U.S. Manga Obscenity Conviction Roils Comics World | Hacker News Reader

U.S. Manga Obscenity Conviction Roils Comics World

wired.com

26 pointskqr229 comments

I sure hope this is overturned. It's a ridiculous law - as per the "anyone with sense can see that this is wrong" definition of ridiculous.

I do not have the problem with the use of state power to enforce the consensus morality that it is absolutely and totally impermissible to have sex with children.

As a conservative techy I'm quite familiar with the libertarian counter-argument, which rests so firmly on "everything is permitted save for that which harms non-consenting people" that it sometimes forgets that that assumption is not universally shared. I'm not going to try to talk you guys out of that one, but just wanted to mention that at least one person in your social circle thinks the other way.

It's not against the law to own drawings of people murdering, or hatching ponzi schemes, or smoking pot. Why should it be illegal to draw one crime and not the others?

I have about as much desire to defend "laws should be internally consistent" as you have to defend "sex with children should be socially acceptable". I don't believe it and it isn't necessary for my argument.

Or, if I wanted to play the score-free-debater-points game the other way, I'd say "You don't get a free pass on incitations to murder or solicitations to ponzi schemes or offers to sell marijuana just because they're written. Why should 'it is just ink on a page' save child pornography when it saves none of these things?"

I absolutely believe that sex with children should be socially unacceptable. However, I believe that fictional depictions of unacceptable acts are acceptable.

By outlawing depictions of one unacceptable act because it has crossed a threshold from "unacceptable" to "super-unacceptable" such that drawing it is illegal, you open up two slippery slopes:

1) Other crimes may be deemed "super-unacceptable", creating criminals out of otherwise law-abiding comic collectors.

2) Other mediums may be deemed off-limits. Could a written description of sex with children be illegal? Could a spoken description of sex with children be illegal?

In an extreme worst-case Orwellian scenario the law would fall down both slopes: any depiction of crime in any medium would be illegal.

You don't get a free pass on a written note that says "let's go make kiddie porn" either. I'm not making the "just ink on a page" argument, which doesn't save the examples you gave or real child porn, so it shouldn't save explicit manga either. What should save manga is that it's fictional; no other crime was committed in the creation of the work.

An interesting absurd side effect of this slippery slope might be to make testimonies of child abuse illegal.

So you'd go to prison for saying that the man did bad stuff to you.

Really, where's it going? I read the text of the law and it seems pretty clear to me. I don't have a problem with outlawing this material at all.

The reason child pornography is illegal is that to make it, you need to abuse children.

But what's wrong with drawings that makes them more than simply free speech?

It is well-established in the law that First Amendment protections do not apply to obscene material--where "obscene" is not just "pornographic" but "sexually explicit in a really really gross way with no redeeming social value". There's a summary of the relevant law on the DOJ's Web site here:

http://www.usdoj.gov/criminal/optf/links/citizens_guide.html

I'm not saying this a good law, but anyone who has this kind of stuff should know that the "it's just ink on paper" argument cuts no ice with the judges.

Why do you think it should be outlawed? Why should the government have any say in what art you are allowed to view?

I do not believe that these manga depictions of sex with minors have "serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value". So, I do not believe that they constitute art and therefore it's OK for the government to intervene.

Neither do our comments. Should they be subject to government approval too?

They are not obscene.

We're getting somewhere. So why do obscene stuff should, in your opinion, be controlled by the government? I don't mean why it's distasteful or unhealthy or something like that, but what makes you want to cross the line from "not socially accepted" to "men with guns ruin your life"?

> “He was a prolific collector,” says the lawyer. “He did not focus on this type of manga. He collected everything that was out there that he could get his hands on. I think this makes a huge difference.”

This is probably worse. This means the next guy without the same collection will be sentenced based on what he is, not on what he does.

So in other words, any halfway competent pen and ink artist can frame you with 5 minutes of his time, a 3x5 index card, and casually sticking something into your coat pocket at a cafe, then calling the cops.

Lesson learned: never become good at drawing if you don't want to go to jail. Yeah, that makes sense.

"'This stuff is huge in Japan, in all of Asia,' Lunning says"

Does this mean that anyone from Japan or "all of Asia" who reads these comics is subject to arrest when they visit the United States with one of these comics in their backpack?

