This was brought in because paedophiles were converting photographs of real life child sexual abuse into painting and drawing styles which rendered the images outside all current laws.
There is no reason why anyone needs to be allowed to hold drawings of horrific child abuse.

As a fan of Japan I find this law absurd
theregister has long pointed out that the London 2012 icon also contravenes this law as it looks like Lisa Simpson giving head!

nsmith I agree that pseudo-photographs like those should still be banned, what I'm talking about is when harmless cartoons are banned, which I think it's a step too far.

Imagine if you drew a picture in Paint as a joke, if the stick figure was constured as erotic and underage you could go to jail for it.

nsmith - if real life sexual abuse is depicted in paintings or drawings then that should be punished, and harshly. The laws should also apply when the subject of the painting or drawing is idenfiable as a real person (although that could blurr the line when characters from live action TV or films were drawn, depending on if it was considered to be the fictional character or the real actor). The big difference should be if there is a victim or not.
I feel that the fact that the UK is almost alone in having this law also makes it very difficult when applying it to the online world. Someone from the UK could go on an American or Japenese website which is perfectly legal and contains perfectly legal images of this nature and would be commiting the offense not only of viewing but also creating child pornography (as the computer automatically downloads the images on the page when visiting, and downloading is considered creating). You might not even know the image is there, but ignorance is not an excuse, and if you delete it there are still traces left. With the paranoid nature of the law any attempt to destroy those traces such as using military standard disk wiping could be seen as enough to convict for destroying evidance. Nice country we live in.

NSmith and EDantes: The people you bring up in your comments could be prosecuted for committing acts of underage or non-conensual sex, or of owning pictures or video of underage or non-consensual sex.

Why then is there a need for a law that turns someone who draws a picture or writes a story of someone having underage sex into a criminal?

Technically, I could be arrested for writing the following:

"A man had sex with an underage girl".

Is that really the kind of country you want to live in?

PS - Cooper23: If these Japanese sites contain pictures of underage sex with actual people, you're better off not visiting them at all.

Cronan - I wasn't talking about Japanese sites containing pictures of actual sex with underage people but drawings. Those sort of images are perfectly legal and quite common in Japan, and to make matters worse the UK laws only require the subjects to appear to be underage, and it's well known that adults from Eastern Asia can look childlike by our standards. The point I was making was that these images could even appear on sites where they are not expected, as they are perfectly legal and accepted in most of the world. Whilst I almost feel like a criminal saying it, I have never gone to try and find these sorts of images, and to be honest can't see the point, but I have seen them quite a few times.

If we as the UK see ourselves as technology trend setters, this law on our statute books is utterly ludicrous. This really does reduce the UK to an international laughing stock.
I think the previous government wouldn't have rested until they terrified us into viewing material which bears the official seal of moral approval. It’s been said before but it would put us on par with countries like Saudi Arabia, Iran and China.
The Sexual Offences Act 2003(retrospective) extended the definition of Child for porn purposes to ages 16-17. So in theory you could get married at 17, you better forget about making those home movies with your wife as if these slipped out you could be classed as a sex offender, with all the associated punitive measures.
The Criminal Justice Act 2008 is also a joke, created on a single case of a mad man, never should a law be passed on a single act. Even thou that guy was a nut job, this act was wholly to satisfy the victim's family. The law makes it illegal to look at images of “extreme porn”. The issue of whether adults consent or the action is real is immaterial.
If the porno law was because a paedophile was converting real abuse to cartoon representations, then the police could tell from its vast bank of child pornography and prosecute the offender accordingly. However using it to ban Manga style imaginary cartoons where no real child has been abused is a step to far towards a "moral" thought police force (Doublethink)
Let’s not prescribe to a totalitarian society.

If I was investigated for any reason and found innocent of all wrongdoing, the traces of animated GIF Simpsons incest porn which was circulating by e-mail in 2001 would be enough to put me on the sex offenders register.

This is unacceptable, as is my inability to create pictures like the one below.

http://gallery.bitplane.net/d/681-1/cartoon+porn.png

The Law banning images of child pornography already provides for prosecuting the owning of "psuedo photographs", that is; images derived from photographs, often using computer software, but also traced images and images that are so realistic that they could be mistaken for photographs. If need be this could be extended for newer techniques used to create "psuedo photographs".

This new law is far too broad in its definitions. A jury unfamiliar with Japanese Manga/Anime conventions might not understand the culture of "kawaii", roughly translated; "cuteness", which means many adult characters are drawn with features that western eyes might take as being child-like. Similarly the convention of "chibi", drawing adults as highly stylised children in order to show confusion and or embarrassment. Many manga and anime are for adults and deal with adult themes, including, on occasion, sex. There are tens of thousands of Manga and anime collectors in this country, and there have been since the 70's, who are innocent of doing any harm, but are placed in danger of prosecution by this law.

I didn't even consider past fans SteveMD, overnight they were labelled as criminals by the government, must be disappointing for fans of anime and manga.

This law is a huge blur that opens the door to a raft of government control freakery of the nastiest kind.

Suppose the state doesn't like a particular individual. They send police to investigate and see what they could stitch him for.

The police find a drawing of two stick men on a scrap of paper in his bin.

Perfect. They claim it's two nude five year olds. So they've nailed him.

Ah, you might argue. Stick men are only stick men. The police couldn't possibly get away with a claim on something like that in front of a jury.

But the question is, where would you draw the line? (No pun.)

Suppose now it's more borderline. Suppose he's an amateur artist. Suppose he drew an adult couple making love. And suppose he was so bad they looked like children.

Is this guy a criminal?

Now suppose he was a good artist instead. Suppose he drew a nude picture of himself from memory of when he was a kid (pick any age).

Is he now a criminal?

Sorry, but this law sucks. It opens the doors to the persecution of ANYBODY the state does not like.

@nsmith "This was brought in because paedophiles were converting photographs of real life child sexual abuse into painting and drawing styles which rendered the images outside all current laws."

That's what the Government claimed, but such images are already illegal, criminalised by a separate law (part of the Criminal Justice And Immigration Act 2008). This law is a separate law (in the Coroners And Justice Act 2009) that criminalises all sexual drawings depicting under-18s, not just those derived from abusive images.

I didn't know this law existed. After hearing about a case of people being prosecuted in America under similar laws I check the 2008 Law I believe.

This law needs to be taken off the books, and I believe I may of broken it just by going to a 4chan type site last night.

Criminalising private possession of any fictional depictions is rather dubious, and something I oppose. But even if we accepted that fictional "child porn" should be illegal, there are many problems with this law:

* A "child" is not defined as being someone pre-pubescent, but as someone under-18 - over the age of consent! This is the same age for actual child porn, another dubious change made by Labour in 2003. At least there is some argument about having a higher age for people participating in porn - but this clearly doesn't apply to fictional drawings! Even if we accepted the claim that viewing such material affects people's sexuality, surely it would be a _good_ thing if pedophiles are instead turned onto 16-17 year olds over the age of consent! Actual child porn law has a defence for 16-17 year olds if you are married to the person. So it's legal to possess a sexual image of your 17 year old wife/husband, but a drawing of the same scene would be illegal!

* Aside from the absurdity of criminalising fictional drawings of acts that are legal, there is the problem of how do you judge someone's age? There is little apparent difference, especially in unrealistic drawings/cartoons, between a 17 year old and someone in their early 20s. Material such as Japanese hentai will be at risk for depicting characters that look young, even if they're not intended to be under 18.

* Worse, the law explicitly criminalises images of *adults*, if they have predominant features of someone under 18. This leads to the danger of making judgements based on size of breasts (as recently happened in Australia), or school uniforms or scenes (many consenting adults may role-play school scenes, and school uniform fetish is a cliche - but a drawing could risk being illegal).

* An image is illegal if it depicts a fully clothed under-18 merely in the background of a scene with adults having sex. Aside from the aburdity of this, this could cover graphic works such as Watchmen and Lost Girls ( http://www.independent.co.u[…]-erotic-comics-1652270.html ).

* As with the "extreme" porn law ( http://yourfreedom.hmg.gov.[…]-the-cjia-2008-extreme-porn ), we have BBFC works being exempt, yet a clip from a BBFC work can still be illegal.

Supporters claim that such images need to be removed from society, yet scenes of under-18 sexual acts can be found in mainstream media (e.g., South Park's Proper Condom Use shows Cartman masturbating an animal). Either we end up criminalising material in mainstream media, or the law is pointless if they're still allowed. Similar laws in other countries have resulted in people being prosecuted for joke images (of the Simpsons, in Australia).

The arguments for this law were that real images were being converted to drawings (already illegal by another law, see my comment above), and that police were unable to confiscate cartoons of children from people who also had child porn. The latter could easily be handled by saying that those convicted of child offences are also forbidden to possess any such drawings etc - there is no need to criminalise everyone, making us all risk three years in prison and being placed on the Sex Offender Register.

Well said EDantes!

So what if a person draws a picture of some depraved and sickening sexual practice she thought up in her head? Where's the victim? If there is no victim, then the state has no business sticking its oar in!

I want to buy a music album from Japan, but the album artwork contains a questionable (according to Labour) DRAWING on it... so i can't buy it... ANYWAY, how do you put an age on a drawing? Also, the mind can manifest itself into an image (a mental one), are those images banned too? Like a thoughtcrime?

There is a classic British newspaper cartoon featuring a man's head and shoulders in the background as two children peek in through his bedroom door, with the subtitle "Wow! And mummy shouts at me for sucking my THUMB!"

If this is now as bad as child porn then the message is clearly that child porn is not a bad thing. No, this law was just passed by some very confused people.

Fully agree this should be repealed. It's a bad law!

This law is ridiculous. What is wrong with drawings? A child is not raped every time someone draws one in a bikini. Money should be spent on help for real pedophiles and abused three-dimensional children, not on this ridiculous law.

The expressed output of someone's imagination via drawings should never be subject to criminalisation of possession, choose how diabolical it appears to be. If real children were used, either directly or indirectly then prove it properly and prosecute accordingly.

We don't need laws which exist only because a more appropriate law would be too hard to prove. IE in this case that real children were used and abused in some way, or real pictures formed the source of the material.

As with much of New Labour legislation, this law and others surrounding pornographic images are drawn so widely as to criminalise completely legal material in which no real person was ever used or abused.

The notion of a legal age of consent may be worthwhile in preventing exploitation and abuse of the young however, to use some arbitrary age of 18 to determine if a fictional character 'appears to be legal' in a certain fictional scene and context beggars belief.

Moreover, the criminal evidence from Japan and other countries where such 'cartoon child abuse' material is freely available shows that it may well be beneficial in reducing ACTUAL child abuse. Given the opportunity, most people would rather not break the law or abuse real people and such fictional outlets serve as a safe and legal alternative (in those more liberal and rational countries).

As I've said elsewhere, reasonable and rational people are supposed to make reaonable and rational decisions. Clearly, with this law and others like it, such reason and rationale went out the window in favour of knee-jerk speculation and misguided beliefs that "one thing leads to another". All real-world evidence suggests this type of material actually helps prevent other behaviours all sane and caring people wish could be stopped.

If we believe paedophiles can be created or spurred-on by viewing that which appeals to them then, I doubt cartoon figures feature highly on their hit list indeed, we should ban real children for it is their presence and appeal which actually prompts the child-abuser to abuse them.

If people want to 'crack one off' over cartoon images that's fine by me but, if they attempt to 'groom' or abuse an underage child they should be dealt with to the maximum penalty the law allows. I believe that's how the law stood before Ms Eagle and her self-righteous band of numbskulls set about destroying the principle that where there's no real victim there's no real crime to answer for...

Holding or viewing any image of any kind in any medium is not a crime! It may reveal the viewer as a pervert or whatever but still that is not a crime. It may or may not spur them on to commit a crime, it may or may not satisfy them so they don't prey on real people, whatever, just looking at something or owning a picture can never be a real crime. The criminals are those who actually interfere with children and other vulnerable people, whether it is in order to make the images or whatever. That IS a crime. Just looking at something, however distasteful and appalling it may be to the rest of us, is NOT a crime.

Please eliminate this thought crime which restricts the fun 7 games of thousands and provides little or no benefit to society

A drawing harms nobody. What should the mere possession of a drawing be a criminal offense ? I do not accept that this is need to stop pedophiles as I am sure that any serious pedophile would have at least some photos of actual children they could be prosecuted for without having to resort to prosecuting them for drawings

@Geordietoff

I have to disagree with you there, Geordie.
Owning a picture of child porn and pseudo-photography of such subject matter should always be illegal.

What I'm talking about are merely cartoons like "lolicon" that are erotic in nature which cause no harm and have not harmed anyone, these have no reason to be illegal. This has obviously been brought in by prudish MPs.

As a life-long fan of anime (Japanese cartoons) and manga (Japanese comics), I was dismayed by this legislation. To make things worse, it was so badly drafted that Parliament's own Joint Committee on Human Rights had this to say about it: "We remain concerned at the broad definition of the offence and, as a result, its potential application beyond the people whom the Government is seeking to target." (JCHR Legislative Scrutiny: Coroners and Justice Bill, 17 March 2009, p52, s1.174). The government's response was basically that it was up to the courts to clarify the meaning, which means that we don't know what's legal and what isn't until the first people fall victim.

Speaking specifically to the impact on fans of Japanese culture, the main issue is that, given the highly subjective nature of the drafting, not to mention the highly subjective nature of determining the age of a fictional character, how are we supposed to know whether our existing collections are legal or not? There is a get-out clause for BBFC certificated material, but that of course only applies to video recordings and not to printed material. And in any case, most anime DVDs will have been imported from the USA and therefore not certificated. The government stated time and time again that they were only seeking to target material that would already have been illegal to publish in the UK. However the actual wording of the act makes it clear that this is far from the case, given that material need only be merely "disgusting" (C&JA 2009, s62(1)(2)(c)) rather than "obscene", which is the usual threshold for something being illegal to publish. It should absolutely not be the business of government to criminalise those who merely cause "disgust" to others, otherwise we should need to turn the whole country into a prison.

