Hentai Collector Sentenced to Jail Over "Obscene" Material

[jboking]

You seem to be under the assumption that he wouldn't be regarded as a weirdo in Japan. It's not that there's no cultural bias there against odd pornography; it's that they don't care to do anything to you as long as you keep your oddness to yourself.

The bold is the only assumption I was under. Fact is, you don't get this in the United States. Laws and legislation like the patriot act have proven that.

Though, for the sake of argument, I'd be willing to claim that in Japan they are more accepting of this strange bunch.

 

[12capital]

Am I the only one who is noticing that there are an increasing amount of cases like this where people who aren't actually hurting anyone are getting put in jail? I recall a mother was fined several MILLION dollars for illegally downloading some 20 songs off of a file sharing program. I find this ridiculous, why doesn't the government spend more time finding actual criminals who are out there hurting others instead of ruining someone for making a harmless mistake?
This also reminds me of congress meeting about steroid abuse in major league baseball instead of, you know, important things like the Middle East or the economy.

 

[Piecewise]

Am I the only one who is noticing that there are an increasing amount of cases like this where people who aren't actually hurting anyone are getting put in jail? I recall a mother was fined several MILLION dollars for illegally downloading some 20 songs off of a file sharing program. I find this ridiculous, why doesn't the government spend more time finding actual criminals who are out there hurting others instead of ruining someone for making a harmless mistake?
This also reminds me of congress meeting about steroid abuse in major league baseball instead of, you know, important things like the Middle East or the economy.

These are all just terrible attempts to make an example of unfortunate bastards. Randomly pick one file sharer, a crime that is about as ubiquitous as j-walking, and make her pay a million dollars; jail a man for porn which is legal and very common on the Internet; etc.

As per what japan thinks of this, watch "Welcome to the NHK" to get an idea. It's not like it's completely accepted or common place, but this is the place that sells used school girl panties in vending machines

 

[cobra_ky]

not that anyone will pay attention to this, but he was tried in 2006 I think under a very broad law that was replaced by the PROTECT act later [even congress said that the first law was too broad in a way that could negatively impact peoples civil freedoms].

He was tried using the now outdated law instead of the current, which is fairly rare in most areas. reason is most of the time the laws are passed before the original trial date or after the suspect has been incarcerated.

The PROTECT Act was passed in 2003, long before Handley was arrested. the same law he was found guilty under is still in effect today.

 

[cobra_ky]

Japan: Censors pornography
America (idiotic states only): Sends people to jail for possession of pornography

No, not just the idiotic states. The PROTECT Act is federal law, you can be arrested for breaking it anywhere in the United States.

 

[geldonyetich]

I've never been to 4chan or a porn site, but I'm still outraged by the assault on free speech that American anti-obscenity law represents.

Hmm... I suppose there's more than one reason to be outraged about it.

However, you're misunderstanding free speech if you believe it was ever intended to be any kind of shield for obscenities. We've been damning certain things as profane since well before the bill of rights and well afterward. If we weren't, and it was done in the name of free speech, it seems likely we'd have repealed free speech centuries ago.

He had a collection of over 1200 manga, 7 of which were found objectionable. As far as I know, there's no evidence that this man was actually a pedophile. What you're suggesting is along the lines of arresting people for owning guns, since it's a good sign they're going to commit a crime.

Not really. A gun is a tool. As a tool, it is bereft of any significant agenda. Literature, on the other hand, is representative of ideas.

It wasn't so much that 7 were found objectionable so much as 7 were isolated by the prosecution as being particularly effective at convicting him. There were likely quite a few more that might have worked.

 

[Anth]

Is lolicon hentai pornography? Yes.
Does it feature characters who appear to be under the age of sexual majority? Yes again.
Is it child porn? Ehhh...

The question of whether the characters are under the legal age is kind of moot anyway, considering the number of anime characters that look young dispite having their ages given at a ridiculously high number.

As for the question of hentai as a gateway drug to paedophilia, no it is not (always). I have an otaku friend who is into lolicon and he can't stand real children. Correlation and causality remain two different things, even if the courts disagree.

