (Would a black defendant be given the same rights as a white defendant? That's why we elect representatives to make laws, rather than letting the neighborhood lynchmob decide what the laws are.)
Having to worry about what your neighbors will think discourages valuable work, acting as a prior restraint on speech. It's too bad you can't appeal Supreme Court rulings, because that one was totally wrong in many, many ways.
And you think the average people think it is OK to destroy the life of one person just because he downloaded-imported cartoons?
I don't think so.
I consider this material "obscene", I don't like it, but this man has the right to have it. This man has no made a huge painting in a public, then law can be used because it affects the society.
I wouldn't be worried that the "Ruling Party" deems something obscene or not. Instead, I would be worried about what the "average person" thinks.
It's easy enough for the ruling party to create opinions among average people. There's not much of a difference here if the ruling party is compelled enough.
I find myself inherently suspicious of US legal attempts to crack down on porn because 'cracking down on obscene content' is the justification that the CCP uses in China to censor many things that are clearly not porn.
I am especially confused on how arbitrarily the censorship is applied. I could maybe understand (but not be in favor of, of course) a law that made depicting any crime illegal. But this will obviously never happen; fantasizing about murder and terrorism and depicting it in great detail is a recipe for a blockbuster film. As soon as it's having sex with someone below a certain age, though... then you can't even read a book about it!
I'd like to write some sarcastic reason for this, but I can't even think of one. I have a feeling that "one nation under God" has something to do with it, though.
According to the article, both textual and visual depictions are still legal if they serve "serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value". What seems problematic is deciding that a Hollywood blockbuster is art, while anime is not.
Exactly, it seems very likely that he could be acquitted in higher court on the basis that the comics serve 'serious artistic value,' but again, it is easy to see that a 40 year old man will not risk 15 years in prison when he can be out in one, guaranteed.
There's been a lot of discussion about this over time. Take Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita, for example. It's frankly some of the best prose I have ever read, ever.
The book is written from the perspective of a pedofile lusting after a young girl. Stanley Kubrik's film of the movie in 1962 won an academy award. There was an immense ammount of controversy surround the movie and the book, and they still are. Art or obscenity? We'll be having this discussion for years to come.
One of the few movies where I consider the (1997) remake to be superior to the original. With the absolutely creepy scene where a conversation is punctuated by insects getting bug-zapped.
Neither movie contains anything explicit beyond kissing, as I recall. But there's no doubt what's going on.
I'm not sure how solid it is either, but for text there are at least some more constraints on what Congress could ban. Fanny Hill (1748) is a very explicit novel about the sexual exploits of a 15-year-old girl, and despite being frequently banned, it was ruled protected by the First Amendment in the U.S. in 1966: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memoirs_v._Massachusetts
That's right, something I admire about British people is that they created a lot of sports like boxing and football in witch they put rules over something people were already doing so they could control it.
If people want to fight,or compete let them and they will calm, repress them and it will grow and grow. It is in our instinct to fight and compete, so better to do it in a walled garden.
I prefer a person that feels the sexual urge to masturbate with cartoons than with pictures of kids, and with pictures of kids than with real kids, in fact I don't care what a man does in his house with things, I care if they affect real people.
Yes, but that was the argument that xcombinator lead with; that expressing violence in a controlled manner is a good thing - which is contradicted by research. Anyway, the idea that masturbating over fictional depictions of child sex is somehow preventative of actual child sex abuse is orthogonal to the problem being discussed here.
This is utterly absurd. You cannot limit in any way fiction that people read or write - not if you claim to be a free country.
Seriously - why is this happening? I am not talking about "protecting the children" or other such nonsense - the question is what actually is happening here? What is the reason? What possible advantage can anyone have from destroying the life of this man like this?
What possible advantage can anyone have from destroying the life of this man like this?
"God" will like them more. Pleasure is evil, sex is even more evil, and sex involving people who look like they're under 18 is so evil that you shouldn't even be allowed to think about it.
Not to mention that it establishes a precedent. Your library, your viewing habits, your browser history are all potentially criminal now. Can you declare with certainty that you possess nothing incriminating?
What if the definition of obscene materials were expanded to include depictions of abortion or of darwinism...?
I just googled the probable original Japanese titles of the first four listed seized items. I found they are all available on Amazon.co.jp (3 available as used from third-party vendors, 1 as new directly from Amazon). From the covers it's clear these are the items in question.
It's not like you need to go underground to buy them; Amazon is selling them, though obviously Japanese standards of what counts as obscene are different than those of the U.S.
"hiwai" works, but the "waisetsu" is used more in the legal context.
Japan did a trial regarding a publisher few years back, called "Matsubunkan trial".
Some details in the middle of page:
http://comipress.com/article/2007/07/17/2307
Sorry for two top-level comments, but I did some more reading on the case. It started when the postal service seized a box containing the books. So if there's someone you don't like, just order a few books from amazon.co.jp for them, and then they'll be facing 15 years in prison.
Now you're getting slightly hysterical. They would just claim that they didn't order the books themselves, the evidence would back them up, and they probably wouldn't even be prosecuted.
Plea bargaining is one stage of prosecution, intended to avoid a trial. If they don't get prosecuted (for example because there's no evidence that they ordered the books), there's no plea bargaining.
Plea bargains are not unique to manga-related crimes. If your claim was accurate, it would be easy to get someone locked away for any crime just by planting weak evidence against them.
