Comment by jrockway | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jrockway | Hacker News Reader

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.

This test is greatly complicated by the internet, where 'community' takes on a whole new meaning.

Not in the minds of senile judges and functionally illiterate jurors...

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.

I think textual descriptions of child sex are, strangely, still legal, if only because a lot of literature has included them.

I would not bet fifteen years of my life on this.

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

The decision claims that the it ultimately came down to how the book was marketed. Shaky legal ground.

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.

Not necessarily: http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/08138/882650-85.stm

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.

There's a word for such things: catharsis.

And, apparently, according to some research, it's not always a good thing: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1023445...

That's just for anger though.

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.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prison_abolition_movement

I'm in favor of this, but I think it's unrelated. "Prison" should not even be in the same line of thought as "possessing books".

I just felt like pointing out that the farce goes many levels deep.

careful, go down the rabbit hole of government farce and you may spend the rest of your life spelunking.

ThoughtCrime.

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