One other important issue is that many of us now feel that we are now suffering unwarranted restrictions on discussing our hobby. Most English-language on-line communities devoted to anime and manga are hosted in the USA, where drawn images receive a high degree of protection under the US Constitution. We now visit such communities at our own risk because American citizens may legally post images (albeit in violation of some communities' rules) that we may face prosecution for possessing if we unintendedly download them and then do not immediately delete them in such a way as to render them unrecoverable.

It should be clear to anyone that the negative impact of this legislation on a significant section of the population is simply not justified by its purported benefits. It would probably, though, be too much to hope for a repeal as the new government would then no doubt find itself pilloried in certain sections of the media. So, as a compromise solution, I would suggest that a thorough re-examination of this law's rationale and its drafting should be undertaken, with a moratorium on prosecutions until the review is complete.

I leave the last word to the JCHR: "We reiterate our view, which we have expressed on previous occasions, that legislation should be evidence-based. Such evidence should be published in time to assist parliamentary scrutiny. Whilst we fully support appropriately targeted criminal offences ... we are disappointed that the Government has failed to provide sufficiently weighty reasons for the need of the new offence that they propose in this Bill." (ibid, p53, s1.178)

Every penny spent on drafting and enforcing this law is a penny not being spent protecting real children from real abuse. How on earth can that be worth it?

How many cartoon characters equal one real child? If you could stop a million incidents of fictional abuse, but at the cost of having to forego the opportunity to prevent one incident of real abuse, would you really let the real child suffer for the sake of cartoon characters?

This law is obscene. Absolutely disgusting.

LawrenceKraft i agree with you 100% as a retailer specialising in anime and manga this law is an absolute nightmare !

As others have already pointed out, the issue of paedophiles converting photographs to drawings to evade the law was covered in the Sexual Offences 2003 and subsequent legislation.

This law, however, criminalises completely *fictional* images which do not and have never have been anything to do with actual children including a large swathe of Japanese Manga and Anime.

As with the Extreme Pornography legislation, this law was based on little more than personal tastes and subjective impressions of what an image looks like and is so vague and ill-defined that it could even criminalise the Olympics 2012 logo because that could be seen as a stylized image of Lisa from The Simpsons kneeling down and performing an act of oral sex!

This is another piece of Thought Crime legislation passed by a Government that thought that by controlling what we were allowed to see, somehow that would make the world a better place.

Such laws already exist in places like China, North Korea and Iran, they have no place in England and should be repealed forthwith.

APPEAL THIS NOW! :)

In case you haven't seen this yet:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/01/06/tiger_police/

In short, the police used this law to prosecute someone for possessing an animation of Tony the Tiger (seriously) having sex with a woman. The case was thrown out when it was found out that the police had removed the soundtrack (which made it quite clear the video was comedy not pornography, as if that wasn't obvious enough) from the evidence.

Absolutely disgusting (though perhaps not as much as some of your porn collections ;))

Surely the law could be drafted in such a way as to preclude the digital pictoralisation of a photographic image and the genuine original work of an artist. If they can't then good luck with the rest of their legislative agenda.

I'm sorry but this is one of the most demented laws in existence ... It means that all that old Greek pottery in museums with the boys having sex with goats and god know what are all pornographic and can be taken to court and cause a right newspaper frenzy ... And of course as mentioned above it led to that classic case of Tony the Tiger from the Fosties cereal adds having sex with a woman in a joke clip being taken to court ... I would think the embarrassment of this incident itself would be enough to repeal this little silliness
Drawings can be very rude ... But NEVER dangerous

@garethfox

Possession of any image derived from an indecent photographic image of a person under the age of 18 is already banned by the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2008.

The law as it stands equates to thought crime; which is to be discouraged. From a purely practical point of view it has the potential to destroy more lives than it will ever save. Anyone who has ever explored the antiquities or modern day asian culture (amongst others )is potentially implicated.

As it stands anyone who uses the internet to explore other cultures where this law does not exist risks prosecution for what could be accidental contact with prohibited materials. This is not a good way of promoting knowledge and understanding.

The money spent on Tony the Tiger style farces could more usefully be spent on helping "real" people in genuine need of help. Call me insensitive if you will but I am reasonably certain that Tony The Tiger derived no personal satisfaction or sense of justice from either arriving in court or being dismissed from it.

Isn't it now illegal *to be shown* child pornography? What if I didn't want to see it? Ridiculous.

I concur with this. I mean comeon why banned anime hentai, which obviously center around cartoon, instead of realizing real life porn star and hoe from the strip bar is the real problem.

Free this hentai (cartoon) and Banned (Real life pornstar instead)

The prevailing opinion above seems to agree with my own: This law appears to serve no purpose but to appease a chunk of population that finds such images distasteful.

There is one clear reason, to me, why images such as those banned by the C&J act should not be illegal: There appears to be no body of evidence supporting the assertion that viewing them "leads to something, and that something will lead to something else" as one Lord put it.

Putting in place a law without evidence that it will improve a situation is /clearly a bad idea/. There's not even any debate needed!

Some reasons why this law might be bad:

The population I'm aware of who have exposure to these images are generally also /not into live-action porn/, or are into it to a lesser extent.

Many believe that art must be modelled. However, this art has been made for such a long time that artists will generally use /previous artwork/ as a model! There is no victim, at all, in such an image.

Viewing of such images may serve as a /release/. By applying harsh punishments to someone who is not causing direct (or even indirect!) harm to another person, there is little to no encouragement for them to stay with such a mild release.

Until I am shown real evidence that viewing purely and clearly fictional pornography encourages someone to commit similar acts (as opposed to people wanting to commit such acts viewing the images), I remain disgusted that we have such a law in place.

LawrenceKraft, you may want to check out the case of Christopher Handley, an American who was arrested and convicted for possestion of the sorts of images under discussion here. The USA has had such laws for several years. Check out the PROTECT act. This is not something unique to the UK and the American constitution did not provide protection.

This law is as dumb as a box of rocks but you have to be watching or reading some pretty messed up stuff to fall foul, and then you need to be on their watch list.

And just to make things a bit more interesting, the import of such material has been illegal for a LONG time in the UK. This has just been a rather scatter gun attempt to close a loophole that really didn't need to be closed.

Nihilarity:

Actually, the "tiger" porn law wasn't this law, but the "extreme" porn law (see http://yourfreedom.hmg.gov.[…]-the-cjia-2008-extreme-porn , http://yourfreedom.hmg.gov.[…]ce-and-immigration-act-2008 ).

This case was thrown out because the "extreme" porn law is restricted "realistic" depictions (though it's still a mad law, convering staged/fictional and consensual material). But under this law, non-realistic depictions, such as cartoons, will be fair game for prosecution and conviction.

For reference, this law is Section 62 of the Coroners and Justice Act 2009 - see http://www.opsi.gov.uk/[…]/ukpga_20090025_en_5#pt2-ch2-pb1-l1g62 and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coroners_and_Justice_Act_2009 . Though it shares many similarities with the "extreme" porn law of Section 63 of the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2008. Both are moral panic laws that criminalise private possession of fictional material, based on what some politicians thought was "disgusting".

As noted by many commentators above, there is absolutely no need for this law and it unjustly criminalises potentially millions of adults who are otherwise perfectly law abiding. It definitely warrants repeal.

Ah thanks for the correction mdwh, guessed wrongly that they were part of the same law.
That case is still relevant to this in a way, because it highlights how easily this kind of law could be misused. Opinions will obviously vary on whether or pornography depicting underage children should be allowed, but the worst thing about this legislation is that it potentially makes perfectly innocent things illegal. I can imagine the police using this to 'get' people they don't like, or don't have enough evidence to prosecute for other offenses.

The real question is...how do you tell the age of a cartoon character?

Different artists have different drawing styles, in Japan (where this law hits hardest) characters are drawn with big expressive eyes and a small nose which often gives a child-like feature, even though the figure of the character is clearly that of an adult.

In just 1 day this law made innocent law abiding citizens into hardline criminals that could be placed on the sex offenders register and thus ruin someone's chance of a career ever, I could at this very moment with a pencil and paper DRAW illegal material, no-one is harmed in the production of these materials unlike real pornography.

'Code Geass' the highly popular Japanese animation was edited for a 1 second scene because it was deemed "innapropriate", I have seen this scene and it showed a still image of a high school 17 year old touching someone's breasts (no genitalia or nipple was showing) yet it was still edited out due to this ridiculous law.

This law is frankly pointless and has criminlized otherwise law-abiding citizens due to their viewing habits.

Code Geass was not cut due to this law. I have spoken to the BBFC about this very subject and they have not changed their guidelines since the introduction of this law. The cut would have been made even without the new law.

I agree that moral laws like this are just disgusting and should be repealed asap, is weirdness or disgust really a good enough reason to treat someone like a child abuser for possesion of drawn images?

Ive been a fan of anime for almost 21years (age of 6) now and lolicon for what must of been about 14years. I completely agree this law is a breach of humanrights and intrudes into the privacy of comic collectors. Without any proof this law infact protects or such imagery leads to the pursuit of other crimes i will continue to fight it anyway i can. Also in one of the documents i cant remember which it states "the conviction rate for this crime will be very low as such imagery is only found amoung actual or pseudo" so theyre not even going to effectively police this stuff either and just to add insult the people its supposed to target will already have previously illeagal material making this law pointless. Atleast tokyo had some comman sense rejecting a simular ban as they saw it to violate human rights. As for pedophiles exploiting loop holes i try to get pieces signed the last one was my popotan artbook (now illegal) signed by Haruko momoi (music artist to the games opening and voice actress to the underaged girl), that doesnt sound like the actions of a pedophile does it? and on one final note i did a little survey on age of characters aged 17-18 (anime only) faces only averaged 11year old, full body 14 seems the only method people will use to judge a characters age is breast size as they lack any cultural understanding. IT NEEDS A COMPLETE REPEAL, I did spend a long time discussing this issue with my MP and i quote "this law needs a serious review", trying to set up a meeting with my brothers MP nick clegg (not having much luck atm) to put forward a simular case.

This law would criminalise child abuse victims, who make drawings of their own abuse as part of therapy, their healing process, or a way to describe to others (as I understand it, for some, drawing is easier than speaking about what happened to them).

As a fellow enthusiast of Japanese anime, artwork (doujinshi/hentai/lolicon/...), music, etc. I just want to throw in my support for the repealing of this draconian law which will do nothing to prevent real children from being abused.

"The creation of laws punishing people for victimless thoughtcrimes, regardless of the good intentions involved therein, is unacceptable in any society that strives to give value to personal freedoms, unless that society is then willing to rid itself of all freedoms entirely."

This law is pointless, if it was passed what actuall benefit would mistreated children in this world gain? Fictional images cause no harm however all the people out in the world who are causing this harm continue to do it. It's laws like this which are a fake advancement in combatting serious problems. This law should be Repealed and something usefull actually done to protect children. It's a massive waste of time and money which is just causing problems to industry. Besides, if people have these urges why not get it out of thier system in a harmless way? Much like Airsoft/paintball is a substitute to using a gun. People are only human, however the more harmless ways to get something out of someones system the less likely they are to do something stupid, horrific or harmful.

Similar to the comments found above, I also support the repeal of an arbitary and unnecessary law. Entirely fictional images with no grounding in actual reality should not be the basis for a criminal offence. Would we make it illegal to read a murder mystery because people within the book are murdered? Would we make it illegal to watch the Italian Job because it 'condones' theft?

Perhaps if this law is any indication...but I will stand and say that this _should not_ be the case. Repeal this law; do not criminalise victimless persuits that harm neither the consumer, the retailer, the author or anyone else - lest we end up on the most slippery of slopes.

Complete rubbish, how the hell can they determine the age of a cartoon character, I've seen cartoons as suppose to be young with breast size so large they looked like midgets, this law must of been approved by crack heads, like the retard judge in Australia that dubbed Simpson Porn as child porn, another thing is, what about the art in the art gallery, if this is enforced, it means the most popular paintings at the gallery must be removed from the public as well, this is one of things that they are trying to get rid of out of our freedom of expression, if you think about this, it violates the European Human Rights Act 1998 - Article 9 and 10 which can be viewed here http://www.opsi.gov.uk/acts/acts1998/ukpga_19980042_en_3, I can understand arresting people for converting real child porn to an virtual image, believe me, I have come across them and they are a major difference to the virtual image, even computer generated CGI 3D drawings don't even come close to it, this is just another way for the government to control the people and what they look at.

@project2501

The Handley case in the US is often cited as an example of how the PROTECT act has successfully criminalised obscene drawn images of the same sort as the C&J act does. However, Handley entered a guilty plea thus rendering the point moot. The only actual conviction under the act I am aware of is that of one Dwight Whorley. Whorley had violated his bail conditions and was also in possession of actual child pornography, so the PROTECT conviction was somewhat ancilliary. I believe he is still trying to appeal that part of the conviction to the US Supreme Court.

The point to bear in mind, though, is that even if those provisions of the PROTECT act relating to drawn artwork are ultimately endorsed by the Supreme Court, they criminalise the possession of images that are already obscene by US standards. This is a rather higher threshold than the generally-accepted UK standard, and potentially much higher than what we may eventually end up with once the C&J Act definition has been tested in the British courts.

