Interesting Article regarding Manga

[mando_22]

http://gizmodo.com/5815352/american-faces-minimum-1-year-in-prison-for-bringing-manga-to-canada-on-his-laptop

Noticed this article today from lifehacker, not sure whether I agree or disagree with it.

I by no means condone possession of child pornography, but I just wonder if something like this could eventually become a larger problem regarding manga.

What are your thoughts on this?

[GigaTurtle]

Tho i can understand the point of considering a loli in a manga *or anime if it comes up* as child porn as a precaution for the youth from pedophiles, but there is one aspect to be seen here. Their not real! why convict someone for reading a book *or watching an animated show* if the content is not real? why not arrest the people who have portraits of naked minors *or even young angels* that is called art? I can understand their want to protect their citizens, but where can you draw the line between art and child porn if you count content that was drawn? manga and anime is an art as well, but doesn't get the same pass from the law as art. It just seems wrong.

Thanks for listening

[idl12]

Everyone knows that illustrations of naked children with their little penises and vaginas aren't considered art unless the Vatican or "insert prominent religious organization here" says so, is it stupid? yes it is stupid? will it prevent people from raping little children? Fuck no, it always pisses me off how they bash anime/cartoons/manga for all kinds of crap, yet when it comes to live action, anything goes, meh, American moralities at work I guess, a drawing of a young child in a swimsuit being sexually inappropriate is considered child porn, but the kid in Two and a half men can do whatever he wants, This really pisses me off and I can go on and on, but I'll stop here, it seems these people just won't be satisfied until cartoons and comics are all butterflies and goldilocks just like most american toons.

[† Ferocia Coutura]

Meh, people are just stupid. I honestly don't believe in censorship when it comes to things like that. If you dont like it, dont read it. If I am forced not to read about violence, it won't make me any less likely to hurt someone. If I am forced not to listen to music that swears, it's not going to stop me from cursing out someone. Ultimately, we make our own decisions, and stopping us from reading, watching, or listening to something won't change our minds.

On another note, I do not support child pornography. I just don't believe that this counts.

[DuLake]

Well, I've never been a fan of loli, so outlawing that doesn't really bother me, and in a lot of ways, I'd endorse such a ban. While it is often theorized that porn is cathartic (and I'd agree in many ways), porn doesn't help with the sexual objectification of it's subjects. While it is undesirable for adults to be objectified, adults are, by definition, sexual beings that are, among other things, sexual objects, so it's not like you're reinforcing something that isn't there. Portraying children as sexual objects, on the other hand, is reinforcing an idea that is altogether undesirable (unless of course, you're of that particular fetish).

What makes me curious, however, is how they'll judge what classifies child hentai (I'm mean to use the term as a catch-all for drawn explicit material). Will it go by an age written in the manga? If so, a loli could be drawn and be given an arbitrary age. Incidentally, hentai of, say, schoolgirls or what have you with fully - or over - developed bodies may be considered illicit. If it goes by appearance, that may be too subjective to enforce. And what of existing hentai, does it become illicit? Further, it'll be a bitch to remove all illicit manga from the internet. Photographic material was simple, since it was already illegal by the time the internet launched, so they didn't have to deal with previous caches of material; they could just go after the new stuff. This wouldn't be so easy.

Interesting article. It'll be interesting to see how it continues.

[RikuoAmero]

I agree with the opinion that drawn lolicon hentai does NOT equal illegal child pornography. After all, what if I draw two stick figurines in a suggestive position and say the one with a dress is an eight year old girl? Does it not become child porn if I change the eight to an eighteen?

I've typed child porn into Google with Safe-search off, and not found anything explicit. But typing lolicon hentai, that gives me the complete opposite result. They're just hand-drawn pictures.

However, the question does become almost impossible to answer once you get into the realm of CG art, that looks positively real. Do we ban it because its life-like, or not, because it's drawn?