This is important: no precedent was set. Plea bargains set no precedent. In fact, so far as I know (just tried to look it up, no luck) not even district court judgements set precedents. Only appelate courts do.
But it does mean they can prosecute based on the theory that the material is obscene, and it might take you an enormous amount of time and money to smack them down.
I have to weigh the purviews of what I can cover. I’m a staunch believer that you always weather the storm head on: just that you don’t do it with a lightning rod strapped to your back. Eroge isn’t illegal… but not all eroge is safe. It’s not an issue of if people can win a case: it’s the matter if people can AFFORD to do it. 
Again… it’s not just lolicon at stake: even guro is also at risk. I’m sure they’ll be going after incest next. :roll:
In any case: I can’t review anything with lolicon. I can’t review anything that’s guro just for the sake of guro - or a game with violence that tries to justify it with a thinly veiled plot that we all know has no purpose except to justify the violence.
Man, this really sucks. I guess I’ll be keeping a close eye out for any further developments. I suppose that if all else failed, I could get hold of a one way ticket to Japan and try my hand at being a freelance English teacher. While I’m thinking I will eventually go and possibly stay, if there are any drastic developments I may have to accelerate my plans.
Wow, this is disappointing. Not so much that he accepted a plea or anything, I sure as hell can’t blame the guy for that, but for the fact that he’s basically been thrown to the wolves for liking fiction. I know this isn’t just a case of lolicon, and the guy was no angel, but wow, it’s still disappointing. I mean, I’m not a fan of loli’s but I sure as hell respect the rights of anyone to read or play whatever the fuck they want.
And of course for the eroge market, there’s usually a loli-esque character in every fucking title, (thank you 18+ age disclaimer) which just means that any prosecutor with an axe to grind to keep people safe from themselves can try make a case against your average ero gamer. Honestly the US is so ass backwards when it comes to prohibiting things that have the potential to be dangerous. I guess I just can’t get my head around the idea that lolicon is somehow more dangerous and more important to get squared away than the plethora of problems that currently plague our society. God forbid someone rubs one out to a picture of a fictional character in a time of economic, environmental, societal, and foreign turmoil.
Yeah, I just don’t get it.
He didn’t harm anyone neither directly nor indirectly and he didn’t steal or harm anyone’s property. So, the guy’s still an “angel” in my eyes. The fact is, a harmless man might be thrown into jail and receive an insane fine for what he was reading.
To begin with I just don’t understand the obscenity law. Not only is it vague enough to make any kind of porn illegal, but it also judges people by community standards, when in fact one might not be affecting the community or have any connection whatsoever with said community. Handley did not publicly display the obscene materials, he purchased and imported an obscene comic-book for his private use. He was NOT harming the community’s moral standards by doing so.
A good question is how this will affect translation of titles by PP or others.
Unfortunately, in the eyes of people who come up with and support such laws, anyone who differs from what they consider appropriate is a threat. To them, such a person is far from harmless. They believe allowing something that doesn’t conform to their standards will undermine all that they hold dear. As the well known proverb states, “The nail that sticks out is hammered down”.
Feh… it’s these kinds of people who got Pepe Le Pew from the Loony Toon Cartoons, pulled from modern syndication because his shows would “influence” children to be serial stalkers and rapist. :roll:
The more I read about the whole Iowa case, the more surprising it becomes to me, that he made a plea bargain. Did ya’ll know that Iowa is one of the most liberal states in the Union? It allows gay marriages and the state court system has a strong stance against censorship. I can see why the CBLDF was so adamant in defending this case: they had a serious chance at winning it.
Wow, is that really true? It has been a very long time since I watched Looney Tunes (or Merrie Melodies), so I wouldn’t know. If so, it is very sad news.
Speedy Gonzales was sort of frowned upon for awhile as well. They eventually abandoned the entire policy because of pressure. Now only a handful remain totally unviewable in any form; the DVD releases of the cartoons carry disclaimers saying “these were made long ago, standards have shifted, what is offensive now was hilarious back then” etc.
I can understand objections to Speedy (and whatever that slow/sleepy one was called), but PepÈ Le Pew? In any case, I now return this thread to the originally intended purpose.
And it’s not just the Looney Tunes, they have the same disclaimers for Tom and Jerry too :roll:
They still have a few I’m waiting for, mostly Daffy cartoons. Only 1 of the Duck Dodgers shorts was released. And the one with him playing Robin Hood still hasn’t been released.
Yea… but they’re noisy to say the least.
I learned about the Pepe boycott, when CNN aired info, after some “rights group” were upset when AT&T started using him for a recent commercial.
I actually understand and agree more with the complaints over Pepe than I do about Speedy. Even when I was a kid, I found him overbearing and kind of creepy.
With Pepe, the complaint was that a lot of people end up kind of like him: abusive while believing that what they’re doing is okay. He isn’t really a bad guy, when you get down to it, but he does bad things, and (the argument goes) this sends a message. I mean, Schwarzenegger got flak when he was running for governor about some very ribald “jokes” he pulled like twenty years ago that clearly were harassment. I’m sure nobody ever told him to his face that it bothered them. If you believe his apologies/explanations, it was only much later he realized people were in fact offended, but too afraid to say to – he had thought they thought it was funny.
Speedy, on the other hand, is a much more nuanced character. There are a lot of overtly stereotyped and (frankly) kind of racist jokes all over the cartoons, but there were also a lot of things that counteracted this. Speedy himself not being a white man come to protect them was a big one. If I recall correctly this is one of the things the hispanic groups said – they LIKED that Speedy was an openly mexican character at a time when shows like Kung Fu had a white lead pretending to be Asian when Bruce Lee wanted to do the part. Then there’s the fact that the most commonly occuring villain (I think one or two featured Taz as the bad guy) was Sylvester, who is obviously ethnically American, doing nothing but trying to kill them all and devour them alive.
So I mean, I can easily see the complaints about Pepe. But compared to some things out there, it’s pretty mild. There’s Charlie Chan, there’s Creepy Disney Subtext (there’s more, like this bit about Pinnochio), there’s F-Troop. Then there are people like H. P. Lovecraft. In 1920, being racist (like he was) was not terribly uncommon, however, it means his body of work contains things like this and this – but also this. And Lovecraft created essentially modern horror: you basically cannot see horror done today that hasn’t been influenced by Lovecraft, or by someone who was influenced by Lovecraft.
The older works are what they are. They were a product of their time, and even relatively progressive people can produce things that seem quaint or offensive later on. It is better to acknowledge this, and at the same time, acknowledge the positive qualities of these works – than to try to whitewash the problems away (pun not intended). Whitewashing over an issue doesn’t make the issue go away, it just makes it easier to ignore.
The key word in all of this is OBSCENITY: lolicon is legal as long as it’s not obscene.
I agree though: “jailing someone over manga does nothing to protect children from sexual abuse.”
The Justice Department is hurting an innocent man, who was absolutely no threat to children. They’ve protected NOBODY.
This makes me worry over the release of Yin Yang 2. Does anyone know if the old “label the character as 18” thing still works when used with works of fiction like hentai games?
It does if it’s plausible.
Saying that Chihaya and Chihiro are youthful looking 18-year twincest attending junior college?
They’ve got the figure for it. 
Saying that Chii is a youthful looking 18-year old attending junior college?
Yea… right… 
