Artefact-->Handley vs Iowa verdict

Started 6 years ago by LunarSD, currently has 31 posts - latest post is by Uncommon0taku

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LunarSD

Here. (More detailed info from greater posters than I comes later in the same thread)

No one is forcing you to post this if you don't want to.

The recent headlines are happy and calming, and most of the community probably already knows by now that ~20% (more? less?) of Manga/Doujinshi officially has legal precedent for landing you Obscenity charges, hundreds of thousands in fines, decades in jail (for just one count, imagine how many of us could get multiple counts), sex offender registry, etc.

"Handley faces up to 15 years in prison and a $250,000 fine."
Though one must note that so far "Sentencing hasn't been scheduled."
--Source

Handley's lawyer seems to have gotten him a nice plea bargain at least, keeping the Obscenity charges while quietly brushing the harsher child porn possession charges under the carpet. But this is at the cost of creating an official Guilty legal precedent future cases of "obscene" Hentai possession will have the pleasure of being able to follow. Something nobody seems very appreciative of (maybe Handley...).

It is more than just assumed that his plea bargain significantly attenuated the punishments (again, in exchange for this legal precedent, making a large portion of Hentai officially very, very illegal). According to an internet post from someone "close to the case", this plea bargain entails:

"...he would not serve any time in jail because he's been a good boy while he was on probation, and ... his fine would be under a grand."
--Source

Going by the "Obscenity" charges alone, one could presume almost anything from /d/ could fall under the Draconian "Miller Test" guidelines as well... Though apparently Handley's case successfully managed to eschew the Miller Test, as he ended up pleading guilty to "Title 18, United States Code, Section 1466A(b)(1), which prohibits the possession of any type of visual depiction, including a drawing, cartoon, sculpture, or painting, that depicts a minor engaging in sexually explicit conduct that is obscene".

Future defendants charged with possession of "Obscene" Hentai could very easily get the book thrown at them, and can now logically expect sentences of equal or greater value to real-life child porn/abuse (unless they can plea bargain too, graciously contributing to the legal precedent pile).

Probably best to just let these thoughts fade away and hope it never becomes the sort of law they pro-actively enforce.
(So maybe just let this thread die, and go watch some porn instead?)
/drama out

Posted 6 years ago #
Michio

I concur. Please post this Artefact.

Posted 6 years ago #
Geerie

so wait you can get off easy if you stay away from porn after youre caught?

Posted 6 years ago #
Blitz

I was going to quote and post...but decided I had little to contribute to the overall discussion.

I do hope Artefact decides to post this, though...

Posted 6 years ago #
Michio

I'm confused by this case, and also worried. Am I a criminal or not?

Time to Truecrypt my pictures and videos folder and clear my history regularly.

Posted 6 years ago #
Yakimaki

Michio said:
I'm confused by this case, and also worried. Am I a criminal or not?

Time to Truecrypt my pictures and videos folder and clear my history regularly.

You sir are indeed a criminal, as are we all.

Posted 6 years ago #
Hayami

Well, one possibility is that Artefact intently ignores this topic.

One of the reasons why they've charged Handley and pressed him into pleading guilty could be that they want to scare us. The more we talk about it, the more people are scared. The more are we scared (and don't admit that we like loli H or H in general outside of tolerant communities like this one), the easier it is to tell any kind of lies and demonize H manga/anime/games community. So basically we're just helping them.

Sure, cases like this may as well motivate some to fight the system and even to form some organization like CBLDF. But looking at people's reactions so far I'm rather pessimistic :(
The chances are, people will just do some insane stuff like youtube pron day, which only helps to demonize us further.

Posted 6 years ago #
Artefact

Lunar, I don't really appreciate the attitude you've displayed here. Instead of going through a song and dance to get this posted, could you not have just emailed this to me, like everyone else with an interesting story? I'm already surprised nobody bothered informing me of this in the first place...

Posted 6 years ago #
LunarSD

Artefact said:
Lunar, I don't really appreciate the attitude you've displayed here. Instead of going through a song and dance to get this posted, could you not have just emailed this to me, like everyone else with an interesting story? I'm already surprised nobody bothered informing me of this in the first place...

