That’s…irritating. But notably, the laws vary by the state, and it’s not legal everywhere in the US.
I find it odd that it is one of the few cases where the people involved didn’t roll over and “die”. Handley’s (and other obscenity based cases) case was so dissapointing because there was no chance (well slight chance if the SC caves in to moral pressure) that it would have remained a guilty verdict if he ever recieved one in the first place.
I am getting fed up with people trying to legislate morality in this world. If no one is being harmed, why the hell should anyone else give a damn?
Do you want an actual answer to that? 
Spin politics is the obvious one - raise up demons so that you can tell the public how great you are for smacking those demons down. If an axis of evil doesn’t exist, you’ll just have to invent one.
There’s also the difficulty of morals vs science.
Many people would say that it is morally wrong to look at loli porn - so even if the science shows that statistically the existence of loli porn makes no difference whatsoever to actual crime, their morals insist it must be banned.
Many other people would say that censorship is morally wrong - so even if the science shows there’s an increase in child sex offenses when loli porn is available, their morals insist that it must not be banned.
So do I need to wipe my computer or not?
Unless your constantly hounded with police raids, I doubt it. For now, anyway.
If you’re worried about getting hit under the new law with lolicon, probably not.
If you’re worried about getting hit under the new law with child pornography (from a “/b/ raid”)…then maybe. Accidental viewing seems ambiguous enough that the charges would, at the very least, not be immediately dismissed (putting you in a Handley-like situation). To make matters worse, they wouldn’t just charge you with child porn. After thoroughly searching your PC, they’d use the child porn, together with whatever lolicon you have, to charge you with obscenity under the Protect Act. The reason this is really bad is that child porn is much more aggressively pursued than lolicon. You’re much more likely to be arrested for child porn, then have your lolicon collection discovered during the investigation, than you are to be arrested for lolicon, and have those few child porn images discovered during the investigation. Of course, your chances of getting caught would still be very low–just a fair bit higher than from lolicon alone. At the very least, I hope you don’t visit 4chan on public PCs. 
Of course you could also just use the universal Pedobear defense plea. 
geez the world is rotting we need Nieztche’s UberMensch to bitchslap people into place.
I deny this reality and substitute my own.
Of course if you were a practicing Taoist you could try to deny the legitimacy of any court to rule over you, except those you grant permission to do so on religious grounds.
That would require getting people motivated to band together. Seems people are content or are all “woe is me, I can’t do anything about it, so why bother.”
Huh… not related to lolicon directly, but something that gives an interesting prospective of how politicans think in the US…
Unless you’ve been living under a rock the last few years, you should have heard of a mercenary company known as Blackwater (aka Xe), operating in Iraq under US payroll. They’ve been accused of committing a HUGE number of war crimes, up to and including murdering innocent people for the sheer hell of it. They’re also accused of being extremist rightwing Christians (which could explain the random and senseless killing). There’s also tax evasion, weapon smuggling, kidnapping…
Long story short, despite these atrocities, the US government turned a blind eye to these events… even the current Obama Administration continues to use them. Furthermore, the individuals who committed the crimes were held individually responsible – that is to say, Blackwater itself was not in danger of being forcefully dismantled by the government. Well guess what? That all suddenly changed after allegations of Iraqi teen oral sex for $1 started circulating a few weeks ago. Well after that happened, NOW the US government has stated they will seek the termination of Blackwater as a corporate entity, once and for all, if they are found guilty of these charges.
So let that be a lesson to you criminal masterminds, who want to run a mercenary outfit. Even Cobra Commander didn’t touch kids, for fear GI Joe would nuke him in response.
I’m wondering if it’s more of the straw that broke the camel’s back?
No, it would be (so far as I can tell) misunderstanding what the article actually says. It’s not exactly clear, but what I got was that the child sex allegations are part of a whole litany of charges, all being brought at the same time, another one of which (racketeering) could result in the dissolution of the company.
So at most its a contributing factor and given prior conduct of the group the slew of allegations was just too much to say they were isolated incidents. Had this been the first report of it, they probably could have gotten away with that.
Wow… you guys hear about Roman Polanski?
http://www.cnn.com/2009/SHOWBIZ/Movies/ … index.html
This guy drugged and raped a 13 year child, fled sentence, and after decades have passed: got caught and arrested. So now these movie makers are saying he should be freed… WTF? The man shouldn’t be free: he’s a rapist who never served his term. Then again… the girl is no longer a girl and evidently he paid her off: so I guess that means all is good in the world again.
Weird how things work…
It’s messed up.
I think for many people the problem is that there have been SO many cases in the news in the past decade of ‘rape’ cases where the quote marks belong there because it was quasi-consensual except for the problem of someone being underage… so to many people at the moment if they hear someone’s in trouble for sleeping with a thirteen year old, they think it was probably not such a big deal that you should be pursuing someone 30 years later.
Of course, if anyone takes the extra time to look up the specifics of the case, it was NOT a case of quasi-consensual statutory rape, it was pretty clearly rape on the books. But some people don’t make that effort.
Others just have trouble dealing with the fact that people they may personally know and like can do things that are wrong. I’m hoping this is the trouble with the celebrities going nuts… they’re being incapable of recognising that just because you like someone that doesn’t make them a perfect or even good person.
There are a handful of just plain rape apologists out there who insist that the girl MUST have wanted it, isn’t that what starlets are for?
One of my feminist bloggers wrote a big spiel pointing out that he’s a rapist and should serve his sentence, and was somewhat baffled by the wave of support she got from right-wingers welcoming her to their side. (I guess ‘their side’ is ‘anti-hollywood’? we’re not really sure. Bit baffling, as being anti-rape is generally already the feminist side, thanks!)
Most people in Hollywood have trouble distinguishing Fantasy from reality anyway. They believe his achievements in other areas in his life should give him a free pass for this. To put it bluntly, that’s bullshit. It’s why you see a lot of famous people believe the rules everyone else has doesn’t apply to them.
From reading the article, I don’t think the sticking point is whether he deserves jail time or not. The sticking point is that he was arrested on his way to a film festival, and this arrest could have a chilling effect on the freedom of expression (or the perception of freedom of expression) such events promote. These people are concerned with symbolism of the arrest, not the morality or legality of the criminal case itself.
That said, there’s something to be said, I suppose, for prosecuting a case against the victim’s will, particularly when the police go to the extreme measures of pursuing the perpetrator outside the country. But that’s a fundamental part of our legal system. Once a case becomes a criminal case, it’s no longer in the victim’s hands. Changing that rule would cause ripples throughout our entire legal system. Is that something we want?
It’s understandable that the victim would rather people left her alone, after thirty years of being told how she ruined his life.
But prosecuting cases is not just about getting revenge for the victim (at least, it’s not SUPPOSED to be just about that) - it’s about stopping the perpetrator from committing further crimes, and demonstrating to other potential criminals that yes, they can be caught and punished. Society at large is meant to benefit.
You generally need some cooperation from the victim in order to prosecute a crime, because you need the testimony. I believe it’s possible to push forward a prosecution even with a victim refusing to cooperate (domestic violence cases) but it’s obviously harder to get the evidence lined up that way. But in this case he was already convicted; testimony isn’t needed.