Tuesday, December 23, 2008

Twenty Years for Sailor Moon?

I'm going to out myself as a bit of a nerd by posting this, but my interest in comics and the law collided today, when I came across this. It seems courts are upholding child porn convictions for porn that doesn't actually involve children. Twenty years for possessing erotic anime featuring girls that appear underage? (Don't all girls in anime look underage?)

The Comic Book Legal Defense Fund (one of my favorite NPOs) has become a special consultant for the defense of a manga collector charged with possessing child pornography. This has split the comics community between those who view this as a first amendment issue (like Neil Gaiman) and those who see it as defending perverts.

I side with the former. I don't buy the argument that people inevitably act on their fetishes, so I don't see why we should imprison people for fantasizing. In this case, I certainly don't approve of the fetish, but once you allow censorship of drawings, where do you draw the line? As Gaiman points out in the link above, the law is a blunt instrument, and it's very difficult to ban animated porn without also banning art.

7 Comments:

Blogger Patrick Bageant said...

I see the outraged response to this kind of thing as an out-of-sight, out-of-mind style mindset:

"If we ban this smut, people will stop thinking that way."

Get real! Markets track demand. Not the other way around.

12/24/2008 1:55 AM  
Blogger Toney said...

perv.

12/24/2008 5:59 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Appellate Advocacy grades are up. And a merry Christmas to all.

12/24/2008 8:46 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Thanks for trying to ruin my holiday with talk of grades, 8:46. Can someone in charge of this blog take that (and this) comment down, please?

12/24/2008 8:53 AM  
Blogger Armen Adzhemyan said...

I don't know 8:53, bitching about grades (and apparently Dan's endless stash of anime porn) is a steadfast holiday tradition for this blog. Sort of like complaining about the CDO in the fall.

12/24/2008 8:56 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

8:53 is a whiny baby.

12/24/2008 1:12 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

huh. Z*mring's crim law grades are up too.

12/24/2008 11:48 PM  

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