Right now, the current US attitude to drawn artwork is easily demonstrable by doing such simple things as using Google to find information about anime characters, which is now a risky activity because of the potentially illegal images that may be returned. Google has (thankfully) been very successful in blocking illegal photographs of children from its searches, but clearly sees no need to block drawings of the same sort. To make things worse, because of the drafting of the C&J Act, individual images as returned from a search engine are the riskiest things to possess. This is because in their original contexts of an anime or manga, they might be deemed legal because the work as a whole was not pornographic. However, once extracted they lose that protection.

As for Code Geass, despite the BBFC saying that their guidelines have not changed, I find it difficult to understand how they could have cut the scene in question and yet passed certain other works uncut. I assume that the cut would easily have been overturned on appeal, but it simply wasn't worth the distributor's time and money to argue over a few frames. However, this particular discussion is probably better suited to the "Abolish the VRA" section of this site.

Handley was advised to plead guilty, there is no way he could have got a fair trial. Plead guilty and get a lesser sentence or go to court and get the book thrown at you.

Handley was caught after the postal service opened a package (surely thats in violation of the constitution) and I'm pretty sure if UK customs found similar you'd be in for some tough questions even without sec62.

http://customs.hmrc.gov.uk/[…]rue&id=HMCE_PROD_010644

The C&J sec62 has not changed the customs act.

Since the cut of Code Geass the BBFC have passed Mahoromatic series 2 UNCUT. If the supposed reasons for cutting code geass were true then mahoromatic should be in shreds right now.

I see Waterstones are still offering The Lost Girls for sale, a book which supposedly would have become instantly illegal.

And finally the dojin stall at the London MCM expo was still there and doing fairly well from what I saw.

I'm in the middle of writing an article on the BBFC and this very subject. The BBFC have been very helpful.

Your conversation about Code Geass makes me wonder if the molestation scene of Mayu from her flashback was cut from Elfen Lied.

Elfen lied was not cut for the DVD release. The version shown on TV back in 2007 was cut but the US TV masters were used and the cut was needed for the US. They could have shown it uncut on UK TV but budget restrictions made them use the US masters.

@project2501

HMRC have always had wide powers of discretion when it comes to seizing imported material, and have traditionally been more strict than the prevailing definition of "obscenity". The C&J Act hasn't changed customs legislation, but if you try to import anything they deem to be prohibited by the act then that does empower them to take rather stronger action than just giving you a slap on the wrist. I for one will not be attempting to import manga or artbooks "sight unseen" now.

Waterstones may still be offering The Lost Girls, but that in itself does not make the book legal - Amazon UK is still offering photobooks that people have been convicted for possessing under the Criminal Justice Act 1988 "indecent images" provisions. The problem is that such laws as these are rarely applied consistently. Some people are simply ignorant of the risk or willing to accept it, others perhaps have rather more to lose and will therefore be far more circumspect.

Hmm.

I don't know if any of you have actually seen PLANETES, but there's a character who lives on the moon who's four years old, but looks about 18 ~ 20ish.

If some hentai started floating around of her, what criterion would she be classified as? Legal since she looks 18+? Illegal because she's actually four, despite looking 18+?

How many Laws can one break with just a piece of paper and a Pencil to draw with?

with this link posted above
http://gallery.bitplane.net/d/681-1/cartoon+porn.png

Is that legal? even obscured it obviously depicts a naked 17 year old - If I was admin of bitplane.net, or didn't have private browsing on when you clicked the link then you could probably get done for that.

It's an example of a law that prettymuch everyone could get done for and so if the police take a disliking to you for any reason they can now legally just call you a paedo and if you dared challenge it then the tabloid reading types would be out with their pitchforks.

Would also like to add if it comes to it. I would really like to be apart of getting this law repealed or added to a great repeal bill if it enters a diologue stage. I want my human rights given back to me and I don't care what I'm called or viewed to be by the public.

I agree in principle with the Americans, when their supreme court rejected similar overreaching parts of their child porn laws (before later reinstating them in part...). See: http://www2.law.cornell.edu/supct/pdf/00-795P.ZO (change extension to pdf)

Some choice quotes:
"The mere tendency of speech to encourage unlawful acts is not a sufficient reason for banning it. The government “cannot constitutionally premise legislation on the desirability of controlling a person’s private thoughts.”"

"The government may not prohibit speech because it increases the chance an unlawful act will be committed “at some indefinite future time.”"

Laws of this sort are approaching "thought-crime", and have no place in a free society.

This law is not about dealing with child abusers. It's about legal restrictions on creative expression to prevent the spread of evil thoughts that might later factor into motivation for child abuse. This is a trade of current freedom to prevent speculative future harm. This seems a worthwhile trade to some -- ignore that at your peril. "They're only taking away the freedoms you never use," they say.

Any objection based on an appeal the risk of stifling mainstream entertainment is doomed to failure. There has been no real damage so far. The risk is exactly the sort of phantom that the law itself targets: a mere speculative future harm.

A principled stand for freedom of expression is the only ground to argue against this law.

To create a crime where there is no victim and an Act that is so subjective that it depends on individual's own moral standards is utterly ludicrous.

The Government have moved away from creating laws to protect people to creating laws that lay the foundation for a 'Nineteen Eighty Four' future. Could this same train of thought be applied to other crimes? In the future will it be illegal to depict murder, crime, underage-drinking?

The Government needs to repeal this law and put the effort that would have been wasted into enforcing the laws that already exist to protect minors and to improve the poorly resourced and managed Social Security services.

http://gallery.bitplane.net/d/681-1/cartoon+porn.png

OK, lets go through the law:
(2) A prohibited image is an image which— .
(a) is pornographic, .
(b) falls within subsection (6), and .
(c) is grossly offensive, disgusting or otherwise of an obscene character.

Well.. its not pornographic and apart from the awful MS paint skills its not offensive, disgusting or otherwise obscene.

So lets move on to (6)
(6) An image falls within this subsection if it— .
(a) is an image which focuses solely or principally on a child’s genitals or anal region, or .
(b) portrays any of the acts mentioned in subsection (7). .

Well, can't see its genitals or anal region. Lets try (7)

(7) Those acts are— .
(a) the performance by a person of an act of intercourse or oral sex with or in the presence of a child; .
(b) an act of masturbation by, of, involving or in the presence of a child; .
(c) an act which involves penetration of the vagina or anus of a child with a part of a person’s body or with anything else; .
(d) an act of penetration, in the presence of a child, of the vagina or anus of a person with a part of a person’s body or with anything else; .
(e) the performance by a child of an act of intercourse or oral sex with an animal (whether dead or alive or imaginary); .
(f) the performance by a person of an act of intercourse or oral sex with an animal (whether dead or alive or imaginary) in the presence of a child.

Again all fail.

So by reading the law the image does not fall foul, however 2(a) and 2(c) are open to interpretation. But the most likely offence will be one of trolling.

project2501, you're right that that image is a poor example. However, there are hypothetical cases that are truly silly.

For example, in subsection (7), as you quoted, there is this item:-

"(a) the performance by a person of an act of intercourse or oral sex with or in the presence of a child"

This means you can take a piece of legal hardcore porn, and turn it into a "prohibited image" by drawing a child on it.

You could have porn showing, explicitly, two adults having sex in their bedroom. It can be indisputably pornographic. Depending on what they're doing, it could be "grossly offensive, disgusting or otherwise of an obscene character." But it would still be entirely legal to possess (as long as it's not an "extreme pornographic image").

But if you take a pencil to that image, and draw a child in the background, it suddenly becomes a crime to possess that image.

But what if you draw a frame around that child? If it's a picture of a child, hanging on the bedroom wall, it probably isn't illegal to possess (depending on what's meant by an "imaginary child" later in that Act). But if you alter that image by drawing curtains on either side of the picture frame, it turns it into a window, and suddenly you're back to having an image that's criminal to possess.

You can actually commit a sex crime by drawing a picture of some curtains.

Of course, this could be dismissed as a silly quibble. But what harm is done by drawing a picture of a child that isn't done by drawing a picture of some curtains?

It doesn't matter what it's a drawing of - a child, curtains, whatever - it simply doesn't make sense to make it a crime to possess a drawing.

jasons: hear, hear!

I strongly agree with those choice quotes.

After all, if we criminalise possession of works of expression, simply because they might somehow have the effect of encouraging bad stuff, we end up being completely controlled, with no real freedom of expression at all.

The very essence of thought crime is the attempt to stop people doing bad things by trying to stop the thoughts that lead to those bad things, by somehow trying to criminalise those thoughts either directly or indirectly.

Criminalising possession of works of expression because of the ideas they represent, because of the thoughts these works of expression might inspire, and because of the bad actions that might, possibly follow at a later time, is a very good example of thought crime.

It is because of these underlying principles that such laws as this are not only utterly unacceptable, but truly evil. It's these underlying principles - freedom of thought, freedom from pre-emptive, presumptive criminalisation, etc - that matter here. It is for these reasons that laws such as this must be repealed.

If the principle of thought crime is accepted for this law (as, it seems, it already has, since the law was successfully passed), then it can be applied to all sorts of other stuff as well. After all, it's the same principle. This law absolutely must be repealed.

DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER

DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER

DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER

DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER

DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER

As Thomas Paine said:

"An avidity to punish is always dangerous to liberty. It leads men to stretch, to misinterpret, and to misapply even the best of laws. He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.”

This law is clearly wrong, eroding civil liberties and creating victimless thought crime, and yet it is just the kind of law that and politician will shy away from repealing because of the sensitivity of the subject matter. And yet if this law stands, this country does not have a legal system I could feel proud of.

Well done for adding it here. I only hope someone has the courage to take notice and act.

At what point was this a good idea? Its just thought crime with no evidence to back it up.

Ludicrous.

A completely victimless crime and it is wrong to censor art. Edward Munch's portrait of a teenage girl sitting on her bed comes under this definition and has been removed from some libraries.

A piece of knee-jerk legislation which is utterly without grounds.

"Edward Munch's portrait of a teenage girl sitting on her bed comes under this definition and has been removed from some libraries."

Got any proof?

"Those who give up their rights for security, deserve neither freedom nor liberty."

As well as the important points that have already been put forward, I would even go as far as to say that this law belittles actual child abuse.
In effect this law's saying that screwing a child up for the rest of their life is no worse than looking at some badly drawn squiggles.

I think the best policy would be to get back to basics with laws such as this. The given reason why child porn is illegal is not because most people don't want to look at it, but because a child has been abused to make it. This law has no such justification and protects noone, and is therefore nothing other than the criminalisation of minority interests.

No nsmith - it was brought about because of 'moral panic'.

Everyone should be able to enjoy lolicon.

LawrenceKraft and Shaunhw - in total agreement with you both.

LawrenceKraft and Shaunhw - in total agreement with you both.

please repeal this law as it could cause innocent people to be mistreated and labeled as pedophile when they have done nothing wrong

I note that Waterstones are still selling Alan Moore's "Lost Girls", which is clearly illegal under this law. The law is simply silly.

Clearly its not. The law does state that images are expempt if they are part of a larger work, ie a book.

as long as producing a drawing took no illegal labour and the making and distribution does not step on any individual liberties,it should be legal.banning an activity and a sexual preference which causes no harm and may potentially be a prohibiting execise is just dumb.where there is a demand there is a supply.banning it wont stop it.it just like that stupid "war on drugs" america is running.its not stopping anyone and they are basically trowing huge amounts of money a year in a pile to be set on fire.this is what it amounts too.spending money on un-nesessesary shit.

Drawing hurts nobody. If the drawing is of something that really happened, it still hurts nobody. What hurt somebody was the initial abuse, and that should be punished, and would be punished. This law is bullshit.

The motives may have been noble but as with a huge amount of rushed and poorly drafted recent legislation it runs into the law of unintended consequences.

There is no compelling research to suggest such images are a significant problem or likely to become so. Under this and other legislation It is possible for instance the a professional or amateur graphic artist could be guilty simply through owning a copy of programs like Poser, that contain nude templates of children and infants for use in creating animations and graphic art.

project2501: "Clearly its not. The law does state that images are expempt if they are part of a larger work, ie a book"

Nope, this is incorrect (or if you disagree, can you quote me which bit of the law?)

The only exemption is for classified works - that means things like BBFC-classified videos. But books do not require classification to be published (thankfully!)

(In practice, sure a mainstream book probably won't get you convicted simply because that would be completely mad, but then that just makes the law even more stupid, in that images in mainstream books are okay, but the same image in a book elsewhere or on the Internet, or drawn privately, is illegal. It's still a valid criticism in this law to say how the images criminalised in this law available in mainstream media, and applying the law inconsistently doesn't address the problem.)

project2501: "Well.. its not pornographic and apart from the awful MS paint skills its not offensive, disgusting or otherwise obscene."

Well, I'm glad you'll be sitting on the jury! :) The problem is that no one can be sure what a jury (or the police) will think is "porn" based on looking at the image. And "offensive", "disgusting", "obscene" are entirely subjective terms (note that this is not even the Obscene Publications definition of obscenity, but simply the dictionary definition).

Perhaps that image will be okay and it was a poor example (I can't even check without knowing if I break the law or not), but other examples might be the scene from South Park's Proper Condom Use where Cartman masturbates an animal. Or consider the Simpsons joke images, that have resulted in convictions under similar laws elsewhere (Australia).

I totally agree with this. I would like also to draw attention to the following very well written dialogue, which covers additional points pertaining to "indecent images" in general:

http://yourfreedom.hmg.gov.[…]ection-of-children-act-1978

There are huge potential problems on both sides of this issue.

If you ban the artistic depiction of children in a sexualised way, you have the problem of interpreting where the line lies between art and pornography. My mother, who is an artist, has in the past made sculptures and paintings of nude children (that is, her children). Technically she could be arrested and jailed as a child pornographer.

