‘Obscene’ U.S. Manga Collector Jailed 6 Months
wired.com
wired.com
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.
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.
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.
Neither movie contains anything explicit beyond kissing, as I recall. But there's no doubt what's going on.
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.)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
EDIT: Improved wording.
"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.
What if the definition of obscene materials were expanded to include depictions of abortion or of darwinism...?
/me wishes that sounded less plausible.
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.
"Land of the free," indeed.
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.
Mike Diana was first to receive a conviction for publishing, distributing, and advertising "obscene" comics (in 1996). See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_diana
And Diana's website to see the comics he was jailed for:
The high court ruled that the ban was too broad, and could cover legitimate speech, including Hollywood productions.
So Hollywood's business interests matter and regular people don't?
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.
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.” '''
moral of the story: GET A BETTER LAWYER
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.)
In most jurisdictions, the defendant could also opt for a bench trial, which would have just the judge and no jury.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dream_of_the_Fisherman%27s_...
I don't totally understand the law - maybe the bestiality helped further classify it as 'obscene'?
@metamemetics: OK, but you get my point :). Does anyone have a suggestion for a succinct way to say what I meant to say?
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.
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!
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.