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NEWS: USA, Japan Propose Limits on Explicit Online Material


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biolizard_alpha



Joined: 25 Aug 2004
Posts: 184
PostPosted: Sun Dec 09, 2007 10:29 am Reply with quote
Ron Paul is from Texas, not Georgia
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The Xenos



Joined: 29 Mar 2004
Posts: 1519
Location: Boston
PostPosted: Sun Dec 09, 2007 10:31 am Reply with quote
Whelp... I'm gonna put a magnet on my hard drive now.

I kid. Cause I'd also have to burn some books I bought while in Japan. Then again, Japan's customs were more afraid of US porn than vice versa. They already have come crazy pornography laws.

Heh. I keep saying Coppertone is going to be spending some time for spreading child porn if they get serious about this fictional child porn thing.

Actually, the even more f---ed up thing is how I doubt many of these lawmakers understand how the internet works. Do I even have to mention the crazy series of tubes analogy by Sen. Ted Stevens?

Well, good luck to US porn and hentai (import porn) publishers like Icarus. I'm hoping they get around to publishing Viva Freedom by Tuna Empire. It's a hentai tankobon about.. well.. American freedom. It may also feature an orgy with a generic anime, George W Bush, and Saddam Hussein. Plus it features another girl in NYC during 9/11 and then getting g-------ed by the Taliban exposing them to sexual liberation. Surely, a controversial work, but, hey, viva freedom.

Also... f---ing Gob bless Ron Paul.
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Daemonblue



Joined: 05 Jul 2006
Posts: 701
PostPosted: Sun Dec 09, 2007 10:43 am Reply with quote
Heh, I don't understand anything they're trying to get at through all of that legal speak. All I know is that in some of the former SAFE acts, they had to remove the parts pertaining to drawings since they could have covered a broad scope of things that would otherwise not be considered as such. For instance, if I draw a girl that looks like she's 10, but in a story that would make her 25 or so, would that be considered child pornography? How about if I draw someone that looks to be in their mid 20's but is really 9 (such as Dokuro-chan's younger sister)? With drawings, you really can't say anything cause the artist decides the ages of those they're drawing, and even if you think they're younger than what the artist says they are, you're automatically wrong because you're not the one who drew it. It's because of things such as that that they threw out those parts of the other SAFE acts, it's just ridiculous to think that one person can get off scott free while the other is locked up behind bars for drawing the same picture just because one put the person in a situation where she was older while the other put the person in a situation where she was younger.

Edit: And oh yea, Ron Paul FTW.

Edit 2: Also, I think worrying about fictional characters is the least of our troubles when there's 11 year old girls accusing 8-9 year old boys of raping her.


Last edited by Daemonblue on Sun Dec 09, 2007 10:57 am; edited 2 times in total
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hentai4me



Joined: 25 Oct 2005
Posts: 1313
Location: England. Robin is so Cute!
PostPosted: Sun Dec 09, 2007 10:53 am Reply with quote
I don't quite get what material they are policing here.

Are they now policing lolicon and similar hentai? Is Loli/Shota/etc now illegal? Will this stop me importing/viewing other forms of hentai material which does not have underaged persons in it, such as Futanari?
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Serenanna



Joined: 07 Sep 2007
Posts: 3
PostPosted: Sun Dec 09, 2007 11:45 am Reply with quote
Technically, minors are anyone under the age of 18 according to other federal laws, like the one requiring porn companies to keep records of the age of their actors and actresses. So, yeah, everything from yaoi of Ichigo from Bleach and Ed from FMA, or hentai of Asuka and Rei from EVA, and just about every other anime character ever in creation is potentially effected by this if they all go by canon age and not just appearance.

The bill also effects providers of free internet services like LJ, Deviantart, Hotmail, Photobucket, Google, you name it, they all gotta either monitor their servers and users and turn us all in, or not monitor at all. So, yeah, scary.

Since 4chan is free, it might cover them as well, but I'm not a legal expert as to what codifies as free service.