On the other hand, if you permit the artistic depiction of children in a sexualised way, then, the modern world being what it is, you will inevitably end up with not only websites but also magazines aimed at paedophiles, containing the worst possible types of images, just as is the case in Japan. Personally, I thinkl this would be a bad idea; because many people would find these images offensive; because it would create the impression that paedophilia is acceptable, and because these images would feed the unpleasant fantasies of some dangerous people.

I think it comes down to this. "Art" should be fine. "Pornography" should be banned. The current legislation is probably too broad and should be rethought. To the extent that it is possible to do so it should be made clear what will be acceptable and what won't. But in drawing the line between art and pornography, so much depends on context that you have to leave room for people's individual judgement - people in this case being the police and the courts.

I am not generally a fan of draconian laws that are rarely applied, but I think one could argue that this is a special case.

"On the other hand, if you permit the artistic depiction of children in a sexualised way"

Except we already "permit" them, in that they are legal, yet there is no problem of "magazines aimed at paedophiles". (Do you have a reference to support the idea that you can buy these in Japan?)

There are also plenty of laws controlling what can be published, especially in shops; age ratings, and so on.

""Art" should be fine. "Pornography" should be banned."

But there is no way to distinguish these - there might be non-artistic pieces that aren't porn; there might be artistic pieces that aren't intended to be porn. And even where a line can be drawn, everyone has a different opinion on what counts.

There also might be pieces that are intended as porn, but aren't meant for pedophiles (e.g., images of 16 year olds; or unrealistic images of adults that the police/jury *think* might look under 18, e.g., school room scenes, or just because they're drawn as young adults).

"Except we already "permit" them, in that they are legal"

Just to clarify - obviously they're illegal now, but this law only came in a few months ago, 2010. So for all of history before that, we permitted them - not to mention them still being legal in many sensible countries - and we've never had anything like magazines for pedophiles, as the commenter above claimed.

(Why would pedophiles be after cartoons, anyway? And if they are after cartoons, you can see cartoon depictions of underage sexual acts in mainstream media, e.g., South Park. It's supporters of the law who claim that such mainstream media wouldn't be affected, so if that's true, this law wouldn't help for mainstream things anyway.)

I will confess that I think the reasons behind the law are very noble. I also, despite being an anime and manga fan who admires them greatly, find certain aspects of it and its depiction of children incredibly creepy and dubious. However, the law itself is a vague mess that needs to be scrapped before it leads to embarrassment.

Not only is there the danger of it being used to censor art instead of actually convicting real paedophiles, but it has too many flaws to work. Beyond the time that will be spent trying to debate what it pornographic and what is art, the practicality of using it will be difficult, especially with some of the inconsistencies of the law mentioned in the previous posts (such as the fact it includes depictions of people over the age of consent).

I was thinking now that "drawings are people too."

Based on the fact that if I draw a picture of a loli, I'll be branded a child molester and a pedophile, etc, etc.

If I drew a picture of a house, then tore it apart, would I be charged with destruction of property?

Or what if I said there was SEMTEX planted inside, would I be detained under the terrorism act?

Why exactly WOULD any person want to view an image (drawn or otherwise) of children engaging in an act that could be perceived as sexual incongruity?

I believe this site has merely become a platform for anti-government/police-hating/paedophiles and all those asking for a repeal of ANY law that protects children should question their own integrity.

Also, those posting statements about ongoing court cases against them (as there are on other threads) should be found in contempt of court.

It is a common belief that current actions predict future behaviours and that if a person percieves that they are 'getting away' with committing an offence, then their propensity for committing even further grave acts will grow exponentionally.

I find it abhorrent that this subject is even allowed on a forum that law-abiding members of the public have access to.

 jwills, What you seem to be asking for is that an open debate on an issue which concerns many people be removed because you find the topic distasteful?

You claim that this law supposedly protects children, yet the nature of this particular piece of legislation is that it specifically targets 'imaginary' or 'non-existent' depictions, such as drawings or animation. While it cannot be denied that there may be examples that have been produced as a direct result of child abuse, it is also deeply concerning to think that the wording of this law specifically targets anyone who decides to draw such a picture, to charge someone on the nature of an imaginary depiction makes this the same as a thought crime.

There is also the matter of content imported from countries such as Japan, wherein the popular artistic culture is focused on 'young' looking characters, be it general or sexualized. The specific wording of this bill targets any such depictions that appear to be under 18 years of age with no examples pertaining to how a fictional character's age is defined. Meaning such drawings are now policed the same as photographs with greater ambiguity as to what would be considered 'unlawful content'.

This law was slipped through by the previous government on the grounds that access may result in more serious offences. Essentially, the justification for this law is an assumption that access to such images could potentially lead to a more serious act being committed in the future. A law should not be enforced on the grounds that "the convicted 'could' or 'might'...".

 In addition, 'common belief' is not a grounds on which laws should be introduced and enforced. In this case, the fact that there is a counter argument which claims that such images serve as a 'safe release', in itself a means of protecting children. Both sides have equal grounding in terms of support and evidence, but to take the most convenient argument and define it as a 'common belief' is a simple refusal to take both arguments into account.

I can understand that the topic may be an uncomfortable area for debate. What I would like to know jwills, is why you find it abhorrent that law-abiding members of the public have access to an open debate such as this one, and why you think it should be simply cast aside without discussion?

@ Dante136

I find this particular debate distasteful, as it concerns the sexualisation of minors (imaginary or otherwise).

If you read the first line of my post, I ask "Why exactly WOULD any person want to view an image of children engaging in an act that could be percieved as sexual incongruity?"

THAT is why I believe a public access forum is not the correct place for a discussion such as this. That people should question a law such as this highlights the fact that the law, as it stands, works. As those questioning such an act are surely of questionable moral values? You espouse 'safe release' as a counter-argument? I, and countless others would argue that where sex offenders are concerned, there is no such thing as a 'safe release' for pent up sexual desires in these cases. That the perverts who would wish to view such images, indeed, those who would produce them, are simply acting out their depraved lusts.

Allow me to remind you that there really is no such thing as "A victimless crime". If, as you say, that this law consitutes a "thought-crime", then so be it. If it serves in the interests of protecting vulnerable, defencless children, then I believe the whole nation should be behind it 100%.

I also don't believe 'both sides' have equal grounding in terms of support and evidence, as I think you'll find that the majority of reasonable people would not consider 'imaginary' pictures of children engaging in sexual behaviour to be at all appropriate.

I ask again, and perhaps you personally may wish to answer this question Dante136;

"WHY would ANYBODY wish to look at or produce a picture of minors, be it drawn/painted/CGI or any other media, engaging in sexual acts of any form?"

Even comparing real abuse and someone drawing a picture from there head, classifing them literally the same is why this country is going to rack and ruin. You might think they are leagues apart, but you would probably get a worse representation in the press if you have an imaginery drawing. These are real dark days.

Keep it real people, the 2008 porno laws and even 2003 sexual acts are quite a mockery on our society. We've lasted over 500 years without them fine. Scrap em now and lets debate some serious world changing issues, i.e over population, low food stocks, destruction of rainforests, energy avaliability.

Weather someone enjoys a bit of manga with questionable tastes and making them pedo criminals really does mock the law.

@jwills
You're basically saying that someone should have to justify their freedom, rather than others having to justify the striping away of their freedom. Guilty unless proven innocent. Quite frankly, I find /that/ to be an atrocious and sickening attitude to have, and it shows how blatantly some people despise a truly free society.

If we really want to protect the children, lets look at the options here:
- Drawn pornography might, possibly at some point in the future protect a child, although there is no proof for it, and it's just as likely to strip away protection from children.
- Laws such as this are creating a society that consider criminal anything that the majority considers distasteful, destroying the overall freedom of society in the process, teaching children that freedom is not a basic human right but something you have to justify.

If you want to protect the children, try not to destroy their future in the process.

the difference between you and me would be, i merely see a drawing you see a child and yet im the potential rapist. Human rights exist to give everybody some level of equality and now the law is in such a state it brands comic collectors as sex offenders. Its a crowning jewel to the incompetence of a labour government a law i can quite easily break typing "hugging pillow" into ebay. This law needs to be removed at all costs (and im currently waiting on a reply from the secretry of state for justice). Make no mistake this law doesnt target paedophiles, it doesn't protect children. Infact you could do a much better job protecting children by banning alcohol nationwide. Why would people produce or own... well as ive stated above signed work by voice actresses//music artists that played characters in said games, fandom for a series you enjoy. comedy (such as southpark even though im not much of a fan), I did find the doujin custom zombie girl funny and most touhou H doujins are funny too. It's a hobby, a hobby im fighting tooth and nail to keep. And rather than asking why people would own them I ask you this can you justify sending somebody to prison who has done nothing wrong except downloading a comic or two based on a cartoon series they like?

reading all of the above i give my full backing on its removal "what ifs" apply to everything and stand for nothing. Look at the violence and child abuse in christian history (no offence intended, nor am i calling all christians child abusers) yet no effort is being made to ban religions and clearly more harm has been done by that than what these type images will ever achive. Films that glorify terrorism dont create terrorists. Explicite cartoons of minors DON'T!! create child abusers. It also saddens me to see you call people on this thread pedos because they can see how deeply flawed this law is, something you seem to be failing at. It shocks me that the law now treats cartoons as children. I feel it makes a mockery of actual abused children. They are cartoons nothing more, they don't feel pain, misery nor sadness.
Please remove this legislation from the UK it's appallingly to treat cartoons as real children and people who collect adult comics of characters that may appear to be underage as offenders. Thank you

I can't see anywhere I personally have pointed the accusation of "Pedos" as you succinctly put it at any poster on this thread Sparking.

However, I am yet to see a justifiable explanation to the question I have posed. That being (again); "Why would anybody wish to view or produce, even procure an image of a child engaging in what could be percieved as a sexual act?"

Unless, of course, this would be for the individuals sexual gratification.

Please, can ANYBODY who wishes this law to be repealed, answer my question?

I have been an avid comic collector for approximately 40 years now and do enjoy Manga, but fail to acknowledge that as a valid explanation for collecting individual images of children in sexual situations.

"I believe this site has merely become a platform for anti-government/police-hating/paedophiles" (july 28th) you should really read up whats been typed. That may be true for production, however there seems to be reasons for its collection/veiwing and yet no valid reason to ban it either that doesnt heavily rely on speculation. In addition to a huge list of problems with this poorly thought out legislation and EU charter violations. Mistakenly convicting comic collectors for child abusers is mortifying. This law doe's need to go

So, your answer is no on both counts then?

Nowhere do I use the word "pedos" as you had and there is no valid answer to my collection/procurement/viewing point?

As I say, I have collected comics for nigh on 40 years now and I'd be more than happy for the authorities to pore over them as much as they like. For nowhere would they find an image that could place me on the wrong side of this law.

ok fine ill show u a reason then.
http://i986.photobucket.com/[…]/momoi.jpg
This is a picture of me with the voice actress//music artist haruko momoi which ive been a huge fan of for many many years. The small book shes holding is the art book to an hentai game popotan. One of the characters (the one she plays is the youngest of 3 sisters) is clearly under 18 in apperance (I would place her as being 11). She also produced the opening to the game aswell i choose this book to be signed which i purchased many years before this law. Anyway i took this book with me to get signed and a few of the pictures inside are characters bios which displays the characters in sexual scenes in this case oral. I own it for nothing more than a pirvate collection because of good voice acting and really cute singing (and now sentimental) and i also love the artwork by akio watanabe (how made the work to the game) I am different to you clearly but no good will ever come from law only mistakes. So ild get upto 2 years simply because I like a voice actresses work and singing by owning this book

paedo//paedophile its just a shorthand version which u clearly mentioned above. This legislation still needs to go in the names of all those abused. Cartoons are not children and they should not be treated as such. I guess artistic license isnt a good of enough excuse for production however i do feel that ownership through artistic styles, voice acting, fandom, music and signed peices is a valid enough reason for ownership.
In the end it comes down to pros and cons and the only benefit this law would have is to protect a child that may not even exist at the expense of convicting hundreds of comic collectors, censorship of art, intrusion of privacy and breaking human rights. Morals ha, I still dont find it morally acceptable for a government to pick which of our human rights we keep based off if people may or may not like such imagery.

I am also against this law. As an anime convention attendee for many years ive met a lot of interesting people and many good friends. Some of these are interested in lolicon (including myself). It's one of many sections of an anime hobby which ive been a fan of. Many very good artists would be cut off to me (such as marcy dog, nishi Iori, hikari hayashibara etc etc)if this law remains. My friends that are standing up for their human rights (and i fully back them) and who are not compliant with this law run the risk of being sex offenders. This law doesn't have a victim nor will it deliver justice as the thought of abusing a child is not a latent desire.
This law needs a full repeal!!! (excluding pseudo) art should never be subject to censorship!!!
Human rights are for all not just the majority

Given that I'm a devout 'toonaphile' that has always preferred the company of 2D girls over the real thing, regardless of their supposed age, I'm dead against this law. Indeed, I've followed its progress through Parliament via The Melon Farmer's site from the very beginning. However, despite personally criticising many of the consultation responses for the biased, totally unfounded pieces that they are; contacting my own MP with my concerns; even calling out the likes of Dr Zoe Hilton, who is notorious for fabricating evidence at every turn to guarantee a steady stream of donations for her child protection racket, the NSPCC, they went ahead and passed it anyway, with virtually no serious debate whatsoever.

In a proper democracy, you don't pass laws that will affect a massive section of the population without first consulting that section. Doing the complete opposite of what they said they were going to do (Evidence Driven Legislation), New Labour effectively drafted a policy and then asked groups they knew would be conducive to their way of thinking, thus ensuring it would pass without opposition. Even worse, they obfuscated the issue so badly, buring it within a shopping basket full of other laws, plus making it sound like lolicon is equally as bad as real child porn ("think of the children" and all that) ensuring that no-one in The House of Lords would touch it either.

