Dont' bring manga into Canada

[Slargos]

I think we have long since established that Barrister argues from the standpoint of existing law, and builds his arguments thus.

I've noticed the same kind of reasoning from police officers here in Scandinavia, and I've always wondered about the causality relationship. Which comes first, the reasoning, or the job?

[Slargos]

I've spent a lot of time in the largest icelandic town outside of Iceland - Gimli, Manitoba.   

But such issues are hardly a "no-brainer".  If we feel that depictions of explicit child sex are forbidden when shown live, why should they be okay in cartoon format?

What's next, the banning of text depicting child rape?

To be honest I would have thought there were more than 6 thousand icelanders in copenhagen... There are about 1000 of us here in Trondheim.

I have a faint recollection of this being the case somewhere. Can't for the life of me recall the details though.

[Josquius]

Bullshit.

I'm no expert (thank god) but from what I've read it is classed as a psychological disorder.

I have a faint recollection of this being the case somewhere. Can't for the life of me recall the details though.

Its not child rape but I do remember something a year or two ago with a guy writing some pretty weird fiction about the rape of the pop group Girls Aloud IIRC and being convicted.

[dps]

Even assuming there was nothing illegal there is still someone looking through your personal stuff...iffy.

This poor guy probally didn't even know it was illegal in Canada. It is strange.

As someone else pointed out, when you go through customs, they do look through your personal stuff--it's kind of the point of having customs.  And philosophically, I'm not sure that I see any difference between them rummaging through printed material that you might have and poking around in your computer files.

I guess in  a case of a laptop there is also an issue of privacy/secrecy of correspondence involved. Can the customs officers go through your personal letters or contact list on your phone? I would think this goes beyond their scope of duties.

They definately can look through letters, as I understand it.  And as I said, I'm not sure why electronic media should be any different than print media.

But such issues are hardly a "no-brainer".  If we feel that depictions of explicit child sex are forbidden when shown live, why should they be okay in cartoon format?

I don't know. Maybe because there's no actual victim?

Doesn't have to be.  For example, if you have a (live-action) porn flick in which none of the actresses are younger than 25, but one of them plays a character that's stated to be 17, there is some legal opinion that the film would be considered kiddie porn.  Yeah, that's nuts, but as Neil said, it's a hysteria.  It's gone from a completely reasonable idea of protecting children to a witchhunt.  Remember the stories about some teenage chick sending topless pics of herself to her boyfriend's cell phone and ending up getting charged for distrubuting kiddie porn? 

I think we have long since established that Barrister argues from the standpoint of existing law, and builds his arguments thus.

While in many ways, it's good to see those charged with enforcing the law standing up for the law as written (otherwise, taken to an extreme, why even have written laws--just let them enforce their own individual views), but when not acting in an official capacity, it does take a lot of the wind out of their arguments when their position boils down to, "Activity A should be against the law because the law says that activity A is illegal".  A bit of circular reasoning there.

[Barrister]

If we feel that depictions of explicit child sex are forbidden when shown live, why should they be okay in cartoon format?

I thought we were trying to protect children from being used in the sex trade...I am less convinced we need to protect fictional characters from abuse.

I just find it funny that an answer to what seems like a huge criminal law controversy (and is resolved in a variety of ways in different jurisdictions) seems to be so one-sided to a criminal law professional.

I guess hundreds of thousands of sexuology experts, legislators, judges etc. are not as smart as a crown prosecutor in Yukon.

In what way did I ever say this stuff was simple?  You'll even note that what you quoted was me posing a question, not making a statement.  And later all I said was that these questions are not a "no brainer" aka this shit is hard to make policy about.

Sometimes we know each other so well here that we assume we know what someone's response is, and answer that, rather than what a person is actually saying.

You guys all said laws against child porn are to 'protect the victim'.  Well if you want to get technical about it, there is no victim involved in mere possession of child porn.  Nor is there any victim involved in copying and distributing child porn.  The only victimization is in the initial making of child porn.

Laws against child porn aren't only about protectign children from being victimized during it's creation (although that is a significant part of it).  It is also about prohibiting that market for its creation in the first place, plus is about preventing an attitude and culture that is accepting, or even promotes, viewing children sexually.

