Hentai Collector Sentenced to Jail Over "Obscene" Material

[Bloodstain]

Personally, I do like this kind of stuff, but let's try to look at things in a matter-of-fact way:

Since pedophiles can (mentally, kind of) live out their urges with it, lolicon actually PREVENTS child abuse.
Even if it didn't...it's just lines. And colors. On paper. No child was harmed in any way. Seriously, what the hell?

Oh god, I hate religious conservatives because of things like that.

 

[Khada]

and now when he gets out of the slammer, he will have to look to real child porn on the net to satisfy his urges because all his manga/hentai is gone.

this is ridiculous, his comics should have been destroyed and him slapped with a warning. the end.

 

[Lim3]

I've seen a bunch of teens rape and destroy a girls life get off with no jail time. But this guy has to go to jail and have his life taken away from him for something like this? Justice is amazing.

Damn! Thats terrible. Apparently looking at hentai, dōjinshi and ecchi is worse then actual rape.

As perverted as the Japanese are, and as backwards as their treatment of women is, as least they won't get arrested for possession of comic books!

I'd suggest starting a new country for gamers and otaku, but we wouldn't have very many females. :'(

 

[A random person]

"Art" is not an absolute qualifiable quantity, last time I checked. Though that does raise the question of why such a subjective term was allowed to be used in a law.

And that I agree with you on despite my previous snarkiness. Really, who though the aforementioned artistic qualifications and the Miller test (for those who don't know, the "test" for determining obscenity. Basically, if a "regular" person finds it obscene, it is) were suitable for legislation?

Handley will also be required to serve three years of supervised release and undergo a "treatment program" that will include psychological testing and polygraph examinations to "reveal possible new criminal behavior," which he will have to help pay for, and five years of probation.

...okay, seriously, what the fuck?

I mean, everyone else has already pointed out what I wanted to, but...god damn.

Initiating synchronized facepalm (synchronized with you, I'm in agreement)...

 

[Seydaman]

To be honest that is really scary, that a persons life can be ruined like that. Mind fucking that your government can ruin your life based on what it decides and that's that.

 

[Seydaman]

I can sort of see the govs way on all this. That stuff is just a portal for people to start doing that stuff for real. I have seen it before.

the things you own, end up owning you- Tyler Durden

So playing GTA will make me a murderer? NOW I KNO!!! /sarcasm

 

[Elf Defiler Korgan]

Deploy Batman to capture the hentai artists' responsible!

You see, just one more piece of evidence that America isn't as individualistic as it claims. The side of collectivism and controlling morality via policing won here. Those labeled pervents (an emotive term) will stand little chance in a jury; and for those involved there doesn't seem to be much questioning whether they actually should be holding up the private interests of a citizen as a source of criminality (see First amendment sections above).

State power is run and directed by people; and just last week a friend was telling me how years back, a friend in high school had almost everyone turn against him when it leaked he was an appreciator of beast. Looks like those close-minded people interested in punishing the different got into the legal system.

 

[cobra_ky]

Welll... oops.

Case details aside, I don't agree with Mr Brownstein here. It's the nature of art is that it depicts things (and elicits an emotional response, which is no doubt why a guilty plea came in), you can apply the ink on paper argument to anything from racist propaganda to a bank statement. It's what those lines signify that matters, which in this case just happens to be Hentai. Surely a little bit of logic would have told the guy he was buying porn depicting under age characters and that that was going to rub quite a lot of people up the wrong way (pardoning the expression).

The difference is it's perfectly legal to own racist propaganda in the U.S. I believe the guy's logic was something along the lines of "I'm having this imported from Japan, it will arrive at my house in a box and no one but me will ever see it." Of course, a postal inspector ended up opening it en route and called in the witch hunt.

This all comes down to a violation of the first amendment. From Wikipedia:

Personal possession of obscene material in the home may not be prohibited by law. In writing for the Court in the case of Stanley v. Georgia, 394 U.S. 557 (1969), Justice Thurgood Marshall wrote, "If the First Amendment means anything, it means that a State has no business telling a man, sitting in his own house, what books he may read or what films he may watch." However, it is not unconstitutional for the government to prevent the mailing or sale of obscene items, though they may be viewed only in private. Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition, 535 U.S. 234 (2002), further upheld these rights by invalidating the Child Pornography Prevention Act of 1996, holding that, because the act "[p]rohibit[ed] child pornography that does not depict an actual child..." it was overly broad and unconstitutional under the First Amendment. Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote: "First Amendment freedoms are most in danger when the government seeks to control thought or to justify its laws for that impermissible end. The right to think is the beginning of freedom, and speech must be protected from the government because speech is the beginning of thought."

So the only reason he could have been found guilty was for ordering the stuff, and technically they could have sentenced him but it was illegal to seize it.