Dodgy politics aside though, anyone with an ounce of intelligence knows that drawings, no matter what they depict, are not real. Conflating lolicon with actual images of child abuse not only devalues the real thing, it creates a situation where anyone can be harrassed by the police or the Government for anything they don't approve of. Even so, if what the IWF are doing is anything to go by, I think it will be used as more of a censorship tool than anything else. For sure, since America & Europe have little or no interest in chasing this stuff down, any blocklist to the extent of the one for real child porn would result in massive amounts of the Internet simply disappearing overnight.

At any rate, despite the fact that most people here seem to be sensible (we'll ignore jwills since he's clearly an unimaginative troll, who has never had a naughty 'Rule 34 moment' in his life) and have a very pragmatic view of the situation, I very much doubt this law will be repealed. On the contrary, I can actually see things getting worse in the future as anything surrounding the issue of child sexuality becomes a total no go area in the name of protecting them. Remonstrations that what we choose to fap to is our own affair, providing it doesn't directly harm others, will carry little weight I'm afraid.

Dismissing jwills as a troll is unwarranted. He has quite clearly stated his position. He hates paedophiles more than he likes freedom.

Wow, it's nice to see some active discussion, and some passion from both sides of the debate. Firstly and foremostly I am willing to state my position on the side of the people who would wish to repeal this law, and I'm also willing to attempt to explain why.

Firstly and foremostly, I accept jwills' axiom that anybody who looks at this imagery is probably doing so in order to gain sexual pleasure from it. I also accept the presumption that in many cases, sexual attraction to the 2D art is linked with sexual attraction to real children.

Having established that, I would like everybody to consider a few examples of 'taboo' pleasures which we can gain without a victim (and which are not yet criminal):

- Firstly and foremostly, there is nothing stopping me or you from imagining ourselves raping a child. The government cannot police this, I'm not sure if it would like to, but it cannot. This is not going to form the basis of my argument however.

- Take the example of a person gaining enjoyment from playing Counter-Strike. His main activities are likely to include using very realistic weapons to shoot at counter-terrorists and planting bombs to destroy monuments. Although this person is evidently gaining pleasure from depictions of murder and terrorism, it would be hard to argue that your average CS player is a suicide bomber in training.

- Another example would be somebody who watches a Schwarzenegger movie, and derives personal pleasure from the explosions and the gunfire, because these send chemical messages to the brain in much the same way as sexual stimulation does. Again, it would be difficult to argue that the person is likely to go and find an Uzi and start shooting people.

- My last example is that of a couple who like to roleplay. If they roleplay a rape situation, thus deriving sexual pleasure from the idea of raping/being raped, by the logic used by the pleasure = incentive, the one who is simulating the rape victim should go out and try to get raped? I see a logical fallacy here.

The fact is that an attraction, or pleasure derived from such, does not mean that the person gaining the pleasure is willing to make a victim of another person in order to gain said enjoyment.

Even amongst convicted child pornography users, Marco Strano (2003) published findings that 89% of these convicts had never had sexual contact with a child. We can only imagine that outside of the prison system, this number should be even higher, and that for users of only victimless (unlike the aforementioned) pornography like lolicon and shota, higher yet.

Before anybody decides to attack the straw man argument, I don't think that child pornography should be legal. It is not a victimless crime and downloaders are violating the privacy of the individual victim in question. Whether it should be treated as a sex crime or not is a seperate debate, but it is at very least a privacy violation which I find abhorrent.

Hopefully by this point we have proven that there isn't a clear link between use of lolicon/shotacon and actual child abuse, in which case the argument is simple: should something be legislated against just because it is 'disgusting', or because it harms someone?

Progressively speaking, we have moved away from the former. From legalising homosexuality and promiscuous sex (found 'disgusting' by religions), civil equality for people regardless of race (found 'disgusting' by the original traditionalists), keeping the burka legal (despite mass disagreement from the masses), Britain has erred on the side of liberty rather than totalitarianism.

Now, it really seems that the reason for the prohibition is that 'paedophiles like it'. If this is true, why not let them have it? Has anybody investigated whether paedophiles will move onto real child pornography (or worse) now that their substitute is illegal?

Have we just taken the methadone away from the heroin addicts?

All in all, I just find it unwise to ban something which has no links to real harm to anybody, has no direct victim, and could be used as a substitute for real abuse, just on the grounds that it's 'disgusting' or that we don't like the people who support it.

I don't like the BNP, but I'd never advocate telling them they can't say what they want to say, write what they want to write, or read what they want to read. Censorship is the way of the authoritarian.

"I abhor what you say, but I would defend to the death your right to say it."

REFERENCES:
M. Strano, Uno studio clinico e criminologico dei pedofili on-line, Relazione al congresso internazionale della SOPSI (Societa' Italiana di Psicopatologia), Roma, 26 Febbraio 2003

"Why would anybody wish to view or produce, even procure an image of a child engaging in what could be percieved as a sexual act?"

I figured I'd answer this seperately. Simply put, they may wish to view it because they have an attraction to the 2D stuff (if you compare anime to real life it's easy enough to see how somebody could be attracted to anime 'children' but not real children, they're worlds apart), or because they have an attraction to real children but don't want to harm them by abusing them or sponsor such abuse by downloading child pornography.

Can I ask you to ask this question in return, "Should we prevent somebody from doing something we find abhorrent if it can't be proveably linked to a victim?" (i.e., should we illegalise homosexuality, ban the BNP, ban the burka, etc?)

I'm sorry jwills, I missed some of your other posts, so I'm going to debate a few of your points. I believe that you're using very charged terms in order to convince people of fallacies, and I need to annul these before anybody else is taken awash by your powerful but flawed points.

"That the perverts who would wish to view such images, indeed, those who would produce them, are simply acting out their depraved lusts."

Again, I ask, why is it a problem for you if they do something in their imagination, or if they draw something purely imagined? This is the idea of a 'safe release', it keeps the sexual release in their bedroom without harming children (via abuse) or sponsoring harm (via downloading images of real children being harmed).

"If it serves in the interests of protecting vulnerable, defencless children, then I believe the whole nation should be behind it 100%."

I would agree with this point if this law DID serve children, but it doesn't. There is just as much evidence that this material could serve as a substitute for child abuse as evidence that it increases child abuse. This law serves to give the media and the masses the message that the government is doing something to deal with 'evil paedophiles', when in reality it is taking police time *AWAY* from dealing with child abuse.

"I think you'll find that the majority of reasonable people would not consider 'imaginary' pictures of children engaging in sexual behaviour to be at all appropriate."

A hundred years ago, the majority deplored the idea of homosexual relationships. Two hundred years ago, the majority (of voters, anyway) disagreed with the idea of women having the vote. Five hundred years ago, the majority couldn't even read or write.

Tyranny by majority is still tyranny. Persecuting a minority, no matter how much their ideals disgust you (whether that be the BNP, homosexuals, those who have sex outside of marriage, those who believed in freedom for slaves or equality for women), is still tyranny.

Personally, I would rather have the police protecting children from would-be rapists or neglectors, not protecting them from artists or perverts sitting in their basements downloading obscene cartoons. Maybe you disagree, or maybe you're under the impression that giving the police more crimes to stop whilst reducing the size of the force in this age of austerity won't mean that we're spreading them thinner. I can't speak for you.

I'd be willing to hear an argument that doesn't rely on 'it's disgusting', and instead relies on facts. If you can prove that this law will protect children, I will be far more inclined to agree with you.

Using powerful and emotionally evocative language doesn't make your argument any more correct.

Much as it pains me to say it, especially after such a well thought out piece there, you're wasting your time trying to apply logical debate to this subject. As soon as child sexuality is even mentioned, even in a totally hypothetical or imaginary situation, all sense of reason and proportionality goes flying out the window, to instead be replaced with hysteria and moral panic.

It doesn't matter to the likes of jwills that Japan has a child abuse rate 1/10th of ours, or that the extreme paranoia surrounding even child nudity simply doesn't exist over there, despite the prevalence of loli/shota material. To him and others like him, child sexuality is bad, should never be discussed, let alone depicted, written about, or lampooned, and that's the end of it.

Now, I'm no psychologist, but the way he uses words like 'paedo' & 'pervert' tells me he has serious issues of his own to work out (think Martin Salter with the Extreme Porn Law here). From what I've read, projection is a well established phenomena these days, whereby those with inferiority complexes will often toss around such terms in order to make themselves feel morally superior. It won't work with me of course, since I know there's nothing illegal about being a pervert, or indeed or paedophile either. If it were, half the population would be in prison as everyone probably likes or fantasises about something someone somewhere will find objectionable.

Besides, the first is highly subjective and the second is merely a state of preferring children in a sexual context to adults. As I believe you already pointed out with violence in games or films, just because someone finds the childlike form appealing does not mean they are automatically predisposed to sexual abuse of that form. Need I say it: paedophiles aren't all necessarily child abusers and child abusers aren't all paedophiles.

Much as certain elements of the Government, the police, and the religious right wing would love to round up everyone they don't approve of, due process means an actual crime has to be committed before they can do that. I would be the first to admit that some geezer hanging around suspiciously outside of a school might well be up to no good, but that is a far cry from tarring artists/fans of hentai with the same brush. There's also the issue that what people do behind their front doors is nobody's damn business, so long as no-one else is harmed.

Oh, and for the record, I have zero interest in real children and do whatever I can to stay out of their way. Indeed, I could see where things where going years ago and decided never to have any as long as I'm stuck in this god-forsaken country. That being said, and as one who suffered from quite serious physical and emotional abuse as a child from not one, but two so called fathers, I do support proportional legislation. What I don't support is kneejerk reactionary policies that are not only impractical to enforce, but clearly illegal in their own right under EU human rights laws.

Someone else has already suggested a rollback to the Protection of Children Act 1978 on here, which I wholeheartedly agree with in fact as it dealt with the serious transgressors actually fiddling with real kids. For sure, the police should be left to do the job they are paid to do while the fictional lolis & shotas take care of themselves.

Sasamisa, I actually disagree with much of what you have said. First off, why are you attacking jwills's character instead of his argument? This is the way that people debate when they can't win with facts. This is just as bad as his emotionally evocative words and powerprose, it's a replacement for a real argument.

Using Japan as an example is poor, because any educated person knows that child sexuality has a completely different definition over there. For one, possession of child pornography is legal there and this constitutes a large percentage of 'child abuse' cases here; for another, the age of consent is far more relaxed in Japan.

"As I believe you already pointed out with violence in games or films, just because someone finds the childlike form appealing does not mean they are automatically predisposed to sexual abuse of that form."

Actually my point was that sexual pleasure is just another form of taboo pleasure, and that being pleasured by the *idea* of having sex with a child in a drawing doesn't mean you're going to do it, in the same way as gaining pleasure from shooting a counter-terrorist in Counter-Strike doesn't mean you're going to do it.

"Need I say it: paedophiles aren't all necessarily child abusers and child abusers aren't all paedophiles."

This is true, and it is related to my argument. It is possible to be disgusted by the idea of harming a child, but still to be tolerant of those who are cursed with the attraction to children and use harmless materials to deal with their problems.

When a heroin user seeks help and uses substitutes, we laud them for their effort to overcome their problem. When a troubled person who is attracted to children downloads drawings instead of child pornography, the government rewards their abstinence by illegalising their substitute.

I know it's not fashionable to 'think of the pedos' but in effect anybody who controls a potentially dangerous problem with a harmless material should be respected and dignified by society.

"Much as certain elements of the Government, the police, and the religious right wing would love to round up everyone they don't approve of"

You're using right-wing out of context here, and though it is semantics I feel like it is necessary to point this out. Left wing and right wing are economic positions. Labour are relatively 'left wing' but they are far more authoritarian than the other two mainstream parties. I'm personally a believer in right wing economics, but probably more libertarian than any UK party.

I'm all for legislation against rapists, child molestors and people who sponsor abuse by downloading child pornography. Any harm to another person is heinous, and harm against a child is especially so. I just don't believe in legislating against drawings, writing or freedom of ideas with no victim.

For the record I have very little sexual interest in the said art, and no sexual interest at all in real children. I do, however, have a huge interest in freedom and liberty, and a burning hate of censorship in the name of protection.

"Why exactly WOULD any person want to view an image (drawn or otherwise) of children engaging in an act that could be perceived as sexual incongruity?"

The law covers anyone who appears under 18, so includes adults, not just children. Japanese Hentai for example might be at risk, if the police/jury thinks a cartoon young adult might look like a cartoon 17 year old. Another example might be fetish/BDSM "school" scenes (adults role-playing with school uniforms is a cliche and few would think it anything to do with child abuse; a photo of such is entirely legal; yet with a drawing, you can no longer judge if someone is 17 or 18, and there's the risk that the jury might infer them to be a teenager due to the school scene).

Even for depictions of pre-adolescents: anyone who's watched, e.g., south Park has seen such an image of a child. Same with joke Simpsons images (see the case in Australia). Evidently, people have reasons for viewing/possessing such images.

You're asking the wrong question. The question is why exactly WOULD any person want to lock someone else up, because of a drawing they looked at in private? It doesn't matter whether they want to look at a drawing or not - the point is about them being locked up for three years.

"I believe this site has merely become a platform for anti-government/police-hating/paedophiles and all those asking for a repeal of ANY law that protects children should question their own integrity."

The only one trying to mouth off on a platform is you. And you mean it "protects" fictional "children". A pedophile is someone attracted towards actual pre-pubescent children; not someone who argues against vague laws criminalising possession of drawings of anyone appearing under 18.

As for real children, this law would criminalise victims of child sex abuse who make private drawings of their abuse, for means of therapy or communicating their experiences.