The law in Canada is complex, and not entirely satisfactory - but as I said there are no easy answers to this stuff.  Our laws prohibit any representation, be it film, drawn, written, audio recorded, depicting underage sex.  Now the standards are somewhat different - for a photographic, film, video or other visual representation, it is anything that merely depicts someone under 18 engaged in explicit sexual activity.  Written material is prohibited where it counsels sexual activity with those under 18, or whose 'dominant characteristic is the description, for a sexual purpose, of sexual activity with a person under the age of 18'.

And even there there are defences of artistic merit, educational purpose, scientific purpose, medical purpose, and public good.

So it's trying to set a balance between allowing legitimate educational and scientific purposes, and keeping paedos from having wanking material.

And yes - something like explicit cartoons ARE some of those hard cases.  Is what is depicted "explicit"?  Is the "dominant characteristic" displaying underage sexual activity?  Does it have sufficient "artistic merit" for that defence to qualify?

I dunno. 

[Barrister]

Bullshit.

I'm no expert (thank god) but from what I've read it is classed as a psychological disorder.

I have a faint recollection of this being the case somewhere. Can't for the life of me recall the details though.

Its not child rape but I do remember something a year or two ago with a guy writing some pretty weird fiction about the rape of the pop group Girls Aloud IIRC and being convicted.

I was a little harsh on you.  I apologize.

I certainly reject the notion that "poor paedo - he can't help himself, he's just born that way", but that's not quite what you were saying.

[Viking]

In what way did I ever say this stuff was simple?  You'll even note that what you quoted was me posing a question, not making a statement.  And later all I said was that these questions are not a "no brainer" aka this shit is hard to make policy about.

Sometimes we know each other so well here that we assume we know what someone's response is, and answer that, rather than what a person is actually saying.

You guys all said laws against child porn are to 'protect the victim'.  Well if you want to get technical about it, there is no victim involved in mere possession of child porn.  Nor is there any victim involved in copying and distributing child porn.  The only victimization is in the initial making of child porn.

Laws against child porn aren't only about protectign children from being victimized during it's creation (although that is a significant part of it).  It is also about prohibiting that market for its creation in the first place, plus is about preventing an attitude and culture that is accepting, or even promotes, viewing children sexually.

The law in Canada is complex, and not entirely satisfactory - but as I said there are no easy answers to this stuff.  Our laws prohibit any representation, be it film, drawn, written, audio recorded, depicting underage sex.  Now the standards are somewhat different - for a photographic, film, video or other visual representation, it is anything that merely depicts someone under 18 engaged in explicit sexual activity.  Written material is prohibited where it counsels sexual activity with those under 18, or whose 'dominant characteristic is the description, for a sexual purpose, of sexual activity with a person under the age of 18'.

And even there there are defences of artistic merit, educational purpose, scientific purpose, medical purpose, and public good.

So it's trying to set a balance between allowing legitimate educational and scientific purposes, and keeping paedos from having wanking material.

And yes - something like explicit cartoons ARE some of those hard cases.  Is what is depicted "explicit"?  Is the "dominant characteristic" displaying underage sexual activity?  Does it have sufficient "artistic merit" for that defence to qualify?

I dunno.

How cannot this argument be used to ban "Scarface", "Sin City", "True Blood", "Game of Thrones" etc.etc.

[The Brain]

Nor is there any victim involved in copying and distributing child porn.  The only victimization is in the initial making of child porn.

[Barrister]

In what way did I ever say this stuff was simple?  You'll even note that what you quoted was me posing a question, not making a statement.  And later all I said was that these questions are not a "no brainer" aka this shit is hard to make policy about.

Sometimes we know each other so well here that we assume we know what someone's response is, and answer that, rather than what a person is actually saying.

You guys all said laws against child porn are to 'protect the victim'.  Well if you want to get technical about it, there is no victim involved in mere possession of child porn.  Nor is there any victim involved in copying and distributing child porn.  The only victimization is in the initial making of child porn.