From http://www.cbldf.org/pr/archives/000372.shtml :

Mr. Handley's case began in May 2006 when he received an express mail package from Japan that contained seven Japanese comic books. That package was intercepted by the Postal Inspector, who applied for a search warrant after determining that the package contained cartoon images of objectionable content. Unaware that his materials were searched, Handley drove away from the post office and was followed by various law enforcement officers, who pulled him over and followed him to his home. Once there, agents from the Postal Inspector's office, Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency, Special Agents from the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation, and officers from the Glenwood Police Department seized Handley's collection of over 1,200 manga books or publications; and hundreds of DVDs, VHS tapes, laser disks; seven computers, and other documents. Though Handley's collection was comprised of hundreds of comics covering a wide spectrum of manga, the government is prosecuting images appearing in a small handful.

i personally don't know enough about postal inspection to judge the constitutionality of the search and seizure here.

 

[Doug]

"Art" is not an absolute qualifiable quantity, last time I checked. Though that does raise the question of why such a subjective term was allowed to be used in a law.

And that I agree with you on despite my previous snarkiness. Really, who though the aforementioned artistic qualifications and the Miller test (for those who don't know, the "test" for determining obscenity. Basically, if a "regular" person finds it obscene, it is) were suitable for legislation?

...seriously? Thats their test for obscenity? For legally binding decisions? I mean, jury of your peers and all, but that seems pretty easy for social norms to hit on anyone who chooses to live differently to them.

Oh, and this guy said something relevant:

To anyone who says that there is no way this can be considered art, I'll direct you here.

http://nymag.com/daily/entertainment/2008/05/takashi_murakami_watches_from.html

Apparently it's art worth 15 million dollars.

Tracey Emin managed to sell her slept in bed for £150,000. I still don't think its art. Though I suspect more people would agree with me on that one.

 

[NeutralDrow]

I was kinda on the fence about this, but I've finally come to a conclusion.
Criminal charges should not be filed, as there is no victim involved.
However, the items should be confiscated and he should be given psychiatric help. Hentai is porn, in this case porn of children. If that's what he is sexually aroused by (this being the purpose of porn) then he is in some part a paedophile. This doesn't mean he'll go out and molest children, but it wouldn't hurt to take preventative measures just in case.
Heck, if we did this with the easy to catch hentai importers, it might even give some insight into how to help fully blown paedophiles instead of scaring them into hiding.

Yeah and you know what else we should do? Lets grab all the people who fap to hentai, because that shit is weird. Also lets grab all the scat and gore people and the furries too. And the homos and the BDSM and the fat fetishists. Anyone who buys a dildo will be immediately arrested and playboy will be a felony. Also, lets kill us some Minorities because they're obviously a drain on society. Hell lets grab everyone who has a fetish or is of a different color and just throw them in a big flaming ditch!

You start doing that shit how long until the moral police come for you? How long till your fetish for sailor suits or whatever becomes a social deviancy worthy of psychological evaluation? How about you stop trying to beat people over the head with your morality? Unless you can show a DAMN good link between this and actual child molestation then you're talking out your ass. The difference between owning loli and molesting a child is the difference between shooting someone with a paint ball gun and unloading a minigun into a group of nuns.

Note the bolded part.
People who molest children generally do so because they are sexually attracted to children, in other words they are paedophiles.
Loli, as you call it, is pornography that depicts children in a sexualised manner.
Pornography's purpose is to provide viewing material from which someone can derive sexual pleasure.
So if you derive pleasure from loli, then you are a... what now?
A paedophile, well done.

No.

Seriously, no. You do not have that guarantee. There is a gigantic difference between <url=http://media.giantbomb.com/uploads/0/4929/608320-0090_large.jpg>this and <url=http://www.mikesjournal.com/Little%20Girl%20pointing.jpg>this. As a personal counterpoint, I think the former is rather cute. Thinking about the latter in any sexual way makes me nauseous.

I think I stated pretty damn clearly that child molestation is not a direct result of loli. What I did say is that someone that is sexually attracted to children needs to be given help. Why? Not because they're different, its because their attraction is not okay, because to act on it involves non-consensual sex.

Again, no. You are acting like someone attracted primarily to one subset of person is not only completely limited, but that they will inevitably act on it. Given that I'm perfectly capable of having and enjoying sex with someone who is not a 20 year-old Filipino woman (I could probably go up to 50 and Russian, or 16 and Cuban), I am again a counterpoint.

I really wish people like you would wake up and realise that we are able to set boundaries. You're comparing sexual preference, fetishes and even race, to paedophilia... Do you realise how stupid that is? Can you really not see that there is a difference between someone who gets a boner everytime they walk past a pretty little six year old, and someone who likes to have sex in a furry costume.

