Hentai Collector Sentenced to Jail Over "Obscene" Material

[Canadamus Prime]

Although I think Hentai is disgusting, I fail to see the big issue here. Even if it depicts minors, no actual people were hurt in it's creation; it's not like real child porn where some kid was actually sexually abused for the purpose of it's creation.
And WTF? The guy admitted he had done wrong and would never have done it if he'd known it was illegal. Is all that rehabilitation nonsense really necessary?
One could almost argue that this is an attack on Japanese culture.

 

[Olorune]

Not saying I support this stuff, but let people look at whatever the fuck they want, for Christ's sake.

I agree, but still "eeeeeeeeeeeeeewwwwwwwwwwwwwwww". lol

 

[Enkidu88]

Sounds like they guy probably had a shitty attorney that let the local self-righteous District attorney strong arm him into a guilty plea. Most cases are resolved that way. If he'd would have fought it, I sure it would either eventually gone away or get to the supreme court.

 

[Lim3]

I wish there were gamer lawyers. We need to defend our own. Where are our real life Ace Attorneys?![/quote]

We need a union. How mad would that be? Get RROD, call the union. Internet filter blocking out hentai - call the union. Games in Australia ridiculously over priced compared to America - call the union.

This thread is growing so fast. I think so many of us have looked at hentai we're all shocked that if we look at on portraying underage-looking characters it could be classified as illegal.

 

[Piecewise]

The lesson here is not to get caught with anything that can get traced back to you that you wouldn't look at with Chris Hansen staring over your shoulder.

there goes half the internet

I'm just waiting for Hanson to be arrested for possession of Child porn or something.

 

[-BloodRush-]

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?

way ahead of you.

 

[Dommyboy]

So did they catch him through customs by attempting to import the comics?

 

[ace_of_something]

I totally made a post about this [a href=http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/18.114485-Poll-Is-this-fair-a-question-of-creepy-porn#2091200] back in may[/a]. The post was locked because of the arguments. I'm just saying.
I still think this law is unconstitutional.

Hentai Collector Sentenced to Jail Over "Obscene" Material


A comic collector in Iowa has been sentenced to six months in jail for importing and possessing hentai books from Japan that depict child sex and bestiality.

 

[StrangerQ]

That's ridiculous, 15 years and $250K? What the hell are they trying to prove, that they're as fundamentalist as the Catholic Church in the 1600s? It's a comic! He didn't stalk, touch, rape, or look at real children in lust for all the evidence that is.

Okay, I can understand why he would take a deal. It doesn't matter what the law is, if a jury already thinks you're a pervert they'll lock you up for anything that's on the table. Now, because he's into manga, he's going to be strung up to a polygraph and be subjected to a psychologist prodding into every corner of his life to find out what made him decide to veer from the norm.

Yeah, it's weird that he's into child hentai and bestiality, and I'm not endorsing it, but there are droves of people who are plenty worse who won't get caught because they keep it online. If the postal service hadn't been rifling through his mail it would never have gone public and this guy could have lived his perfectly normal life. Nobody deserves to have their dirty little secret revealed.

This ....
I was thinking exactly the same

 

[Lucifron]

Most bigoted country ever. It's unbelievable. GAH!

Only in the US can you see a movie on TV in which a person is shot six times in the chest without any sound, as it was censored because the shooter was saying "asshole".

And now they are destroying a person's life for watching some perverted hentai? They would have to imprison everyone who has visited 4chan to be consistant in that ruling. Give me a fucking break.

 

[scotth266]

I totally made a post about this [a href=http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/18.114485-Poll-Is-this-fair-a-question-of-creepy-porn#2091200] back in may[/a]. The post was locked because of the arguments. I'm just saying.
I still think this law is unconstitutional.

Huh. Well, apparently it takes a while for verdicts to get handed down, huh? And you sure that thing was locked? Looks plenty open to me.

At the very least his situation lightened considerably: in your post you linked a story that said he was facing 5 years jail time, whereas he is now only paying several fines and has five years probation. Which is still bullshit (especially since the story seems to indicate that he also lost his job over this), but it's better than what he was facing before.

 

[seditary]

I wonder if American police contacted their Japanese counterparts to go after Makafusigi who created 4 of the titles in the list.

Pretty sure I've read quite a few of those too, time to go into hiding!

 

[Nemu]

I don't know much about hentai but I do know that being sent to jail for possessing the wrong kind of drawings in the wrong part of the country is simply wrong. Handley was sentenced under the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protect_Act] noted, "The drawings are not obscene and are not tantamount to pornography. They are lines on paper." Which is enough, it seems, to send a man to jail and irrevocably destroy his life.

Honestly, I don't get it either, and I've been a fan of manga and anime for 25 years.

That being said, I do NOT understand why this man is quite possibly going to jail and, likely, be forced to register as a sex offender over DRAWINGS. Were these pieces of art by, say, Da Vinci, would there have been an issue? I understand why rules about physical child pornography exist--and thankfully they DO, but drawings are even less real than (one could argue) a photograph is. It's crossing a very dangerous line of what is considered "art" and what isn't.

No children were harmed in the making of those books. Sure, they're twisted and the guy needs help to get over his kid/beastiality issues, but they were COMIC BOOKS.

Blah. I fee like I'm in the dark ages.

 

[blankedboy]

...

I don't suppose I really need to say anything here.

 

[elricik]

ummmmmmm..........there lines on a paper, the man did nothing wrong. If I drew a stick figure and called him "Timmy" and told everyone he was six years old, and drew him getting violated by a tentacle, would I be sent to prison?

 

[reciprocal]

So collecting artwork is illegal now?
Good thing I don't live in the US.
I'd rather move to Japan!

.......Did you just call animated child porn artwork?

Prove that it is not.

Prove that it is.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homosexuality_in_ancient_Greece

Please refer to the upper right image.

 

[xyrafhoan]

To me, the person charged over "obscene" material just seems to be an otaku collector, who wasn't so much concerned with the content of his collection rather than the volume of work he owned.

On the other hand the topic of what makes the images in question obscene just reminds me so much of the arguments that go on in the art world all the time. The artist Robert Mapplethorpe had a body of photography known as Porfolio X, deemed obscene for its uncensored portrayal of male homosexual BDSM. People were absolutely outraged by the content, saying something glorifying homosexuality could never be art despite everything else Mapplethorpe has ever done. Those who objected against the photography even exaggerated the descriptions of the work, and included descriptions of work that didn't even exist, just to slander the artist. In the same vein, these people are judging a collector over a small segment of his collection rather than including all of his collection, because they can blow his perversion out of proportion, and they can downplay the value of the work and its cultural significance (in this case, glorifying Japanese subculture no matter how bizarre it becomes).

By the way, if you research Mapplethorpe it'll inevitably be NSFW. Just a forewarning.