"Handley was the nation’s first to be convicted under that law for possessing cartoon art, without any evidence that he also collected or viewed genuine child pornography."
Mike Diana was first to receive a conviction for publishing, distributing, and advertising "obscene" comics (in 1996). See:
It seems the legal system as well as our society as a whole is pretty schizophrenic about that relationship between fantasy and reality.
Do we believe that representations of violent fantasies generally cause crime? And secondly, if something does indeed cause a tiny group of people to commit a crime is that a good enough reason to prevent everybody from using it?
Depending on the answers the consequences of applying it consistently are very far reaching.
Clearly, if comic books depicting child porn are prohibited, any depiction of rape and murder for entertainment purposes must be prohibited as well. That includes mainstream movies, TV programs and video games.
I suspect the real purpose of laws like the one applied here is not preventing crime or protecting anyone.
So the meta question is whether laws should be consistent and effective at preventing crime, or whether it is sufficient if they allow some kind of collective emotional identification.
I'm concerned that if we put up with the latter the law will become a mere pretence for mob rule, which is easily exploited by fanatics and populists.
Clearly, if comic books depicting child porn are prohibited, any depiction of rape and murder for entertainment purposes must be prohibited as well. That includes mainstream movies, TV programs and video games.
It is interesting how many arbitrary lines this creates. Soldiers killing the enemy would be legal to depict, but the enemy soldiers killing us would be illegal. Depicting someone having sex at 23:59:59 on the day before her 18th (or whatever) birthday would be a crime, whereas at 24:00:00 it would be legal.
Extending this to cartoons is even more arbitrary. How do you know which side is the good guys (where killing is legal) and which side is the bad guys (where killing is a crime)? How do you know the age of someone being depicted? (I've seen 14-year-old girls that could pass as 25, and 25-year-old girls that could pass as 14. If you depict someone who is 25 but looks 14, is that a crime? If you depict someone who is 14 but looks 25, is that a crime?)
All I can come up with is that any fantasy should always be permitted, unconditionally.
''' Chase says he recommended the plea agreement (.pdf) to his client because he didn’t think he could convince a jury to acquit him once they’d seen the images in question. The lawyer declined to describe the details. “If they can imagine it, they drew it,” he says. “Use your imagination. It was there.” '''
I don't think the jury should even matter. They determine the facts of the case, not the law. The fact is, he has what the law disallows. But the reality is, the law is totally illegal.
I would be shocked if he didn't win his first appeal.
(Some other details seem shady. Is receiving books in the mail grounds for the warrant used to search his house? Were the obscene pictures in "plain view"? If this is what I can think of, having never studied law, you'd think someone's whose job it is to think of stuff like this would do better.)
IANAL. Having said that, there are a few avenues for appeal. For instance, if the defendant's lawyer was provably incompetent or did not disclose a conflict of interest against his client. Or if the prosecution withheld evidence that would have prevented the defendant from taking the plea.
In most jurisdictions, the defendant could also opt for a bench trial, which would have just the judge and no jury.
Not unrelated, Wired implies that part of the problem with the manga was that they depicted bestiality. Although it seems that he wasn't convicted for the bestiality part?
I don't totally understand the law - maybe the bestiality helped further classify it as 'obscene'?
I assume that's something that just sounds good in a press release, not something that was actually a factor. But who knows. This guy never got his trial, so we'll never really know.
“I’d say the anime community’s reaction to this, since day one, has been almost exclusively one of support for Handley and disgust with the U.S. courts and legal system,”
I'd say the reaction of any intelligent, decent person would be the same. Which, I guess, is why his lawyer told him he'd better not face a jury.
Well, it makes it even more obvious that local standards for obscenity are meaningless. Also that if you must find a common denominator it should probably be the most permissible. All things said and done, I very much like the old principle: "You do not have a right not to be offended".
Not sure how that even applies here. The books arrived in sealed boxes and remained in the guy's home, free from public view. Nobody should even know that the guy has the books, making it even more powerful than "you do not have a right not to be offended". You do not have a right to open other people's mail and be offended, because you do not have the right to open other people's mail!
If I read correctly, the package was opened by customs officials. While slightly annoying, it is their job to open packages from time to time, and it has its uses.
The problem is it should not fall on me to keep my manga hidden. It's actually pretty hard to keep something completely out of sight... should he make a special room locked at all times just because he _may_ have questionable materials? I'd say "you don't have the right to be offended" is the more general principle here, and solves the issue much more elegantly then privacy.
The second problem is more subtle; and something I see as a major threat to the rights afforded to the accused -- ridiculous trumped-up charges, and minimal pleas in exchange for not going to trial. 15 years in prison for owning certain books? Who would risk a fair trial if that's a possible outcome? Much better than submit to the will of the system and take your six months.
Fifteen years should not even be an option on the state's table. 1 year max. Fifteen years is what murderers and rapists get, if they have a really bad lawyer. Is owning books worse than taking someone's life?
Not going to trial means that the legal system never has a chance to strike down these blatantly unconstitutional laws, leaving anyone who owns books open to potential criminal charges. Are you sure the government likes every book on your shelf? With this kind of precedent, you should probably quit reading and just watch CSPAN -- It's What's Best.
Edit: I just realized that many actual child rapists face fewer than fifteen years in prison. So rather than reading a book showing someone who might be underage, it's better for you to just rape children instead. A fine message our lawmakers are sending us.
A few more cases like this, and I'm quitting programming and going to law school. This stuff needs to stop.