Laws against child porn aren't only about protectign children from being victimized during it's creation (although that is a significant part of it).  It is also about prohibiting that market for its creation in the first place, plus is about preventing an attitude and culture that is accepting, or even promotes, viewing children sexually.

The law in Canada is complex, and not entirely satisfactory - but as I said there are no easy answers to this stuff.  Our laws prohibit any representation, be it film, drawn, written, audio recorded, depicting underage sex.  Now the standards are somewhat different - for a photographic, film, video or other visual representation, it is anything that merely depicts someone under 18 engaged in explicit sexual activity.  Written material is prohibited where it counsels sexual activity with those under 18, or whose 'dominant characteristic is the description, for a sexual purpose, of sexual activity with a person under the age of 18'.

And even there there are defences of artistic merit, educational purpose, scientific purpose, medical purpose, and public good.

So it's trying to set a balance between allowing legitimate educational and scientific purposes, and keeping paedos from having wanking material.

And yes - something like explicit cartoons ARE some of those hard cases.  Is what is depicted "explicit"?  Is the "dominant characteristic" displaying underage sexual activity?  Does it have sufficient "artistic merit" for that defence to qualify?

I dunno.

How cannot this argument be used to ban "Scarface", "Sin City", "True Blood", "Game of Thrones" etc.etc.

The argument?  It can be used to ban all of those things.  And remember once upon a time, such material woul have been banned.

But makign an argument is not the same as winning an argument.

For the movies nothing is shown that would qualify as 'explicit sexual activity'.  For GoT the dominant purpose of the books is not child sex.  And there's a defence of artistic merit for all of them.

[Josephus]

How cannot this argument be used to ban "Scarface", "Sin City", "True Blood", "Game of Thrones" etc.etc.

Well it can. More often than not they would use the "artistic merit" defence, should any prosecution ensue. The Canadian law, as BB described it, has an intentionally rather large net, but rarely is anything like Game of Thrones prosecuted. The idea behind it is to have the legal means to prosecute smut when it's out there.
The Canadian courts aren't stupid enough to go after stuff like True Blood but use the legislation to ban the really smutty stuff.

[Valmy]

The law in Canada is complex, and not entirely satisfactory - but as I said there are no easy answers to this stuff.

I guess I find the arbitrariness of it concerning.  All they need to do to turn you, Barrister Boy, into a paedophile criminal is declare some piece of Media you have, such as a set of GRRM books, child pornography.  I would never think sitting alone and writing stories for your own private use to be a crime.  I mean laws like that could be used to destroy completely innocent people if you interpret them broadly enough.  I guess you just have to trust on good people to make sure bad laws do not turn into tyranny.

[Viking]

The argument?  It can be used to ban all of those things.  And remember once upon a time, such material woul have been banned.

But makign an argument is not the same as winning an argument.

For the movies nothing is shown that would qualify as 'explicit sexual activity'.  For GoT the dominant purpose of the books is not child sex.  And there's a defence of artistic merit for all of them.

I would argue that Manga's dominant purpose is not child sex, yet, it gets banned.

[Josephus]

The argument?  It can be used to ban all of those things.  And remember once upon a time, such material woul have been banned.

But makign an argument is not the same as winning an argument.

For the movies nothing is shown that would qualify as 'explicit sexual activity'.  For GoT the dominant purpose of the books is not child sex.  And there's a defence of artistic merit for all of them.

I would argue that Manga's dominant purpose is not child sex, yet, it gets banned.

I am not sure that all manga is banned in Canada, unfortunately. In this particular case it could just be one over zealous customs officer made a rash decision. It's now up to the courts to decide.

[Maximus]

I would argue that Manga's dominant purpose is not child sex, yet, it gets banned.

It has no artistic merit though.

[jimmy olsen]

The argument?  It can be used to ban all of those things.  And remember once upon a time, such material woul have been banned.

But makign an argument is not the same as winning an argument.

For the movies nothing is shown that would qualify as 'explicit sexual activity'.  For GoT the dominant purpose of the books is not child sex.  And there's a defence of artistic merit for all of them.

I would argue that Manga's dominant purpose is not child sex, yet, it gets banned.

Plenty of non-hentai manga is legally sold in Canada.