Had no idea this was the precedent. I'd seen others post potential articles in the Forums and thought that's just how it worked. And I was just being tongue-in-cheek when I made those comments last thread :P Should have thought it might offend you. My apologies if you'll accept them.

Posted 6 years ago #
LunarSD

Yakimaki said:

You sir are indeed a criminal, as are we all.

I'm tempted to take the initiative and sue the US for 1st Amendment infringement (bear with me on this).

If we claim that Hentai is a valid and "important vehicle for public opinion", which I know I'm not alone in viewing something like SanCon as (people giving their opinions on Ero subjects, even 4chan occasionally serves this purpose), then we would actually already have Supreme Court precedent that our visual media is the vehicle for our protected speech.

This is covered by a Supreme Court decision allowing motion pictures to be anti-religious:

...The Legion of Decency called the movie "a sacrilegious and blasphemous mockery of Christian religious truth."

The case was appealed by film distributor Joseph Burstyn, giving the Supreme Court the opportunity to weigh in.

"It cannot be doubted that motion pictures are a significant medium for the communication of ideas," wrote Justice Tom Campbell Clark in the majority opinion. "They may affect public attitudes and behavior in a variety of ways, ranging from direct espousal of a political or social doctrine to the subtle shaping of thought which characterizes all artistic expression."

The Court concluded that movies are an important vehicle for public opinion despite “the fact that they are designed to entertain as well as inform.” Quoting its 1948 opinion in Winters v. New York, the Court noted “the line between the informing and the entertaining is too elusive for the protection of that basic right (a free press). Everyone is familiar with instances of propaganda through fiction. What is one man’s amusement teaches another’s doctrine.”

"Quoting its 1948 opinion in Winters v. New York, the Court noted “the line between the informing and the entertaining is too elusive for the protection of that basic right (a free press)."

...

Clark also noted public concerns that movies may “possess a greater capacity for evil, particularly among the youth of the community,” but said this could not justify private restraint. He did not rule out some form of community control in order to protect young people.

With this ruling, the Supreme Court put American movies on the same footing as books and newspapers. It wiped out the system of prior restraint that had governed the film industry for decades.

--Source

I'd say that I've been both entertained and informed by the dissemination of japan's earnestly crafted creative media.

-----

If the PROTECT Act's illegalization of "drawn material" was intended to inhibit possible offenders from committing such acts in real life, there's precedent to combat that as well:

In June 2002, the 1st Circuit Court of Appeal in Baton Rouge, La., upheld a state district judge's decision dismissing a lawsuit against the makers of the film "Natural Born Killers."

The lawsuit filed against filmmaker Oliver Stone and Time Warner Entertainment alleged that the violent movie inspired two people to emulate the crime spree depicted in the movie. The suit, Byers v. Edmondson, was filed by the family of a victim of one of the crimes.

Drawing on the principles established five decades earlier, Chief Judge Burrell Carter said the assailants' "decision to imitate the characters of a film is more a regrettable commentary on their own culpability, than a danger of free expression requiring courts to chill such speech through civil penalties."
--Same source

There should always be angles to reign in on speech-policing in this country... making a drawing is like writting 1000 words, isn't it? Just because it's not in English shouldn't bar it from protection.

But alas, I'm too poor to pay for lawyers to represent my (theoretical) rights ;_;

Sorry for elongating this thread. I just don't like depressing things to remain unbalanced with no sense of hope for the better.

Posted 6 years ago #
LunarSD

Artefact said:
...could you not have just emailed this to me, like everyone else with an interesting story? I'm already surprised nobody bothered informing me of this in the first place...

I'm starting to feel kinda bad for not thinking to email now :\

There is benefit though in waiting to post this!

Hayami did a brilliant job gathering detailed info, which I capitalized on & compressed in the first post here.

It's only been a day since I first learned of the verdict myself (presently in-between consecutive 12-hour-long work shifts, not much time for this kind of thing).

Posted 6 years ago #
Michio

The Comic Book Legal Defense Fund seems well organized and well funded already.

