Over in General Questions there was mention of the fact that at least in Australia, you can get convicted of possession of child pornography, even if that happens to be porn of Lisa Simpson.
What say you, Dopers? Should cartoon porn of child characters be treated like child porn?
I for one think it’s patently ridiculous. Unless you could show that an actual child (or children) modeled for the drawings, I don’t think there’s any argument to be made for why cartoon porn should be illegal if it depicts children.
No, it shouldn’t be illegal. No one real is harmed, and it might well reduce the amount of real child porn and child molestation. That after all seems to be the pattern, despite the rantings of self proclaimed morality police; more porn means less sex crime.
Agreement: nobody was harmed in the making of it. In addition, no evidence has ever been shown that it causes other kinds of social harm. People who see it don’t suddenly become rampaging pedophiles.
Slippery slope, if for no other reason—from what little I’ve seen, these kinds of things turn into commie hunts. Once you get the force of an utterly moral cause behind something, a crusade quickly turns from “stopping Bad Thing” to “stopping what looks close to a Bad Thing, as a margin of safety” to “stopping what might be a Bad Thing” to “stopping mediums that might have the Bad Thing in them” to “stopping things that might encourage Bad Thing to develop…” etc.
Because what kind of monster would object to stopping genuinely Bad Thing? You’re not defending Bad Thing, are you? Are you saying you’d put innocents at risk, no matter how small, to keep from overstepping the fight against Bad Thing—even if the “collateral damage” is just some weirdo Others who’re probably close to being Bad Thing anyway? We’re probably all better off anyway—them included.
What’s the difference between minor cartoon porn, and porn stories about minors? Literature with minors involved in porn is illegal, so why shouldn’t drawings be?
The reasoning for child porn being illegal in the US is that it’s portraying a crime (a real person having sex with a minor) and that a crime always occurs when it’s made. A cartoon does not portray any real people, so there’s no justification in banning it.
I’ve never heard that literature depicting sex between or with minors is illegal (in the US, at least).
In fact, isn’t there a particularly famous novel called Lolita that got a lot of acclaim and did exactly this? Depicted/described sex between an adult and very young girl?
I can imagine there are drawings out there so gross that if I ever saw them I wouldn’t mind outlawing them. But to indulge my gag reflex in that way would be foolish, because there is no way the law can be finely tuned and universally applied to my exact specifications.
After reading the synopsis on wikipedia, it seems that the moral of the story is that he regrets doing what he did and robbed her of her childhood, so no I guess it wouldn’t “counsel or advocate” sex with a minor.
But what about a novel where the moral of the story was, “having sex with minors feels great and I don’t feel bad about it whatsoever,” but stops short of saying directly to the reader, “you should also have sex with minors!”
As long as it’s just a fictional story, I would say that it should be fine, unless it directly tells the reader to go out and have sex with minors, and tells them how to do it (that’s what counseling/advocating is, I think).
It’s been decades since I read Lolita, but I’m pretty certain that there is no description of any underage sex in it. The narrator says that sex has occurred between himself and Lolita, but it is not described.
Another problem is who decides what the legal age of cartoon characters are? If I take a legal pornographic cartoon DVD where all characters are identified as 18 on the back and slap my own homemade label over saying they are actually 17, does the disk become illegal? If you think it would, what about taking a DVD of cartoon porn where the label says the cartoon characters are supposed to be 15-17 and you slap your own label over that that says they are 18? Does it become legal for as long as the label stays on? What if the creative author, primary animator, director, and CEO of the company that owns the copyright disagree on the age of a cartoon character that, based on appearances, could be anywhere from 15 to 21 because real girls develop in real life in different ways? E.g. the director insists that the heroine is 17, the script writer says he intended her to be 16 all along and wrote that in the script, and the primary animator who drew her says he intended to draw an 18 year old and used an 18 year old as a model, and the copyright owner orders that the summary blurb say the video is about a 16 year old girl? Which is the “legal age” of the heroine?
If you go by a jury’s judgment call of the characters and their body size and proportions - well that’s real dangerous. You could think they look perfectly adult while Joe down the street somehow believes that 13 year olds can have large chests.
And, arguably, it protects real children from abuse. If a pedophile can get what they want from cartoon porn without needing to worry about breaking the law, there’s little incentive for anyone to actually abuse any children making live action porn with them.
Those who would support prosecuting cartoon porn will indeed often go for the “maybe, this could be leading to, possibly, in the worst possible scenario… anyway who would ever defend such an idea?” argument. Two particular ones they have are:
(a) “this could be used to entice or ‘groom’ children” - Eh, really, the true predator does not need porn cartoons. He can use regular porn: *“See, Suzy, that’s what big girls do, and you ARE a big girl, aren’t you” *; or, worse, real CP: “See, Timmy, that boy is just your same age, let’s make a picture just like it” (A real predator will not be satisfied with cartoons, and a camcorder, a basement, and neighborhood children are easily accessible)
(b) “Soon the 3D CGI simulations will be so good you will not be able to tell real CP from sim CP” - been hearing this one since late last century, it translates as “We in the DA/Police are too cheap to hire a real forensic digital graphics lab, and why should we, we really should be able to just nail you on account of being a sick bastard”.
In the end a lot of porn/obscenity law comes down to “we really should be able to nail you on account of being a sick bastard”.
“counsel or advocate” =/= “depict” Or at least I would expect that to be a “reasonable person” understanding, but the Canadian courts may have ruled in another manner.
And of course I have no illusion about an average juror feeling that anything other than expression of visceral revulsion and condemnation is advocacy.
In the USA illustrated or animated material depicting sexual activity with imaginary minors has a specific statute covering it in the 2003 PROTECT Act (and no, that’s NOT the one that was overturned in Court; this one is still in effect) wherein it can be acted against if found obscene (subject to the usual requirements for determination of obscenity), under a provision separate and distinct from CP.
Even if you could prove it increased the odds of pedophilia, would that make it ok to ban it anyway? A high stress job increases the odds of domestic violence and child abuse, but we don’t ban those. Considering how we currently deal with pedophilia with a mix of ignoring/denying/shaming it and explosive, draconian rage I’d say cartoons are the least of our problems on the issue.
If some might argue that lewd drawings depicting minors be illegal, shouldn’t it then also be illegal to feature adults engaged in acts legally inappropriate for minors when those adults appear to be minors - that is, by simply looking much younger than their actual legal age?
There are more than several sites out there already that cater to this demographic - that is the appeal for minors engaging in acts of sex. Should it be illegal to seek out individuals who appear to be significantly younger than their actual legal age, cast them in porn roles? Because it’s the same principle as the drawings depicting young people.