I never said anything about a blanket ban. My point is that loli isn’t as safe as you seem to think. Since you seem to like bringing up YMK as a comparison, perhaps you would care to imagine if a postal inspector saw the box, where there is a picture of Nekoko and a warning that the game is for adults only due to “strong sexual content”, “violence”, and “fictional drug use”. Then imagine if he put two and two together and reported it.
Loli sex is not safe sure. But nothing about the censored scenes were obscene, so I still fail to see your point.
Honestly, I’m kinda interested (well, in a horrified way) in seeing how fast the government would come down on manga if they saw a few select scenes from Gantz, Berserk, or even Ichigo 100% for that matter. I’ve always believed that manga kinda flies under the radar since the majority of people equate manga with american comics.
They aren’t obscene to you or me, but who can say about the average American. For crying out loud, these people prosecute teenagers that willingly take pictures of themselves. Some called the scenes in Mass Effect obscene as well.
Obscenity should not be used, but sadly the moral hypocrites of the world realised they had a trump card with it and so created these laws around it.
Regardless, the claim that the scenes are obscene would never hold up in court. Also, please remember that posting an image of yourself if you’re underage, is real child porn, which is obviously illegal, and completely unrelated. Some people called the scenes in mass effect obscene? And what happened with that? Where they removed or altered? Did they get in trouble with the law? Of course not.
The problem is that an obscenity charge is so amorphous and vague. If you really want to know the entirety of the problem, I suggest reading this thread.
Then please tell me why a multitude of manga you can buy in a bookstore can be more obscene, and have no problems, but a game like this can’t even show her bare breasts in a non sexual scene?
Which might take a hit if someone reports these instances. That is the rub, a lot of stuff evades these “moral” upstarts, but all it takes is one to be caught for the entire industry to tremble.
If we are lucky on the judges don’t actually judge based on obscenity. Sadly, it is a crap shoot for this and even worse is these cases rarely make it to the Supreme Court because the defendant caves, as with Handley. If he fought it, he might have won. Or he might have lost and not been able to get the Supreme Court involved anyway.
It would be so much easier if people that thought something was obscene would simply turn away and ignore it. But most have to pick up a torch and burn anything involved with the “obscenity”.
Looking to another incident, take for instance what happened in the UK. All it took was someone freaking out over Rapelay, and see how it snowballed from effecting Amazon, then to the whole UK, and finally to effecting the whole eroge industry.
Handley had a ridiculously large collection of the stuff. And a lot of it was undeniably ‘obscene’. And even then, he pleaded guilty. So I don’t see how his case relates at all. Who has ever been prosecuted for having content as ‘obscene’ as the material censored in Family Project? Nobody. Simply having a character underage naked, would never be considered illegal or obscene as long as no sexually explicit conduct is involved. That’s why the obscenity law exists.
I don’t recall rapeplay featuring illegal content though, nor anyone getting charged. And either way, this was in the UK, and not the US.
Excuse me, but this game is an extremely vanilla title that doesn’t even have many sex scenes for an “eroge”. Handley had a collection that had lots of guro mixed in with the “loli” content. I see no reason why the possibility of “obscenity” prosecutions is even worth obsessing over a game featuring nothing but straight, consentual sex, when plenty of other games have made it over here uncensored with far grosser and more pedophilic content.
These “legal arguments” you guys keep spewing are made up of nothing but hot air.
You still don’t seem to understand the way the law works very well. Why does the Protect Act exist? Because “the Supreme Court struck down a broader law prohibiting any visual depictions of minors engaged in sexual activity”. Are you trying to tell me, that an image with a minor, naked, not even engaging in sexual activity whatsoever, would be found illegal? What a joke.
My point was that all it takes is one report for things to turn in to a shit storm. You don’t seem to understand just how much anything even remotely seeming like child pornography can send people who have the hubris to think their values are so morally superior frothing at the mouth. All you need do is look at how many times US Congress has tried to pass laws that effect eroge. Thankfully, for now, when the SCotUS has gotten involved, they have upheld our rights (for the most part) concerning this issue.
Look. Unless a new law is created, declaring any depiction of a minor, engaged in sexual activity, or even appearing nude, is created, then the content in this game would never be found illegal. It doesn’t matter how upset a bunch of super conservative mothers get, something like this, would never be in danger of breaking the law. These scenes that were censored are extremely softcore, and depict no sex whatsoever.
Let me try to say this again. The law in question only refers to sexually explicit conduct that seem obscene. There is no sexual content in any of the censored scenes! It is not possible to even consider them obscene in the first place!
Look. The only law involving 2D loli stuff in the US is the Protect Act. What is the protect act? Let’s take a look.
the 2003 Protect Act, which outlaws cartoons, drawings, sculptures or paintings depicting minors engaging in sexually explicit conduct
minors engaging in sexually explicit conduct
Again, it outlaws cartoons of minors engaging in sexually explicit conduct. Do you even know what the censored scenes in question are? They don’t involve sex in any way, they don’t even imply sex. They could never be found breaking the law.
I could say that you don’t seem to understand the way the minds of these “moral crusaders” works. You seem to think that reason factors in. Take this quote regarding an early “sexting” case:
Does it make sense? It sure doesn’t to me. Granted, a real person is involved, but just look at what she was charged with, simply because of the fervor there is to stamp out child pornography.
You just refuted your own argument. Nekoko was over 18 in the original YMK script - there was never any need to rewrite anything! Because Nekoko is over 18, H scenes with her are just peachy. The nudity scenes with Matsuri, too, would have been fine if she was over 18 when they happened. The point is that JAST chose the ‘remove the nudity’ course of action over the ‘rewrite the story’ course of action to better preserve the artistic integrity of the original game.
Again. Child pornography is completely unrelated. What she did, breaks an already established law. Regardless of how silly it is. Nothing in this game, breaks a law.
That’s a matter of opinion. I would say, no, they’re not. Nor do I think that the changes are insignificant.