You're subject to arrest if you bring one of them into Japan. Importing pornography/obscenity is illegal.

They have signs at the airports mentioning so. Your chance of getting caught is probably pretty low and most of the time when they catch someone with a Playboy they just confiscate it and destroy it, but the Ministry of Justice does not consider evenhanded ignoring of the law to be a priority.

I'm not sure if this quite answers the question. Although Japan certainly doesn't allow bringing in content which violates their definition of pornography, it is not clear to me that these manga would fall under that definition.

This article skims the surface of this fairly complex topic: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pornography_in_Japan#Censorship...

Chapter 22, Articles 175 of the Japanese penal code:

　第二十二章　わいせつ、姦淫及び重婚の罪

（わいせつ物頒布等）第百七十五条　わいせつな文書、図画その他の物を頒布し、販売し、又は公然と陳列した者は、二年以下の懲役又は二百五十万円以下の罰金若しくは科料に処する。販売の目的でこれらの物を所持した者も、同様とする。

My comment:

法律上で禁じられているか禁じられていないかを判断するにはWikiを参照するより直接法律を見た方がいいんじゃあないか？例えば、「日本の法律で図に過ぎないものはわいせつにならないだろう。それは論理的だし、日本はポルノだらけとよく知られているし。」と思うなら、読んだらすぐ「いや、文字通り、図に過ぎないものでもわいせつとなる」と分かるだろう。

日本のわいせつの罪はアメリカに移行としたら憲法違反と必ず見られるほど広いふうに定義されている。例の漫画は明らかにわいせつである。わいせつとして罰されるかどうかは先言ったように別の話だが。

これは「おれは日本語読めるからカコイイゼ」とのオタクの台詞として受ける人もいるだろうが、まあ、しょうがないか。

Kindly paraphrase? My Japanese doesn't extend beyond "Two beers, please" and "where is the bathroom?"

The comment says, paraphrased, that rather than skimming Wiki to validate one's guess that about what the law says on the basis of one's opinion that it should logically say X or that Japan is drenched in porno so it probably says X, it is probably better to actually read the law. The text of the law is the ultimate authoritative source on whether the law covers, e.g., drawings or pictures. The law says, unambiguously, yes, it does.

The last line says, heavily paraphrased, "Some folks are probably going to think I'm saying 'lolz i can readz japanese im so cool' -- ah well".

Google translate says: "Obscene document, drawing, or other objects to distribute, sell, publicly display, or a person who is punishable by a fine or a fine of 102 million yen or imprisonment of up to 15 years. The person who has possession of these items sell for the same."

Doesn't the US have similar statutes? (Which are almost never enforced...?)

Please consider a small donation to the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund (http://www.cbldf.org/). They do good work defending against this sort of persecution.

Thank you, Bush administration. You brought us so many wonderful things: Patriot Act, PROTECT act, economy disaster, NCLB, and other heaps of bullshit as well as killing and torturing thousands if innocent people.

Why are we not prosecuting Bush&co? Oh, very easy. It's not because he&co aren't evil (because they most certainly fucking are). In our world, might makes the right -- the one with power is the one with enough propaganda powers (and just powers) to make himself right.

And you ask me why I hate religion and wasps.. this is why :) It hides evil under the mask of morality and goodness.

I am seriously tempted to write a bayesian classifier for "Take it to Reddit" to see whether you just overflowed it or not.

There's an interesting discussion in there somewhere about pornography -- as I understand it even drawing stick figures on a napkin can break the law -- but with rhetorical hand-grenades like that it's impossible to have it.

I'm usually good at thinking that all sorts of things can be HN, but heck if I can justify this one. There's no technology angle, there's no hacker angle. I can't even extrapolate the general principles into something resembling a startup angle. It seems designed just to incite pointless argument.

Was this just copied from one of the more free-for-all boards like Reddit?

I think a regex might suffice:

  /(\W|^)bush\s*\(&|and)?\s*co/i

Similarly, we could build a Slashdot detector:

  /(\W|^)m\$(\W|$)/i

Save tons of trouble. Worse is better :)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com