Still, this is giving me the heebee-jeebees if it passes. I don't think the federal government has any ideas about how many yaoi fangirls are out there that they're setting up to be legally called pedos.
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Digi Angel



Joined: 01 Jan 2005
Posts: 5
PostPosted: Sun Dec 09, 2007 11:53 am Reply with quote
I've always thought that the reason why child porn is illegal is because real children are being harmed, so how can this apply to simple drawings? Personally, I don't understand the logic in this at all...
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Eos



Joined: 15 Jul 2005
Posts: 168
Location: Jersey
PostPosted: Sun Dec 09, 2007 12:05 pm Reply with quote
hentai4me wrote:
I don't quite get what material they are policing here.
Are they now policing lolicon and similar hentai? Is Loli/Shota/etc now illegal? Will this stop me importing/viewing other forms of hentai material which does not have underaged persons in it, such as Futanari?

Not entirely, but the language of the bill could extend to them, hence it being a news item. It would depend on whether your service provider judges drawings as child pornography, and is even looking for them to begin with. My distain for such material aside, it worries me that this bill could could stir up providers to start new monitoring programs, that could potentially cast rather wide nets. I don't want to see "anime" become unanimous with "child porn." Knee-jerk reaction I know, but lawmakers rarely understand the complexities of the internet. I'm not entirely behind Paul either, but at least he generally has a "hands off" approach.

Serenanna wrote:
The bill also effects providers of free internet services like LJ, Deviantart, Hotmail, Photobucket, Google, you name it, they all gotta either monitor their servers and users and turn us all in, or not monitor at all. So, yeah, scary.

As I read it, those "engaged in providing an electronic communication service" meant service providers (Verizon, Comcast, etc) are held accountable, not website owners. Could be wrong though.


Last edited by Eos on Sun Dec 09, 2007 12:12 pm; edited 1 time in total
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fxg97873



Joined: 13 Dec 2004
Posts: 211
Location: Houston, TX
PostPosted: Sun Dec 09, 2007 12:10 pm Reply with quote
God bless Ron Paul. The only representative to uphold the constitution as he pledged to do so when he took the oath of office. Everyone else is a law breaking liar.

I like how they come out with these titles that make it certain you will vote for it regardless of content.

Your anime and manga, your civil liberties, slowly neutered to death under the pretext of "protecting the children". Moral Panic, Mass Hysteria and Fear mongering...

"When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government,..."


We need another one of those.

mk2000
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Talon87



Joined: 05 Dec 2005
Posts: 89
PostPosted: Sun Dec 09, 2007 1:09 pm Reply with quote
I'm surprised nobody's discussing the most ridiculous part of this law: the part that says you have to pay $300,000 in fines for each image you fail to report.

Quote:
Failure to comply with the SAFE Act would result in an initial fine of up to $150,000, and fines of up to $300,000 for subsequent offenses.


Just think about it -- is the legal system going to define "a singular offense" as a hard drive of content? as separate folders? or on an image-by-image basis? If we've learned anything from the RIAA lawsuits against pirating music, it's that they don't care if "you just stole one CD, so you should be fined for the one CD" -- they'll charge you thousands of dollars, and they'll charge you per individual song. And now this situation's even worse! One 30-page doujin could cost a guy 9 million dollars -- a doujin that he didn't even download for himself, but was downloaded from his unsecured WAP by his next-door neighbor.

$300,000 per "subsequent offense," you have to be effing kidding me. Grossly malproportionate to the potential nature of the crime committed. The law seriously needed to be more precise and say, "Distributors of child pornography will be fined this amount; leechers will be fined this amount; and the amount fined shall not exceed this amount." Think about it -- the way the law is written right now, the judiciary could hose the entirety of 4chan's userbase and have them pay off the national debt.
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la_contessa



Joined: 20 Apr 2007
Posts: 200
Location: Pennsylvania
PostPosted: Sun Dec 09, 2007 1:16 pm Reply with quote
I've been mulling over this for a few days since I first read about it, and I'm still confident about my first reaction: after Ashcroft v. The Free Speech Coalition, 122 S. Ct. 1389 (2002) (holding that the government regulation of "virtual child" pornography does not pass strict scrutiny), this legislation will most likely be unconstitutional. In fact, I'm honestly kind of confused about how Congress thought it would be okay, considering it uses "appears to be" language similar to the statute at issue in Free Speech Coalition. The Supreme Court was pretty adamant that the regulation of "child pornography" that doesn't actually involve real children is not instrinsically related to any valid government interest. Now, this bill is more of a "self-regulation" scheme than overt government regulation, BUT it's still touching areas Congress has already been told it can't touch. I guess the courts may carve the drawings part out, but I'm not even sure the rest of it would stand (on other grounds).