"It is a common belief that current actions predict future behaviours and that if a person percieves that they are 'getting away' with committing an offence"

What offence? No one objects to criminalising abusers. But there should be no offence for possessing a mere drawing.

"I find it abhorrent that this subject is even allowed on a forum that law-abiding members of the public have access to."

How appropriate that someone supporting an abhorrent censorship law should call for censorship. It's not "I disagree with you" but "How dare you even have a say".

Well you first: I find what you say abhorrent, so perhaps you better not comment? Why is it okay for you to have your say, and not anyone else? Of course, I don't think that - you should have your say here. But that's how harsh your comment comes across to me.

"That people should question a law such as this highlights the fact that the law, as it stands, works."

That makes no sense - a law works, because people criticise it?

"If it serves in the interests of protecting vulnerable, defencless children, then I believe the whole nation should be behind it 100%."

It doesn't.

"majority of reasonable people would not consider 'imaginary' pictures of children engaging in sexual behaviour to be at all appropriate."

This is not a question of being "appropriate", it is a question of legality. It is possible to consider images "inappropriate", whilst not believing that someone should face three years in prison and time of the Sex Offender Register for a drawing.

"I have been an avid comic collector for approximately 40 years now and do enjoy Manga, but fail to acknowledge that as a valid explanation for collecting individual images of children in sexual situations."

Do you have Alan Moore's Lost Girls? It's an erotic graphic novel involving teenage sex - they're above the age of consent, but under 18. Or what about Watchmen? It depicts a young child seeing his mother having sex, one of the categories covered by the law. Does owning these make you a "pedo", deserving three years in prison? (Chances are, the police won't use the law on something so mainstream, but that's beside the point - the point is that the law as written does cover these kinds of scenes, so unless you think these things should be illegal too, you should accept that, at the least, the law is too broad.)

"Nowhere do I use the word "pedos""

You used the word "paedophiles" - are you being deliberately pedantic?

"I'd be more than happy for the authorities to pore over them as much as they like."

This does involve the police confiscating all your comics, along with computers, phones, to search through. I believe the typical waiting time to get them back is several months. And absolutely any image that might have been downloaded in your Internet cache when you stumbled across a web page several years ago might be fair game for them to charge you with (although you are still free to use the defence in court that you weren't aware of the image, if you can show it).

@jasons: "He hates paedophiles more than he likes freedom."

Indeed. Although it's sad that he views it as this false dichotomy. I'd say he hates anything that people might brand as to do with child sex - even when "child" is a drawing of a character over the age of consent.

"Do you have Alan Moore's Lost Girls? It's an erotic graphic novel involving teenage sex - they're above the age of consent, but under 18. Or what about Watchmen? It depicts a young child seeing his mother having sex, one of the categories covered by the law."

Nope. Watchmen does not show that. It shows a young child looking at his mostly clothed mother sitting on the lap of a mostly clothed man. The implication is they in the process but its not shown. If you read the law you will see that this doesn't even pass the first hurdle.

OK, lets go through the law:
(2) A prohibited image is an image which— .
(a) is pornographic, .
(b) falls within subsection (6), and .
(c) is grossly offensive, disgusting or otherwise of an obscene character.

Well.. its not pornographic, its not offensive, disgusting or otherwise obscene.

So lets move on to (6)
(6) An image falls within this subsection if it— .
(a) is an image which focuses solely or principally on a child’s genitals or anal region, or .
(b) portrays any of the acts mentioned in subsection (7). .

Well, can't see the genitals or anal region. Lets try (7)

(7) Those acts are— .
(a) the performance by a person of an act of intercourse or oral sex with or in the presence of a child; .
(b) an act of masturbation by, of, involving or in the presence of a child; .
(c) an act which involves penetration of the vagina or anus of a child with a part of a person’s body or with anything else; .
(d) an act of penetration, in the presence of a child, of the vagina or anus of a person with a part of a person’s body or with anything else; .
(e) the performance by a child of an act of intercourse or oral sex with an animal (whether dead or alive or imaginary); .
(f) the performance by a person of an act of intercourse or oral sex with an animal (whether dead or alive or imaginary) in the presence of a child.

Again all fail. There we go, the watchmen is just fine. Oh what a shame! How many TV shows, including the simpsons, have shown kids walking in on their parents in bed?

As for the lost girls, the worst that happened when it came out was a copyright issue over Peter Pan. No-one really batted an eyelid. If it was actually as bad as the scaremongerers claimed then it would have been dragged up before the courts under the OPA.

"the point is that the law as written does cover these kinds of scenes, so unless you think these things should be illegal too, you should accept that, at the least, the law is too broad.)"

The point is it doesn't and actually that most people simply don't understand (as no doubt they've not read) the new laws and simply assume its all doom and gloom.

Its not about the sexualisation of minors, its about imagery showing pornography involving minors.

@project2501, A nitpick: The imagery in question does not 'show' pornography, it is pornography.
But more crucially, it does not involve minors; it depicts minors.

But The Watchmen is not pornography. If you think it is then 1) you have a very strange idea of pornography and 2) you will now have to include every ep of the simpsons where Bart and Lisa come into the bedroom when Homer and Marge are 'snuggling'.

I am of course assuming that people commenting about The Watchmen and the lost girls have actually seen the images in question and are not just going by scaremongering stories that claim all this has all become illegal.

@project2501: The Watchmen clearly isn't pornography. However, The Lost Girls, if considered by a jury unfamiliar with it as a popular piece, would probably be considered pornography.

If it isn't, then that's just a blatant double standard. It's OK for a big name artist to draw underage children having sex, but not for an unknown on the Internet?

And yes, I have seen the images in question.

Also, even the artist of The Lost Girls describes it as pornography:
http://en.wikipedia.org/[…]/Lost_Girls#Controversy_about_child_sexuality

For sure you'd have some fun with the lost girls but people keep going on about Watchmen as if its of the same ilk. Same with claims that some of Edvard Munch's pictures are now illegal. Eh? You think that's porn??

The lost girls could be described as an 'erotic graphic novel', I'm sure others would describe it as something else, but yes it is pornography in parts. One would hope and assume that it would also fall into the 'artistic works exemption' get out clause. Lolita and Lady Chatterly's Lover caused great hoo-har when they came out with claims of obscenity but they were both normal books. Lost girls, maybe due to being far less mainstream, didn't have anything like the fuss made about it.

@project2501, I wasn't talking about Watchmen. I was talking about the images targeted by the law, in response to your last paragraphs:

"The point is it doesn't and actually that most people simply don't understand (as no doubt they've not read) the new laws and simply assume its all doom and gloom.

Its not about the sexualisation of minors, its about imagery showing pornography involving minors."

And wait, what is this 'artistic works exception'? I don't see it in the text of the law. There's an exemption for 'classified works' only. Books are not classified.

@jasons: I believe it's in the legal definition of 'pornographic', but I can't find a reference for this.

@project2501: My issue is with the law as a whole. I think fundamentally it's a disgraceful, totalitarian piece of legislation which tries to tell people what to think. Even if it were worded perfectly, just to ban lolicon and shotacon, I would disagree with it on the principle that it protects no one.

62 sec 4

(4)
Where (as found in the person’s possession) an image forms part of a series of images, the question whether the image is of such a nature as is mentioned in subsection (3) is to be determined by reference to— .
(a)
the image itself, and .
(b)
(if the series of images is such as to be capable of providing a context for the image) the context in which it occurs in the series of images.

ie the image is part of a larger work and the context means it wasn't done purely for the purpose of sexual arousal. Very vague as all laws tend to be...

Maybe as a test case someone should ask the CPS/MoJ if they think the lost girls is in breach.

All laws control what people do and to an extent what they think, its a part of being a society. The freedom of the individual is often curtailed for the (claimed) better of the society as a whole.

Now if only people had made this much effort to take part in the 2007 public consultation about these laws.....

@project2501
I just read over that section. Non-pornographic works (judged as a whole) are exempt, whatever they contain. It's not really an art related exemption. (And thank goodness for that -- do we really want courts trying to decide what art is?)

I don't think it's vague. It just requires subjective interpretation when it comes to actual application. Interpretation not of the law (it is clear enough), but trying to determine the intention of the illustrators/authors/producers.

It's an all-too-reasonable get-out clause that enhances the precision with which the law targets a the specific type of image they want to censor.

It is similar to the criterion that requires an image to be "grossly offensive, disgusting or otherwise of an obscene character." This one's a tad vaguer.

Pointing to these mainstream(-ish) comics as an example is a very weak objection. The law is specifically designed to be able to take a reasonable position on these potential 'borderline' instances. The interpretation-requiring parts require the judge and jury to apply their reasonableness.

It's worth noting that the subjective nature of these criteria means the law automagically adapts to fit changing views and prejudices of the culture, whichever way they happen to move.

Do we want the shifting sands of cultural bias to determine the legal limits of free expression?

"(And thank goodness for that -- do we really want courts trying to decide what art is?)"

Well we'd have them trying to decide what 'pornography' is, so really it boils down to the same thing. Is the lost girls porn (Alan Moore says it is, probably not helpful to the cause) and thus under this law is now illegal or is the context non-pornographic and thus exempt?

There are half a dozen pictures per book that in isolation would no question fall foul of this, but is the rest of each book enough to make them exempt? Even though the entire story leads you towards the situation shown in the images in question.

And I think its pretty important. Is this almost mainstream graphic novel legal or not? And if it is legal then it can be applied to potentially questionable manga and anime.

BTW, I wasn't the one claiming that The lost girls or The Watchmen had been made illegal. That was mdwh. Someone on an anime forum was also worried that they'd be arrested for owning Elfen Lied :)

"Do we want the shifting sands of cultural bias to determine the legal limits of free expression?"

No but its a fact of life, and even without legal limits to free expression there has always been a social limit. As Christopher Handley's lawyer said in an interview after Christopher pleaded guilty, there was no way a jury would have given them a fair trial when the image in question was projected on an 8ft screen in the court room.

Even before this law, if you showed the contents of some dojin to 12 of your 'peers' you'd be hung from the nearest flagpole. Heck, do you remember the fuss when Legend of the Overfiend was released WITH a BBFC cert? "Oh look a cartoon... OMG its full of tentacle sex!! BAN IT!!"

I disagree on the art/porn thing. At least we have a qualitative working definition of pornographic: "of such a nature that it must reasonably be assumed to have been produced solely or principally for the purpose of sexual arousal."

I don't think Alan Moore had the above definition in mind when he called it pornographic. Maybe Lost Girls is a really edgy borderline case anyway. I haven't read it. But I can think of other fringe cases.

Ultimately, yes, culture determines law, in a democracy. But not instantaneously, as law like this effectively makes possible. Don't we prefer a process of debate and deliberation before something legal turns illegal (or vice versa)?

As for the so-called "social limit" to free expression, this is why privacy is valuable. Porn is a private thing. And society isn't one homogeneous mass, some parts of it respect privacy and autonomy more than others. Hence the value of freedom of association.

But the pornogaphy itself is not 'private'. What you do with it is private (just keep the curtains closed) but as the content is available in the public domain it can not be classed as private. It comes from outside your house, its on sale in certain shops, or in normal bookshops in the case of the lost girls, corner shops with the 'jazz mags', at anime/manga cons and all over the internet.

The likes of Alan Moore can express themselves to their hearts desire, but the moment they publish they come under the critique of society as a whole.

Let me correct myself: an individual's possession of porn is a private thing.

Being a private thing and being 'under the critique of society' are not mutually exclusive.

@project2501:

"Well.. its not pornographic, its not offensive, disgusting or otherwise obscene."

This is up for the jury to decide.

As for the acts, the one being referred to is "the performance by a person of an act of intercourse or oral sex with or in the presence of a child; ."

"As for the lost girls, the worst that happened when it came out was a copyright issue over Peter Pan. No-one really batted an eyelid."

Yes, that's the point. Passing laws to criminalise things, when no one actually cares about non-realistic depictions.

"If it was actually as bad as the scaremongerers claimed then it would have been dragged up before the courts under the OPA."

Yes, exactly - there is no need for this new law. Supporters of this law are scaremongering over the kind of scenes that are legal to publish.

"The point is it doesn't and actually that most people simply don't understand (as no doubt they've not read) the new laws and simply assume its all doom and gloom."

See above. And even if Watchmen isn't explicit enough, South Park's Proper Condom Use certainly explicitly depicts Cartman (a child) masturbating (an animal). I have read the law (I also linked to it above).

To be honest though, I'm confused - are you a supporter of this law? If you disagree with the law, and you're just making a comment about Watchmen, Lost Girls, South Park, then I'm not really sure it's that important, and is picking hairs, if we agree on other reasons to oppose the law :) In my original comment, this was just one of many possible criticisms I was giving. Even if someone thinks that point isn't valid, they would still have to address the other points that I, and others here, have made.

"Its not about the sexualisation of minors, its about imagery showing pornography involving minors."

It's not about minors at all - that's already covered by child porn law, which is rightly illegal. It's about fictional depictions.

"But The Watchmen is not pornography."

The definition in the law is whether the jury reasonably think it was primarily made for arousal - only looking at the image. So no, Watchmen as a whole, nor South Park, are "porn". But looking solely at an image, one might conclude differently. It is possible for an image (or clip) to be legal in its original context, but the very same image illegal in another context.

And, this isn't the point I was making - even if mainstream works are exempt because they aren't considered "porn", then we have the same scenes being legal in mainstream contexts, but illegal if someone draws them in private say. It's a double standard; it also makes the law pointless, since such scenes will continue to exist in mainstream media, and this law will only tackle those that are least likely to be viewed by people.