"The CBLDF exists to fight censorship and defend the first amendment rights of comic book professionals throughout the United States. In the past five years, the CBLDF has raised over $200,000 to pay expenses related to defending freedom of speech and expression, and the battle continues. As new waves of conservatism flood the publishing industry and the country, the CBLDF continues to raise the money and awareness needed to fight the censors every step of the way."

Is $200,000 in 5 years a lot of money?

p.s. Artefact's email is contact@sankakucomplex.com

Posted 6 years ago #
Hayami

The core of the problem is that unfortunately the Supreme Court does agree with the concept that "obscenity" is not protected by the First Amendment. You need a test case that shows clearly how ridiculous this concept is and how much injustice can it cause. Handley's case would have been perfect. But alas, they've beat or/and misled him into self-incrimination. The law (its surviving sections) doesn't prohibit any specific genre. It prohibits only individual texts, images and other content that's deemed obscene by a jury (or by a judge). I don't know who could you sue to change the very concept of obscenity.

Posted 6 years ago #
Icy-nee-san

Im to lazy to read all of it, but from what I saw, ordering porn can get you jail time?

WTF KINDA PLACE IS THIS CAUSE IT NEEDS TO BE BURNED DOWN D:

Posted 6 years ago #
GTR

After this case will it affect only the state of Iowa or the entire United States?

Me thinks this would never be possible in liberal states like Nevada, California...

Posted 6 years ago #
Hayami

Matt Thorn's blog post including two letters by Christopher Handley’s mother (May 24, 2009 & May 26, 2009) :
http://matt-thorn.com/wordpress/?p=318

Posted 6 years ago #
sifian

GTR, WTF? Make up your mind.
From http://www.sankakucomplex.com/forums/topic.php?id=779&page=5#post_content

GTR said:
Typical leftist movements...

Intent is more important than outcome.
Effort is more noble/valuable than the result.

Now you say...

GTR said:
Me thinks this would never be possible in liberal states like Nevada, California...

So it's the leftists that are impeding freedom of speech, but it's the liberal who are likely to be a haven to it.

Posted 6 years ago #
Blitz

Michio said:
I'm confused by this case, and also worried. Am I a criminal or not?

Time to Truecrypt my pictures and videos folder and clear my history regularly.

I'm in the process of redoing my encryption..this time doing a plausible deniability setup, mostly for the fact that I'll be traveling abroad to unfriendly territory where I could get a border inspection or some crap like that lol. Also using a bit stronger keys. Not that it wasn't safe before, but there's no better way to be safe than to be paranoid. XD

sifian said:
GTR, WTF? Make up your mind.
From http://www.sankakucomplex.com/forums/topic.php?id=779&page=5#post_content

Now you say...

So it's the leftists that are impeding freedom of speech, but it's the liberal who are likely to be a haven to it.

Neither the right nor left care about our civil liberties; they just say they do so they can get votes and then they turn around and do the opposite. The only party that actually gives a damn are the marginalized parties such as the libertarians. Hopefully these parties will grow in number over the next few years, I think the tea parties really got a lot of momentum going.

And thanks for posting the thread, Artefact, and might I say with an appropriately dramatic title. Already 325 comments. ^^

Posted 6 years ago #
GTR

sifian said:
GTR, WTF? Make up your mind.
From http://www.sankakucomplex.com/forums/topic.php?id=779&page=5#post_content

Now you say...

So it's the leftists that are impeding freedom of speech, but it's the liberal who are likely to be a haven to it.

Pedo otakus have no friend and can't have friends from the Left and the Right. For example, the Right will attack lolicon work (manga/anime form) because of immorality content, and the Left will also attack because of the graphic depictions young women and children being raeped, and it's at odds with the leftists who campaign for the safety and equal treatment of women and children.

Posted 6 years ago #
Ukonkivi

There are some people. On the left. More exactly, the Libertarian Left.
The closer to Anarchism someone is in political philosophy, the more like one would be to support it's legality.

Ron Paul might in virtue of Libertarianism. But would probably neglect to say so on order of just how difficultly far he'd be pushing libertarianism.

But yes, pedophiles and lolicons alike are at odds with almost everyone in the world. Nobody wants to touch the taboo without the words "pedophiles should have their balls and throats cut and blahblahblahblah".

Posted 6 years ago #

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