Forum - View topicNEWS: Virginia Man's 20-Year Sentence for Anime Child Porn Upheld
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rinmackie
 Posts: 1040 Location: in a van! down by the river! |
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I must say in this case the man got what he deserved but the thing that bothers me is this statement:
"it is not a required element of any offense under this section that the minor depicted actually exists." WTF?! According to this, anyone who owns a work of fiction that depicts or appears to depict a minor (and a nonexistent one, at that!) in a seemingly sexual manner can be locked up. Looks like everyone's gonna have to hide their anime/ manga. 
Better go hide my Anne Rice vampire novels, too. |
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GATSU
Posts: 15581 |
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I'm wondering if they only upheld the verdict, because of his previous crimes. That other Court ruling on virtual porn doesn't necessarily apply retroactively, after all.
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Descent123
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In a semi-similar case in the down-under according to a judge cartoon porn kids are people too.
Here's the link: http://www.news.com.au/story/0,27574,24767202-2,00.html My opinion on both cases: I believe that it's the First Amendment for the guy to have drawings of child porn (since IMO it's fiction and not hurting anyone). Of course for the guy in VA he should go to jail for having real child porn on the computers. Now I hate it and don't support it, but give me a break it's a drawing (and I bet it doesn't take long for any wacko to find some anime drawings of young boys/girls doing it on Google). |
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Kit-Tsukasa
Posts: 930 |
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This is what really should be done. He should be going to jail for real child porn. Virtual/artistic depiction is a whole different matter. A non-otaku can easily claim something as child porn when it really isn't <_< HUGE gray area. |
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Josh7289
Posts: 1252 |
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Maybe this should go to the Supreme Court. This guy had both real and virtual child porn, so perhaps we can get it into law that drawings are not the same as real people.
Of course real child porn should be illegal, but it pisses me off so much that the government gets to decide what works of fiction we're allowed to watch/read/create/see/etc., even in the case of damn emails that contained no real nor virtual images whatsoever! |
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kakoishii
Posts: 741 |
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That is a problem. The guy deserves to be going to jail but it should be for only, and clarified as only for having pictures of "real" child porn and for what looks like lewd text conversations (although from what's provided it doesn't say whether it's too a minor, either way it doesn't help his case). This clarification must be made and stated clearly only for the fact that a man in Iowa faces the same sentence for only having imaginary children in sexual situations in "some" of his manga collection and nothing else. The people convicting him in his case could use this case as an example for why he should go to jail using the similar statement: "it is not a required element of any offense under this section that the minor depicted actually exists." This is getting ridiculous. Hopefully someone with reason will pop up and make sure it is heard and recognized that it should be required that the element of offense actually exists. |
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Josh7289
Posts: 1252 |
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Wait, so why is fictional child porn OK, but fictional text-only fictional stories that are entirely fictional not OK (as long as they are entirely fictional, of course)? It has to be clarified that fiction is fiction, and fiction in no way harms actual people. You know, I just hate all forms of censorship. |
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sunflowerseed
 Posts: 106 Location: South Texas |
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This is not the guy from Iowa, but, if he had real pictures from the CP rings and things we see being busted regulary on the web then thats probably why this guy got the 20 year deal upheld.
The guy from Iowa (Chris..) was busted by his mail man for some manga he never got. As far as we know the guy from Iowa (Chris...) could be a quadriplegic who has never left his house in 20 years and can't move nothing but his eyes yet will be marked as a child prediator who actually abducted or lured a child to have sex with him. There has to be a line drawn somewhere, its great the police find the real CP people who are doing this stuff at times, the ones taking the pictures and posting them should be found before they nap the people who feed off of it. Somewhere there has to be a commonsense law added in. |
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Eruanna
 Posts: 451 Location: Canada |
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...WHAT? A text message is just a medium with wich to send a message, and any message could be obscene or not. Of course we dont know what exactly he said through text messages, but to say that a text message couldnt ever be called obscene? Thats rubbish. Sounds like the guys got what he had comming. Debate on animated/manga child pornogrpahy aside, apparently he had the real deal too. Add that to propesitioning (Im assuming) kids under age through text, yeah, lock him up. |
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Top Gun
 Posts: 4809 |
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This is a different situation than other cases, since the defendant in question obviously deserves jail time for the real child porn. But I don't like that statement any more than the rest of you do. If the underlying intent of laws like the PROTECT Act is to keep actual children from harm, and unless there is hard evidence suggesting that those who look at virtual depictions of the subject matter are more likely to exploit real children, how can the law be justified in equating the two, no matter how distasteful most of us may find this material?
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Cait
 Posts: 503 |
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I have to wonder if the court's decision was not due in part because if they overturned the virtual "child porn" convictions that it might affect his convictions on the counts of actual child pornography. If they decided the PROTECT Act is worded in a way that is "unfair" the law could be struck down, so they are covering their bases so this guy doesn't get to walk free for the actual child porn he had.
The law was made intentionally to make it easier to prosecute child pornography, as in, the prosecution would not have to prove that real children were used to make it. It was never intended to be used for entirely and obviously fictional depictions of underaged sex. That's the flaw in the law, though, as it takes an individual's nterpretation to decide what the "purpose" of the law is, and instead we are getting these people who are simply abiding by the "letter" of the law and not its intention. It's really unfortunate and I can only hope that in Chris Handley's case the fact that he had absolutely no real child pornography in his collection will help federal court judges look at the law more objectively (and fairly) should he be convicted and the case goes to appeals. |
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cyberbeing
Posts: 135 |
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That guy was an idiot and a pedophile and should be locked up. In 1999 he went to jail for real child porn. In 2005 he used a public computer to download real child porn, sent/received email about molesting children, and to top it off downloaded loli h-anime. It's very clear the purpose loli h-anime served this guy considering his history, and I believe the ruling was accurate. In my opinion, that statement was only made to make his sentence worse and make it clear for a guy like him, fictional content was not an exception. If this was a guy with a clean history, no real child porn, and only had possession of loli h-anime, I doubt the same ruling would have happened. We will see. The government does seem to be getting closer and closer to convicting people solely over fictional works containing illegal topics. I dread our censored future. |
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dtm42
Posts: 14084 Location: currently stalking my waifu |
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Yeah, this wouldn't be a good test case for the Supreme Court to handle, since he had real child pornography. Though I believe he was wrongly convicted of the virtual pornography - any rational, reasonable person can see just how farcical that law is - he deserved to get jailed. He's too tainted in order to gain the wider public's support, so he would be better off leaving the Supreme Court alone and concentrating on addressing why he felt the need to look at the real stuff.
Of course, to undergo therapy he first has to survive prison life. After all, even the general prison population hates Lolicons. He can thank his lucky stars he wasn't a paedophile, which is practically the worst crime you can commit in the eyes of most prisoners. Edit:
Wait, where does it say that? |
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Kougeru
 Posts: 5594 |
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Basroil
 Posts: 69 Location: North Carolina |
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I have no problems with his conviction seeing as he had real child porn but the inclusion of drawings is unbelievable. This is the death of the US Constitution if having any kind of drawing can put you in prison.
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