The point is not to say that such images would necessarily be illegal. There are many other better criticisms for this law (some of which I also listed). But the point is that many people give an automatic support for this law, thinking that any non-realistic sexual depiction of "children" is something terrible and reasonable to ban. The point therefore is showing that examples of such scenes exist in mainstream media, so it can't be true that the idea of such an image is inherently terrible. They have to give a far clearer line of how an illegal image should differ from say, South Park's depiction of child masturbation. It can't be true that depictions of child sexual acts are inherently illegal (and this also rebuts the often made claim that such images are just like child porn - with an actual image of a child masturbating or whatever, there would be no get out clause because it was in a film or whatever).

To respond saying "Ah but the mainstream images will be legal, whilst other images are illegal" does not really help the justification for the law, in my opinion.

"One would hope and assume that it would also fall into the 'artistic works exemption' get out clause. "

Where is this exemption?

"Lost girls, maybe due to being far less mainstream, didn't have anything like the fuss made about it."

There wasn't a fuss when someone made a joke Simpsons image depicting the child characters having sex - but that didn't stop it being illegal under similar laws in Australia. Remember, this is a possession offence, not a publication one - there doesn't need to be an uproar when something is made.

"Maybe as a test case someone should ask the CPS/MoJ if they think the lost girls is in breach."

For the "extreme porn" law, the Consenting Adult Action Network made an effort to consult police forces, the CPS and MoJ, asking if they would consider certain images would be illegal; many individuals also wrote asking for examples of what images would be illegal. It was like talking to a brick wall. I suspect a similar lack of information would be returned over this new law.

"The freedom of the individual is often curtailed for the (claimed) better of the society as a whole."

Sure, but that is not a justification for any given law. Here I believe the "claims" of making society better to be completely unfounded, and I would (and do) criticise the claimed ways that the Government suggested it might make society better.

"Now if only people had made this much effort to take part in the 2007 public consultation about these laws....."

I agree with you. But personally, I did respond to the consultation.

"But the pornogaphy itself is not 'private'."

But remember that these new laws cover private possession, including of never published material (either a videotaped private scene in the case of the "extreme porn" law, or a doodle I could quickly make on pen and paper, for this law).

"The likes of Alan Moore can express themselves to their hearts desire, but the moment they publish they come under the critique of society as a whole."

Not the case with such laws.

This issue is one of several reasons why I believe that laws on possession are significantly different to laws on publication.

"I wasn't the one claiming that The lost girls or The Watchmen had been made illegal. That was mdwh."

Just to add - I never claimed that either. Possibly my point was ambiguous, but I was referring to falling in the specific category of "under-18 merely in the background of a scene with adults having sex" (and also saying "could", not "would"). Neither of us are in a position to state whether a particular image would or wouldn't be illegal, when we take the various clauses of the law together; that can only be known if an image is tested in court.

In southpark do you see the dogs penis?

"Supporters of this law are scaremongering over the kind of scenes that are legal to publish"

Its not the supporters who are scaremongering, its the opponents. Like I said, I've seen someone claiming Elfen Lied is now illegal. I am not a supporter nor am I a true opponent. I know full well that this law won't do what they think it will do but I am also pretty sure that it won't do diddly to affect the vast majority of normal people. Anime and manga fans will continue to download stuff that is now illegal on 2 counts, firstly copyright (how many people are worried about THAT?) and secondly the content. It is just another ineffective law.

How many people in the USA own similar material to Christopher Handley? And how many of them have been arrested?

"but that didn't stop it being illegal under similar laws in Australia. Remember, this is a possession offence, not a publication one "

The images were effectively 'published'. No-one knows what you own unless there are records showing what you've bought/downloaded OR you show someone else. The police still need to have reasonable grounds for suspecting you to get a warrant. The Aussie police didn't check every computer in the country, they checked his and only his. They knew they were there.

i still disagree with calling it pornography, It's art, art is supposed to stimulate or portray emotion if you are aroused by an image then the artist has done his job but thats my opinion

If the intent in manufacturing an image of a child in a sexual position is for the arousal of oneself or a third party, (drawn or otherwise). Then the production of such an image, should be wholly illegal.

Even if that were in the privacy of somebody's bedroom. If you feel you could justify possession of such an item to the lawful authority of the land, then you are wasting your time looking at such images and should, instead, be fighting for people's rights in the EHCR.

For I feel Petrocelli himself would be envious of your ability to wangle your way out of that particular situation.

I see there are some articulate and well thought out responses to my questions, notably from Minusten and Project2501. However, I, and many others I would imagine, will never understand WHY somebody would want to engage in such an activity.

I can only hope that people wishing to view such imagery for their own sexual gratification are discovered and held to account.

Held to account for what exactly!? Heresy, because that's what you're implying with your witch-finder general logic (I'd be very careful there as we all know what happened to the one who originally began The Spanish Inquisition, don't we). Just because I and many other artists & fans around the world gain enjoyment from lampooning our favourite characters in a sexual way, that DOES NOT make us criminals, whatever you and all those nutters who support this and similar crazy laws around the world may say.

The minute you start locking people up for entirely harmless fantasies, you no longer live in a free society. I say harmless, because I've known people the world over where all manner of hentai & erotica is concerned and not one of them comes close to the profile of the dangerous psychopaths who abuse real children - you only have to visit the miriad of toon porn sites worldwide to realise that. Why the hell would they even want mere drawings, when their real aim is usually to control and destroy the innocence of actual minors.

I can tell you from over 15 years of experience where cartoon pornography is concerned (although I've been interested in 2D girls for almost double that time, since puberty in fact) that most, if not all of it, isn't created by paedophiles trying to get around laws. Quite the contrary, it's often created by dedicated artists, who care deeply for what they are trying to portray, or merely by those having a little bit of 'Rule 34' inspired fun. You take Hindenburg for example, a very famous adult manga artist: he has been producing erotic imagery of all varieties, including loli & shota, for well over 20 years now.

Despite what the thoroughly prudish, anime-hating element that has taken control of this country keeps insisting, he is hardly your typical criminal and neither are any of his mostly basement dwelling fans either. This is nothing more than anti-Japanese sentiment, just because they have a different approach to life. If you knew even a smidgeon about otaku culture, you'd know that we're an inoffensive bunch; the kind of people who rarely take part in anything as regards the real world. Regardless of this fact, that still DOES NOT make us criminals.

Evidentally, jwills, the trouble with you and others like you is knowing absolutely nothing about what you are railing against. You come up against something unfamiliar, even controversial, and instead of trying to understand and accept it, you reach for the banhammer based upon your own small-minded appreciation of the world. I feel sorry for you, in that you appear to be a bigotted little man who thinks that everyone should follow his example, especially where sexual practices are concerned, which I've no doubt is the missionary position for the purpose of procreation within the bonds of matrimony.

The way I see it, they can come and lock me up for my proclivities, at least I won't have to make my own meals anymore - seriously, the Met already tried once, but decided charging me over my toon harem would be way too much bad publicity for them, especially when the estate I live on is so mired in actual crime. At any rate, it wounldn't stop me thinking naughty thoughts about my girls anyway, nor would it prevent me from continuing to enjoy their company, as I have always done.

What has this got to do with 'anime haters'? The vast majority of anime and manga does not involve sex. One of the issues I see with the anime and manga scene in this country is the fact that the general public still tend to believe all fans ARE 2D loving loli/shota obsessives, which is pretty far from the truth. And being otaku doesn't necessarily require cracking one off over a picture of your favorite character.

There are sub cultures to the sub culture. Heck, some people actually like Naruto! And there are plenty of people who like their eroge, but its not EVERY anime and manga fan.

That was not my intention as I know more than anyone how much the genre has been reviled since the early days of Overfiend. Also, I don't agree about the general public thinking all fans are 2D loving loli/shota obsessives since these forms still remain virtually unknown (you can tell that by how little media coverage this law has received). Indeed, people are not even that aware of how far Rule 34 of Western cartoons has come, which is why they laughed at that Simpsons porn conviction in Australia. Believe it or not, there's been one for Powerpuff Girls porn since as well, which shows you just how ridiculous these laws can be applied by those who don't understand the genre.

No, it's more to do with the fact that anime & manga tend to be far more violent and/or sexy than Western comics & cartoons. Even the tamer stuff contains a lot of fan service, which the prudes of this nation just can't seem to get their heads around. Seeing as both are regarded as 'kid's stuff' even to this day (they are watched mainly by the youth in Japan, although manga is definitely more mainstream among the populace than anime), the thought of adult versions, even if they are mere parodies for fun, instantly touches a nerve. For sure, this is probably the real reason for the negative stereotype.

In addition, though I may have said otaku in the case of Hindenburg, I didn't mean to imply all otaku. Contrary to what jwills thinks, I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with "cracking one out" as you so eloquently put it either. Why should such a harmless fantasy be treated any different from any other kind of erotic material? If anything, I like 2D girls far more than ordinary porn - and not just from a sexual standpoint either since I've always been a fan of animation - yet the latter barely raises an eyebrow anymore, except maybe the fact that more and more kids have access to it than ever before.

@ jwills

"If the intent in manufacturing an image of a child in a sexual position is for the arousal of oneself or a third party, (drawn or otherwise). Then the production of such an image, should be wholly illegal."

You've explained that this is your viewpoint, but on what grounds should it be illegal? Please explain what makes drawing a picture of a child in a sexual situation go beyond 'disgusting' or 'immoral' (i.e. fantasizing over terrorism (playing CS:S), speaking opinions that people dislike (the BNP), being sexually deviant (homosexuality?)) and into the realm of harmful.

Alternatively, do you think we should ban violent video games and movies, extremist opinions (i.e. the BNP's) or homosexuality?

"I see there are some articulate and well thought out responses to my questions, notably from Minusten and Project2501. However, I, and many others I would imagine, will never understand WHY somebody would want to engage in such an activity."

I think you understand full well why people may want to do so, you just don't like it. Which is fair enough, nobody's forcing you to think of those people as proper, moral or good citizens; and nobody would dream of asking you to download the material. My point is that the material, whilst disgusting and obscene, does not cause harm to anybody.

Sin does not have to equal law. If I sleep with your wife, it is a sin, but I haven't broken any law (and that actually has a victim).

"I can only hope that people wishing to view such imagery for their own sexual gratification are discovered and held to account."

Held to account for what?

I'm just looking to understand why you think that this material should be illegal, and not just considered immoral? Or, whether you believe that all immoral things should be illegal?

You're still making some pretty big generalisations. There is still quite a lot of anime and manga without fanservice or violence. And even the simpsons shows Marge mostly naked every so often and then there is itchy and scratchy. Although I will say that more and more outright fanservice shows are coming to the west. Strike Witches anyone? Crunchyroll seems to be flooded with it...

And there is a huge number of older anime fans in Japan. You have a generation now in their 30's and 40's who grew up with Gundam and other such early mecha. Not too much fanservice there, some jiggly breasts maybe.

As for rule 34, the CPS did eventually throw out the Tony the Tiger case.

"Why should such a harmless fantasy be treated any different from any other kind of erotic material?"

Well thats the point, now its not treated any differently. Its treated as if its a real person, even if its not. It should be treated as any other truly fiction material, the difference is with Lolita you had to imagine what was going on, no-one had drawn it. The old saying, a picture paints a thousand words.

The PPG porn guy in Australia got grassed up by someone after he showed them the pictures. If he'd not done that he would have not been arrested. Again a case of something being made 'public' and someone getting in trouble.

"I'm just looking to understand why you think that this material should be illegal, and not just considered immoral? Or, whether you believe that all immoral things should be illegal?"

Simple, the 'moral majority' feel safer when there is a law in place. Look at Sarah's law. You can in no way quantify that Sarah's law has done anything to help as there is no control sample. If the 10 people named by police in the trial area had not been named would they have committed crimes? No-one will ever know. But it gives people a warm fuzzy feeling.

I'd also like to add that I think many of you are splitting hairs over something that isn't even going to count where this law is concerned. Claiming such Western titles as The Lost Girls will be criminalised is rather spurious next to the likes of Comic LO & Comic Rin, which some would argue are little more than magazines for paedophiles, albeit drawn ones. I mean, jwills would probably have a seizure of the kind of material present in Angel, which brooches the extreme toddlercon end of the spectrum that even I can't stomach - not that I would ban it either way since it's still fiction.

You know, I think this all got started much the same way that RapeLay fiasco did, with some soccer mum catching her kid fapping to something she found morally reprehensible. One complaint to her local church group later and it wouldn't have been long before the lot of them were up in arms over it. Chinese whispers would have assured the whole thing escalated way out of proportion, especially when the likes of the CEOP got hold of it, since no-one would have wanted to do any research for themselves for fear of being called a 'peado-sympathiser'.

I won't deny that when I first came in contact with Sailor Moon doujinshi, I was pretty taken aback, mainly because I had never seen anything quite so erotic as a parody before. Here was something so close to the original and unbelievably well composed with it, with no parallels whatsoever with Western comics. However, after a time I came to realise that it's all just part of the culture of anime & manga, with a kind of cyclic relationship between everything. That is, manga spawns anime, which spawns merchandise, which spawns dojin culture. Sometimes, the latter can even start the cycle, as in the case of Touhou Project, which unsurprisingly, given its mainly female cast, has spawned more erotica than any one guy could ever get through in his lifetime.

No, if people like jwills have to keep asking why we would want to draw such characters in sexual situations, despite my explanation, I suppose the only thing I'm left with is what Angelica says in the very first episode of Rugrats, when Tommy keeps asking her stupid questions:-

"If you have to ask, you'll never know."

Oh, your reply showed up after I posted mine, project2501, but regardless, I would have to disagree again. Just the other day I read a comment somewhere about anime being perceived entirely differently from Western cartoons, on account of it being depicted a lot more realistically.