There is a difference: the latter is acting on their attraction, while the former cannot, and in most cases will not, due to moral and societal constraints.

There is no difference beyond that. You're still conflating pedophilia with molestation, which is about as stupid as conflating hypersexuality and rape.

 

[Kazyan]

Instead of burning the child porn, how abut we burn the Protect Act?

 

[Doug]

Whilst I agree that owning child pornography should be illegal, even if it is just a drawing, this sentence is wayyy over the top. I don't think a prison sentence is appropriate, especially since he is sticking to cartoons, instead of actual child porn.

I would agree with that. MAYBE monitored to make sure they don't have an interest in the real thing, but if their is no evidence of actual kiddie porn, the sentence is way over the top. Not that I'd want him teaching young kids.

 

[Zyxx]

Before jailing the guy, how about giving him a psych evaluation to determine his likelihood of actually harming a child or animal? If he's not deemed a menace to society, let him go.

Even if he actually does have attractions that way, maybe his hentai helps him sublimate those urges so he doesn't need to act on them in real life. Some folks' minds work that way.
Or, as some have suggested, he may just be a collector with an entirely different fascination.
Maybe he's attracted to hentai kids, but not real kids? Those proportions can be pretty out there.

In any case, he shouldn't be put away unless there's some obvious risk of harm to someone else. We Americans (yes, WE, Texas born and raised here) are waaaay too degenerate to start judging on fantasies now.

 

[evilartist]

Isn't this like getting arrested for murder after shooting someone in a game?

Yes, yes it is. :/

Based on their logic, I'm in deep shit for simply possessing Dragonball and Bastard. This is messed up.

 

[DuplicateValue]

This is ridiculous.

I could make this sort of stuff right now if I wanted to, with just a pencil and some paper. (Just to clarify: I don't)
Seriously though, who is it bothering? What he does/looks at in the comfort of his own home is nobody else's problem.

 

[Mcupobob]

What the hell!?! Its just some pictures drew on to paper, so what. So they take him to court embarrase the hell out of him for doing something complete harmless in his own privacey! And up to 15 years in the slammer not to mention the fine.

/rant

Sorry about this it just seems that a ok man even though a little weird is unfairly punished, and that the police are wasting time on this.

/super pissed

 

[A random person]

"Art" is not an absolute qualifiable quantity, last time I checked. Though that does raise the question of why such a subjective term was allowed to be used in a law.

And that I agree with you on despite my previous snarkiness. Really, who though the aforementioned artistic qualifications and the Miller test (for those who don't know, the "test" for determining obscenity. Basically, if a "regular" person finds it obscene, it is) were suitable for legislation?

...seriously? Thats their test for obscenity? For legally binding decisions? I mean, jury of your peers and all, but that seems pretty easy for social norms to hit on anyone who chooses to live differently to them.

Congratulations, you have realized something elected legislators and judges haven't! As such, you won a spot at the Common Sense Olympics! Represent Britain well, for recent things have not.

And yes, seriously. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miller_test]

Oh, and this guy said something relevant:

To anyone who says that there is no way this can be considered art, I'll direct you here.

http://nymag.com/daily/entertainment/2008/05/takashi_murakami_watches_from.html

Apparently it's art worth 15 million dollars.

Tracey Emin managed to sell her slept in bed for £150,000. I still don't think its art. Though I suspect more people would agree with me on that one.

You could defend him by saying it's less an "art" thing and more a "collector" thing. Also, I'd personally argue the hentai in question more qualifies as art than what you mentioned on the grounds that it involves drawing and shading and whatnot. You know, artwork, which is more than you can say for that other thing.

 

[Hussmann54]

I can sort of see the govs way on all this. That stuff is just a portal for people to start doing that stuff for real. I have seen it before.

the things you own, end up owning you- Tyler Durden

So playing GTA will make me a murderer? NOW I KNO!!! /sarcasm

You dont need to write "Sarcasm" out. Im pretty good at picking it out after only a few months on these forums. Oh and "Kno" has a "W" at the end.

Back on subject. He did mail order the stuff so he is guilty. End of argument, and yea they are going to seize it, technically its contraband and they take that stuff.
And I would like to point out how the media desensitizes people. GTA is considered so run of the mill that it makes murder look like no big deal, or at least belittle it to the point that saying its "just a game" is a legit argument.

As for this dude, that's just pathetic. Anime porn? Go out and get a life. Who knows maybe getting canned will make him do just that when he get released. And why are you people crying about his life getting "ruined"? Its the law and he broke it. Cause > Effect.....

 

[ZippyDSMlee]

Ah lovely the corruption of society grows ever more subtle when it has to make inane things like downloading,blogs and hentai illegal.....