 

[slowpoke999]

Some very thick(and by thick I mean fucking retarded) people in here think that because something is illegal it is automatically a bad thing.What the guy did was illegal, yeh yeh we all get it. Oh but here's a fucking thought, your precious legal system isn't perfect and some laws are freaking bullshit?

Should what the guy did be illegal?If you think so please delete yourself you fucking moron. Laws are not meant to evolve by themselves, they are only allowed to change when a group of people find them outdated. You will get arrested for any real life child porn no matter how vile, even if it is highly educational, so why did this guy get arrested because he broke a certain 'limit' of perversness. Child porn is only illegal because a child is being exploited, not because someone thinks it's 'perverse'.

This is like exactly what's going on in Australia, some cockweed thinks 18+ rated video games are perverse so bans them. I really don't want to say this, but this thought of thinking most definately stemmed from early religion, "We tell you what to think, you stfu"

When this train of thought becomes cleansed from humanity I guarentee half if not more the worlds problems will go away.

[sub]This whole rant was already pretty obvious to 90% of people here, but it's aimed at the other 10%[/sub]

 

[Lim3]

Its not like loli characters are drawn to accurately represent real children. Any children with eyes and pupils that large would be in the circus.

 

[Ian Caronia]

Japan: Censors pornography
America (idiotic states only): Sends people to jail for possession of pornography

No, not just the idiotic states. The PROTECT Act is federal law, you can be arrested for breaking it anywhere in the United States.

WHA-WHAT?! Wow, I've been out of the loop WAY too long. The fuck is WRONG with our country? I mean, is there no land that's safe for perverts to shwank?

 

[derelict]

Not interested in the court ruling or anything, but...

"Handley, a computer programmer who according to defense documents spends his free time playing online games, reading comics and attending a *BIBLE STUDY GROUP*,"


....irony. Sweet, sweet irony.

 

[fletch_talon]

The issue is that the guy in question is almost certainly not a pedophile, and all indications are that he's a normal, law-abiding citizen with a peculiar taste in artwork, and yet he's being tarred with the "potential sex offender" brush in a way that exposes not only flagrant miscarriage of justice, but also gross misunderstanding of porn consumers and pedophiles alike.

I've already said that I don't consider him a criminal in any way. It was the entire point of my first post. But his peculiar taste in artwork amounts to paedophilia. Evaluation will either confirm or deny whether he is or not.

I'm done arguing wth you regarding the rest, as your argument comes down to paedophilia not being an issue until its been acted upon. I disagree, at least we can agree that he has done nothing to warrant fines or jailtime.

 

[stabnex]

The human justice system is like religion and oil. Big Business. The press put him away to boost their ratings during Superbowl Week.

 

[Spiner909]

He gets that much, for hentai? He had better damn not be a first time offender for that kind of charge.

 

[Piecewise]

The issue is that the guy in question is almost certainly not a pedophile, and all indications are that he's a normal, law-abiding citizen with a peculiar taste in artwork, and yet he's being tarred with the "potential sex offender" brush in a way that exposes not only flagrant miscarriage of justice, but also gross misunderstanding of porn consumers and pedophiles alike.

I've already said that I don't consider him a criminal in any way. It was the entire point of my first post. But his peculiar taste in artwork amounts to paedophilia. Evaluation will either confirm or deny whether he is or not.

I'm done arguing wth you regarding the rest, as your argument comes down to paedophilia not being an issue until its been acted upon. I disagree, at least we can agree that he has done nothing to warrant fines or jailtime.

So you're saying that we should arrest people for crimes BEFORE they happen? Well I guess we arrest anyone with a copy of "Mein Kampf" before they kill a few million jews or a bible before they trick an entire town into getting circumcised before slaughtering the lot (it's in there)

Once again, you have yet to prove any correlation between loli and actual child molestation. Its kind of like saying that all furries will go out and fuck a goat eventually. For your argument to be valid you would have to prove that, not only do all or at least most pedophiles consume lolicon material but that this material acts as a gateway into actual illegal and abusive actions.

