Kiddie porn or art?
 

Ok, so recently this dude in Sweden was arrested and convicted for child pornography related crimes. His crime consisted of storing numerous image files of Japanese manga on his comp, and as we all know Japanese manga is largely about old men trying to peek under the panties of under-aged girls.
Well, I didn't really know that, but apparently it's at least one of the main genres of manga.

Additionally, this man translates Japanese comics for a living, and keeping the comics was necessary for his work.
All these mitigating factors considered, he was still convicted for having child pornographic material.

I personally don't have any respect or understanding at all for those kinds of comics - I find it all utterly tasteless, along with cosplay and furries and cat-girls and all the sexual deviences one might associate with it, but it made me think a bit:
What is the crime actually?

Normally a crime has a victim, but in this case the child in question is merely drawn, sprung from the perverted mind of a comic artist, and then read by other perverted men.

Thoughts?

He should be executed just on the basis of being Swedish.

The whole reason there are laws against child pornography is to protect children from being exploited or harmed. If no child is being exploited during the production of this crap, then it should not be considered child pornography, however disturbing or distasteful the comics may be.

Of course everyone knows European is just another word for fascism so I'm not really surprised.

I have a lot I could say, but I stopped myself just in time.

So will that spill over to the states? Cause I see manga in places like Borders, it would be funny to see a full scale kiddy porn raid in Borders :lol



Seriously though, putting aside what we think of manga for a moment, I am pretty much with Leader and BC on this one. Child pornography is a crime with a defined victim. As there is no actual defined victim, this is a travesty and a slap in the face to real justice. Not to mention it is rather insulting to both manga readers (aside: How long till JOAT chimes in on this?) and to actual living victims of child porn

Although, this reminds me of that stuff in Australia where tits are illegal if they just seem young.

NO A CUPS

I used to use Second Life back when it was loaded with casinos and I recall there being a scuffle over people who were making child looking avatars and putting them in sexual positions. The FBI did get involved and the people doing it were banned. Linden Labs also told the FBI that they would assist tracking them down but it turned out to be from outside the US. I don't recall what happened after that but it was probably the same shit.

I get the reason for why they are doing it. I use the term slippery slope and legal can of worms all the time. So I get where they are coming from. The problem is this is creating phantom victims (cartoons, computer avatars, etc.) which have no rights. In fact I dare say (going back to the slippery slope/legal can of worms thing) that you risk setting precedent to give rights to online avatars and cartoons as if they are sentient beings when they clearly are not. This could complicate and further bog down the legal system when unscrupulous people come out of the woodwork trying to create frivolous lawsuits for online avatars or cartoon characters.

Or what of the argument if a cartoon can be a victim, a cartoon can commit a crime? Artists start getting prosecuted because some nutcase claims some cartoon told them to rob a bank. Granted, this is not likely to happen, but the possibility is still there, and that in itself could be a bad thing.

The whole problem revolves around the idea that people will see the old men raping young girls and then try to emulate the behaviour they read about in their favourite manga. i.e being an old rapist. It's not that there is a crime going on at that very moment, it's that these items (the books) are about a prohibited subject (child porn) and they are prohibited because they influence people. The guy got in trouble for having a prohibited item, not because he was raping young anime girls. At least, that's what I figure.


Just like violent video games turning people violent, or shitty gangsta rap making people respect women less, it's ... it's one of those things.

Personally I do think that people imitate what they hear and see. Children especially. This is why most violent movies or video games are rated for adults, and why shitty gangsta rap is laughed at by anyone with a taste in music.

Life imitates art, art imitates life, and then life imitates it. I grew up pretending to shoot my sister and also being a ninja, but I have blossomed into a well rounded individual that could look at a drawn picture of a young girl getting raped and not want to go out and do that, or be turned on by that sort of thing. Unfortunately we live in a shit hole world where not everyone is a well rounded individual, hence the problem lies. There are people that think it is acceptable to think of women as nothing but sexual objects because that's what they heard on a poorly decorated album of Snoop Dog. There are people out there that saw 'Hostel' and thought it was a good movie. There are easily influenced morons in the world and things have to be banned to keep them in check rather than educate them not to be easily influenced morons.

Yeah, Zhukov, that's without doubt the reasoning behind this - at first - seemingly absurd law.
However I think that if you're venturing into the realm of hypotheses - this could inspire people to do this and that, one could also claim that it could in fact prevent the same crimes, simply by letting perverts live out their fantasies (that is, jerk off) without actually harming a real human. It's really hard to know, and I'm pretty sure there hasn't been any proper research to provide evidence in either direction.

Also, it's interesting that texts portraying the same scenery are not prohibited. Lolita will probably never be considered illegal material. But if pictures can influence people to commit certain deeds, surely a well-written novel can do the same?

Choj - wat

BlastedChild - But then that brings up the whole "If you give a mouse a cookie" thing. If one thing becomes allowable, then what about this (seemingly) small, insignificant step? Until it continues. This argument can be put on both sides of it, though, so it's really not going to get anywhere by arguing it in this case.

What a terrorist this guy with his child european manga.

Yeah, screw him with his professional paid job doing translation work.

How dare he try and provide for his european family.

What about movies that depict young underage people being abused? How is that different? The movie Hounddog had 12 year old Dakota Fanning being raped in one scene. She is a real girl not just a drawing. She was actually underage at the time, not an older actress playing someone underage. Did the actor who played the man who raped her get in trouble? Did the director? What about the writer? No, no one did. Why not? Because there was no real victim or real crime. It was a work of fiction, the same as manga.

As far as it influencing people with its content, regardless of how impressionable you are you ultimately make your own decisions. I cant tell you how many movies or books or video games I have been exposed to that involved shooting people but I never went out and shot anyone.

Yet...

They are making that kid eat turd balls. Someone should be locked up for child endangerment. >:

I think it's different in many ways - first of all I doubt Dakota Fanning was shown nude in the movie, or that the rape act was depicted very graphically. Had they shown the entire sexual act in all its...graphicness...I'm pretty sure there'd be some legal actions taken afterwards.

Secondly, I think the message or intent with the whole thing matters. Surely there's a difference between just revelling in nudity and sex and violence just for kicks, or conveying some sort of moral message. I think movies that deal with the horrible sides of life and society are extremely important - I don't see how it's important to draw volumes and volumes of comic art that's all about old men peeking at nude girls.

Sweden is usually pretty liberal about these things, so this recent case kind of surprised me. Especially since he had a very legitimate reason to keep the comics there in the first place.

Well I can see your point about movies and suppose I agree with it. Although I still feel that a drawing is just a drawing and there is no real victim.

It all comes off as Minority Report to me. We're busting you for manga because if you do that you might molest children later? By that logic why not say if you watch a violent movie you need to be arrested because you might commit a violent crime? I watched Harold and Kumar a week ago, should I be arrested because I might smoke pot in the future because I watched it?

I wish watching something made it happen later, then I'd get a job delivering pizza and watch porn before I went to work every day :lol

Looking at the thread title, all I have to say is isn't art just kiddie porn but with adults?

I thought this was going to be all about the opening of The Baader-Meinhof Complex :(

ZHUKOV WILL GET THAT REFERENCE