To clarify, even if a series contains no fan service whatsoever, it would be hard to deny that women, and girls especially, are more often than not drawn to be very appealing. The makers aren't stupid and know that a great many horny young teenage males are watching; males with money in their pockets just waiting to buy merchandise. Conversely, it's the same story with series that are aimed predominently at girls, in that the men/boys are handsome and often deliberately androgynous, which may well explain why the yaoi phenomenon is so prevailent in Japan, even on occasion, outstripping material for us guys by a large margin.

You compare this to even shows like Family Guy, which are ultra unrealistic, where none of the characters could ever be thought of as being real, whatever they get up to. Of course, this still hasn't stopped even Seth McFarlan from shying away from certain subjects, especially where Meg's sexuality is concerned. Even Hailey in American Dad is given a wide berth nowadays, despite the fact she is well over the legal age of consent in most US States.

I do admit that series such as Gundam are hardly erotic fare (there are still plenty of doujinshi based upon them though), but you do know that lolicon anime goes well back into the 80s over there, as do drawn loli/shota magazines in general. Heh, it did kind of explode in the mid-90s, especially when shows such as Card Captor Sakura hit the limelight ((I'm sure you know that Comiket was actually founded by women originally in the 70s - well this show was created by a former 'female' dojin circle called CLAMP), which although wasn't hentai in its own right, was filled with enough innuendo to keep the dojin artists going for years. Indeed, Nelvana baulked at the prospect of releasing it uncut, butchered it, and drew more ire from the fans in the process than DIC's version of Sailor Moon ever did.

I forgot to add that the issue of shota as opposed to loli was hardly broached at all during the consultation stage. Despite the prevailence of said material in Japan (seriously, women's comics are big business over there, with some yaoi dojin stores even bigger than the ones with material for the guys), it was accepted without debate that naughty pictures of little girls were all that mattered.

This would seem to imply that a naked image of Lisa Simpson doing the H would be obscene, yet a similar image of Bart Simpson would not be. Not that I think even the Australian government would be crazy enough to criminalise The Simpson's Movie for Bart's skateboarding scene, this does seem like one hell of a double standard. Then again, it wouldn't be the first time that such laws have assumed that porn is almost exclusively a male thing.

Something else that Minusten said too, about banning other things. I mean, how do you really justify this law when I can still legally draw so many other far more reprehensible things involving children, such as torture or murder. How is it that sex somehow makes these images so much more dangerous!? By jwills' logic, wouldn't an image of someone throttling a kid be just as likely to make someone go out and commit the same crime, yet such an image is entirely legal at present.

I forgot to add that the issue of shota as opposed to loli was hardly broached at all during the consultation stage. Despite the prevailence of said material in Japan (seriously, women's comics are big business over there, with some yaoi dojin stores even bigger than the ones with material for the guys), it was accepted without debate that naughty pictures of little girls were all that mattered.

This would seem to imply that a naked image of Lisa Simpson doing the H would be obscene, yet a similar image of Bart Simpson would not be. Not that I think even the Australian government would be crazy enough to criminalise The Simpson's Movie for Bart's skateboarding scene, this does seem like one hell of a double standard. Then again, it wouldn't be the first time that such laws have assumed that porn is almost exclusively a male thing.

Something else that Minusten said too, about banning other things. I mean, how do you really justify this law when I can still legally draw so many other far more reprehensible things involving children, such as torture or murder. How is it that sex somehow makes these images so much more dangerous!? By jwills' logic, wouldn't an image of someone throttling a kid be just as likely to make someone go out and commit the same crime, yet such an image is entirely legal at present.

As a parent is dislike this type of imagery however this type legislation terrorfies me beyond imagination. Firstly it shows that to our government human rights are meaningless if they don't like whats being expressed. The government is passing laws to keep childwelfare groups and the police happy whos veiws or shortsighted, naive and foolish completely ignoring the greater wellbeing of the child. If such behaviour is allowed to continue my kids along with everybody elses will find themselves in a country where they are no longer allowed to express ideas freely. This is no future I want my children endure. Legislation like this needs to be removed and quick showing the world that be value human rights more than the opinions of misguided groups.

To the government members who will be reading this. Please dont overlook this thread based of what people may consider these types of images to be. Laws like this are wrong, evil and limit the creativity of others. Human rights must be our nations paramount concern, if we give in the veiws of the majority we will be left with nothing. Giving in to these groups is by far more dangerous then these cartoons will ever be and will harm far more children.

@firefly: Thank you for your input. It's nice to see another non-'otaku' arguing the case because a lot of the time people look over those arguments as self-interested rather than looking at their points. I agree with you that this isn't so much an issue of whether the said images are disgusting, but an issue of whether disgust should be a reason to restrict human rights.

Most of us are disgusted by the BNP, and what they say, but I would never call for the BNP to be silenced or forced to stop believing what they believe, so long as they don't go to arms or cause harm to anybody.

Maybe I'm a libertarian living in a country where liberty is no longer considered as important as satisfying the mass media and the vocal and venomous majority who see freedom as a threat to their safety. Maybe I'm speaking out of line defending something which a lot of people find abhorrent. I am just incapable of saying that something should be illegal just because it's disgusting.

There are many freedoms which I think are more disgusting than the right to draw an obscene act. The racism of the BNP, glamourising violence and gang culture in hip-hop music, putting up Facebook pages in support of Raoul Moat, homophobic protests by religious people, comedians jesting about 9/11 or Madeleine McCann...

I just don't see why a double standard exists where all of those things are legal (and I don't think that they shouldn't be) but drawing a picture of Lisa Simpson giving head is illegal.

So what do you do? Restrict the media?

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/08/06/tiger_freed/

He's free, no charges, yet his name is all over the press. The press see it as their freedom to report every little thing for 'the good of the nation'. Its freedom of information! But really they just want stuff to help them sell papers.

And lets not forget that its the freedom of the masses to be free from the imagined threat of the sorts of people who might view these images. Freedom is a double edged sword. Someone elses freedom is your restriction.

@minusten, well i used to live in leicester and theres an anime convention there every year and a lot of people wearing facinating costumes so given the chance I would talk to a couple of them. I enquired about pornography in this medium and a couple went into the underage aspect of it. They seemed like remarkably nice people and the age or the subject of the pornography didnt really have any special meaning they just liked it because of the artstyle they obviously cared passionatly about.
This is another one of my concerns that we are now willing to lock up people who have not commited any actual crime other than excerising their human rights and collecting pornography based on an artform. Most of the characters i was showed looked remarkably young even the ones above 18 and i fear that determining the age by jury (people that don't have expertise within this field) will lead to a vast amount of mistakes. The age of something thats unrealistic is impossible to judge without a lot of knowledge within each field.

@jwills

I also dislike these type of cartoons, so beleive the fury I'm feeling right now saying this

Any law that takes human rights away from me, the public and most importantly my children just to appease the veiws of people like yourself have no place in our soceity.
You are not acting in the best interest of my children, you are not acting in the best interest of this nation and you are not acting in the best interest of mankind.
I would greatly appricate it if you stopped posting your narrow minded veiws here and stopped interfering with people here who are activily trying to build a better country for my children to grow up into.

Maybe you should learn from me, put aside the topic of the pictures in question which isnt easy if you relate these images to children. Then think long and hard, is passing laws just to make the majority happy really worth throwing away our freedom over?
The answer I always get is no.

"I would greatly appricate it if you stopped posting your narrow minded veiws here and stopped interfering with people here who are activily trying to build a better country for my children to grow up into."

I'd be careful there.

From your first post:
"If such behaviour is allowed to continue my kids along with everybody elses will find themselves in a country where they are no longer allowed to express ideas freely."

So let jwills express his thoughts and ideas, no matter how much you dislike them. He has as much freedom as you to do so.

well i simply asked to stop posting them "here", hes more than welcome to express them elsewhere.

Drawings are simply representing ones ideas. No matter how sick and disgusting many of us may believe a drawing to be, It REMAINS that person's expression. In the USA, I believe this would DEFINITELY be protected under the freedom of speech laws. No Government should decide what "drawn" images should be criminalised.
Photos are different, as there is an actual crime involved in their creation, hence justifying their illegal status.

"In the USA, I believe this would DEFINITELY be protected under the freedom of speech laws."

A manga collector by the name of Christopher Handley was arrested, charged and eventually sentenced to 6 months in prison in the USA.

If you read the details of the case, Handley was only charged with transporting obscene materials across state borders. The part of The PROTECT Act about drawings being the same as CP was declared unconstitutional and dropped. Even if this hadn't been the case, it would only effect Iowa anyway, since all States in the US have their own circuit courts.

Unfortunately, like with the Extreme Porn law over here, supposed obscenity is being used far too often as a last ditch attempt to single out and criminalise people the government/police don't approve of. As one guy I know put it, the only thing Handley was truly guilty of was being born in the Bible Belt.

Part of PROTECT may have been ruled unconstitutional but they then changed the laws such that drawn images can still be classed as obscene. You've got to remember that the yanks love moving the goalposts.

Even if he wasn't born in the bible belt he may still have been caught, it was the US postal service that got him. And if they hadn't opened the box no-one would ever know.

http://www.law.cornell.edu/[…]/usc_sec_18_00001466---A000-.html

And you think we've got it bad.

You're confusing two different laws here. The original Child Pornography Prevention Act was the one declared unconstitutional by The Supreme Court in 2002, which resulted in The PROTECT Act being drafted to include only drawings that are obscene.

However, that part of The PROTECT Act has also been struck down as being too overbroad, which is why they could only get Handley for transporting obscene materials over state borders and not actual child pornography.

The poor bastard was duped into pleading guilty by a bad defense lawyer anyway, despite having the support of The Comic Book Alliance. From what I've heard, he was also bullied by the police, who were incensed by the fact that he only had mere comics and not the real thing.

Like I said, the self-righteous bigots of this world have their own ideas about this sort of thing and facts be damned if they get in the way of a good witch-burning.

I'm not confusing anything. The link is the actual law they nailed Handley with.

Even with the backing of the comic book alliance both his lawyer and he knew they'd never get a fair trial. If it went to trial he would also face a 5 year minimum jail term.

http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/editorial/2010-03-02/7

Sounds like his lawyer knew what he was doing.

You have to remember that in the USA Congress, the senate and the supreme court are all playing a game of who can piss off who. The supreme court rules something unconstitutional and then the members of congress promptly reword it and make it law again. The good, white, god fearing members could never sleep at night knowing that one of their laws had been overturned.

You may be right, although he might just have traded 5 years in jail for a lifetime of persecution instead since everyone where he lives would have found out about his arrest/conviction by now. The mere fact that he collected comics will be conveniently ommitted by the moralfags, to be replaced with 'evil child pornographer, let's burn him!' type sentiments no doubt (and you can bet the police will never leave him alone).

I totally agree about the ping-pong effect of law-making over there though, which I suppose affirms what you said about thinking we have it bad. Then again, The PROTECT Act has been around for years now, with precious few arrests in the interim, so maybe things aren't as bad as they seem. I mean, loli/shota is as available on the Internet as it ever was, with the FBI seemingly unconcerned about it.

The general public has known about him for a long time, its been going on for near on 4 years. Even if he'd gone to trial and been found not guilty he'd be in the same situation with the curtain twitchers, maybe even worse as the image(s) would have been made public. See my earlier post about the tony the tiger guy, the CPS went all the way to trial and then decided not to give any evidence so he's now free. Apart from the fact his name has been all over the papers/internet.

US law making is awful, its all self interest, infighting and who can piss highest up the wall. All backed up by pressure from the relgious right. Heck, what about the US ban on internet gambling? Seriously, land of the free?

In the 7-8 years since PROTECT there have been possibly 2 cases where it was the initial reason for arrest. Not a lot really. And as said it wasn't part of Handley's final conviction. I see the UK version being equally ineffective.

Handley was caught cos the USPS opened his international mail. The aussie powerpuff guy was caught after showing the pics to someone who then told the police. There is no indication how the simpsons guy got caught but I'd suspect the same. The tony the tiger guy again showed others the video.

Moral of the story, don't send people 4chan links!

The effectiveness of the law isn't the issue though, project2501, if anything it just illustrates a double standard whereby they can use it if they feel like it and not if they don't.

The issue is that a law like this could ever exist in a free country.

What bothers me most about this law is that nearly 650 supposedly educated and democratically minded individuals spent time debating this prior to it going to a vote. THEN the same bill was read by a another large group of alleged learned individual and was once again voted on. It staggers me that such oppressive and ill-conceived legislation can be passed so easily.

With this law MPs abandoned the use of legislation to protect children and instead used it to create a witch hunt. If a person who is sexually attracted to children makes the decision not to abuse them via photos but instead uses purely fantasy art, then they should be commended for that. Expressing sexuality in a harmless way should be right of everyone.

This law is another example of the previous governments casual abandon of evidence based legislation in favour of agenda based laws, based on personal distaste.

This was brought in on the assumption that only child abusers would be looking at sexually explicit cartoons that appeared to feature underage persons.

However, the fact is it makes overnight criminals of otherwise law biding citizens who view Japanese Anime films or Manga comics because many of these feature young looking characters, and often contain very strong adult themes.

It seems the previous government were trying to apply british standards to foreign works of art.

Whilst I can see there being a need for a law against genuine images of abuse that have been manipulated to look like a cartoon, it is not right that in a supposedly free country people who view foreign works of art could be considered potential sex offenders and criminalised.

What about all those jokey sexually explicit "Simpsons" cartoons that are pinging around the web? If a friend of mine sends me some of those images as a joke, does that make me a criminal? Are those classic "Love is..." cartoons now illegal to own?

How the hell do you tell the age of a cartoon character anyway? its certainly difficult with some of those Japanese cartoons.

With the exception of genuine images that have been manipulated, this law should be repealed.

It is time the government backed off trying to legislate every little area of people's lives - especially their sex lives. This includes drawings of porn. Let's face it - everyone likes porn in some form or another!