 

[Treblaine]

I wonder what the Supreme Court would have to say about Tentacle Hentai!

Hell if they knew half the shit that was on deviant-art that place would have been BRBFBI with the pneumatic-Banhammer ages ago.

How much do you wanna bet there's gonna be at least one person who shuffles through their manga collection and/or destroys some of it after reading this thread?

On a completely unrelated topic...
My friend wants to know how do you completely destroy all the data on a hard drive?

Oh you he should send it to Chris Hansen Data Deletion inc. just remember to send it with your full name, address and a recent picture of you holding the hard drive and he will personally make sure all the sensitive data on your hard drive is destroyed... for FREE! I mean look at the guy:

... doesn't he seem trustworthy.

I've used him already and the service is excellent. Damn, what the hell is all that racket outside, sirens, police shouting... must be a fire or something. Oh, someone's knocking on the door, I'll just make this post and when I've dealt with this I'll find that address so you can, err 'tell your friend' where to send his hard drive.

 

[Piecewise]

He gets that much, for hentai? He had better damn not be a first time offender for that kind of charge.

It's his first charge ever.

 

[scotth266]

Spoiler: From a thread on the subject that was previously locked:

Scotth266:

Please note two things about the following story:

1) That certain mangas of the "loli/lolita" type, such as Dance In The Vampire Bund and Kodomo no Jikan, contain sexualized depictions of children/minors and thus might be regarded as "child porn", regardless of their artistic/thematic merits.

We do not know exactly what titles were regarded as "child porn", so saying that he deserves punishment when we cannot even analyze what's being called child porn is ridiculous. The same thing goes for bestiality: as far as we know, they could be talking about some hentai manga involving foxy (quite literally) women. As in, more furry than beastialty. It once again relies on the law keeper's interpretation of what constitutes beastiality, which could be skewed.

2) Other literary works/works of film are allowed depictions of child/minor sex/rape/whatever. One of my favorite books, Shade's Children, has minors as young as thirteen doing the deed. Does that mean that I'm a pedophile? No, it means that I'm appreciative of a good fucking book.

If the manga in question were, say, just plain ol' porn without any story attached, then the prosecution's arugments might hold some merit, but given that the manga in question was in book form (as is suggested by the GIANT bookcase picture accompanying the story) I think that he would have won his case. I understand his decision to just give up, but I hope that he doesn't get placed on some sex offender list, because apparently that makes your life absolute hell.

Also virtual/drawn characters do not count as real human beings, etc.

Alrighty then, now that there's more details on the subject:

The psych examiner notes that he is apparently unwilling to share details about himself. Well geez, I can't imagine why that is: he's been arrested for having a hobby involving sexually explicit materials, had a good deal of his personal property seized, and to top it all off, he didn't even know it was illegal to own this stuff.

I can't see why he would be the LEAST bit hesitant in talking to a court-hired psychiatrist who's basically prodding him to see if he's a closet pedophile (even though the lolitai in question was a VERY small part of his collection, 80 out of 1,200 items which covered all sorts of elements under the sun), especially since the general details of the examination will be posted for all to see. Public embarrassment/shame at being caught with sexual material of a odd nature can't possibly have been a factor, oh no!

As far as the lolitai itself goes, I think that it's ridiculous that he's getting charged for possessing it. The judgement of whether or not something possesses artistic merit is completely subjective: I myself see the manga Aki-Sora (has sexual deviancy as the subject) as being stupid and pointless, but enjoy Sundome(same), which I feel holds thematic merit.

And I post this link yet again. [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/7.163191-Japanese-Porn-Game-Lampoons-Rape-Game-Controversy]

 

[William Dickbringer]

ah the american justice system at best no wonder my friend hates america

 

[Superhyperactiveman]

See, here's my problem with the whole scenario. Being an otaku, I do peruse doujinshi sites from time to time. Though it's not my thing, I have seen hentai on the site, some of which includes loli stuff, and some more disturbing things (Which I feel the need to point out that I immediately click away from when I happen upon it. I am not a freak... well, not in that context). Now, what is the legal difference between me seeing this stuff on a site and this guy owning it in his house?