Further, what this article doesn't get into that much(http://www.news.com/8301-13578_3-9829759-38.html is one that does) is that it's not just ISPs--it's anyone who offers a free Wi-Fi connection (who knows whether that's part of the untrue "broad interpretation" or not?). Now, this article DID do a great job of pointing out that the monitoring is not mandatory (an operator must only report the material if he or she "learns of" it), but I still have strong doubts that the average person in an apartment building who doesn't have a security key on his wireless router would know how to get the material and identification data even if he DID learn of it. Heck, I knew enough to put a password on my router, and I still don't know how to get that data. So, this legislation is likely not even the most efficient way to get at the problem of child porn in the first place.

A patently unconstitutional law that is difficult to implement and enforce? Must be an election year.


Last edited by la_contessa on Sun Dec 09, 2007 5:20 pm; edited 1 time in total
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RIObsessed



Joined: 11 Feb 2007
Posts: 5
PostPosted: Sun Dec 09, 2007 1:30 pm Reply with quote
Hentai =/= Child Porn. This is bullshit.
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CMB



Joined: 12 Sep 2006
Posts: 44
Location: Lock Haven, Pa.
PostPosted: Sun Dec 09, 2007 1:36 pm Reply with quote
Sad This has all the looks of a witch hunt. Sad
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The Xenos



Joined: 29 Mar 2004
Posts: 1519
Location: Boston
PostPosted: Sun Dec 09, 2007 1:39 pm Reply with quote
Mind you, they don't actually say about virtual child porn or hentai... but.. they leave enough wiggle room that the courts and police could pursue it.

As much as I hate to quote the new prequel Star Wars trilogy, this quote is scarily appropriate.

"So this is how liberty dies... with thunderous applause."

Than again, this s--- is nothing compared to the s--- that got passed with the Patriot Act.

Patriot Act. SAFE Act. How nice they sugarcoat the names of these bills shredding the foundations of this country. Paving the way for bigger and bigger Big Brother.
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erilot



Joined: 26 Mar 2006
Posts: 25
Location: INDIANA
PostPosted: Sun Dec 09, 2007 1:56 pm Reply with quote
Being a yaoi fan, this really does not bother me. I enjoy yaoi, but don't like it when it deals with young characters. To me it is very disturbing when characters are so young. I download a lot of yaoi since so much is not licensed, but hate when I hit anything shota or hard core and so I immediately delete it. To me it is just wrong. It does not matter that it is drawing versus real pictures. There are just some items that should never be drawn and that are characters in grade or middle school in explict stories. I don't mind boys love so much in high school when it is not grafic and just a love story. We don't need grafics, a good imagination will do fine. I do hope they clamp down. You get used to the drawn child porn, it seems too short a step to becoming a perv. Personally, I will stick with my general boys love books, I am after a good story, no grafic pictures.
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rankothefiremage



Joined: 16 Oct 2003
Posts: 523
Location: Michigan
PostPosted: Sun Dec 09, 2007 2:03 pm Reply with quote
While i still think Ron Paul is a fruitcake, i can't help but respect him for sticking to his views. Then again the bulk of our government is run by authoritarian types, even Rep. Paul is a bit above the line in that field, at least according to this site http://www.politicalcompass.org/

Also note that about 12~ish reps didn't vote only 411 out of 435, i wonder if Rep. Dennis Kucinich, since he rates less authoritarian, than even Rep. Paul, and more properly to the left much to my own joy.

Edit - Sigh even Kucinich voted for, but realize that if the Senate doesn't act and try to pass a counterpart bill before recess or get said bill to the president sign it before then, then no law gets past and the house vote becomes largely symbolic.



-Gabe, democratic activist.
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