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Swedish Supreme Court Overturns National Ban On Loli Manga
http://www.thelocal.se/41460/20120615/ (link changed because the old one was NSFW)
Comments
>Sankaku Complex
why
Clarification, since I'm not clicking the link.
Was the ban only on pornographic material featuring underage characters, or was it a wider ban that removed all material, non-pornographic included, which featured underage characters in manga format?
Try this link. Safe for work.
So, one thing I see a lack of in this thread, is how everyone actually feels about it. Do you think it's good or bad?
I can't quite comment, too much variables to go over, maybe hearing someone else will help me place these variables down.
bad wrong stupid etc
Well I think, "oh Sweden...", if you ask. Apart from that nothing you couldn't guess of me.
I'm reluctant to tell how I feel because a)too many unknowns and b)it's this thread again.
First off, will every pedobro be able to distinguish drawn kids from real kids? Does this sort of pr0n alter your views on reality(the research available on regular pr0n contradicts each other on this)? Does it give of a sign of acceptance towards pedo shenanigans and encourage them or does it give them an outlet, letting them more into the open and thus herded towards the necessary therapy? Do the lolicon and hardcore child abuser demographics overlap?
I conjecture it probably varies from pedo to pedo, and such research would be skewed anyway if the questions are not phrased very carefully. Is the possibility that it would encourage even one individual worth allowing it to remain legal? Can one phrase such a question in a more indefensible and asinine way?
Ultimately, I don't care enough. These questions should be in the hands of people who actually have the time and the expertise to properly research it, not internet crusaders. I've only ever known one person who admitted to liking lolicon and he was a nervous social wreck who mostly just hid in his room: I don't see him becoming a rapist anytime soon, especially not since his fetish was seeped in that nurturing moe bullshit.
Online and offline(since this inevitably will come back to how we handled Draven), pedobros provide excellent fodder for ridicule, but online that repetitive dramamongering rubs too many people the wrong way, so I wouldn't want them on here.
All I feel like saying right now is that under the logic of the court's official statement, bestiality and rape hentai must be perfectly legal in Sweden too.
@MadassAlex: The ban was on the pornographic stuff only. I'm just a little hesitant to put the word "hentai" in a thread title, even if I've marked it as NSFW.
@Nova: Thanks, link changed.
I'm for it.
The reasoning generally given for child porn being illegal is that somebody has to make it and that harms children. But obviously somebody drawing it doesn't have to harm children, so although drawn kiddie porn is hella creepy it shouldn't be any more illegal than any of the other horrible shit you can find on the internet.
A reasonable position, although my issue with drawn child porn is that it can be used to convince children that sex is "normal" at their age. Essentially, it can be used as a tool to lure children into a state of security with something they ought not be experiencing yet.
I can understand the loli thing, but why they didn't arrest him for that t-shirt?
^ LOL
Anyway, I should highlight this from the article:
I agree individually with both of these statements.
Now whether I like the ruling depends on whether loli porn has an excitatory or depressive effect on actual child porn, child abuse, child molestation, etc. cases.
Anyone have info on those stats?
To analogise, the production of racist works does not necessarily involve non-white people getting hurt. It does, however, normalise racism to a greater or lesser extent. The media is a powerful tool to shape private thought and public discourse - you can see why folks might want to place controls on works seeking to normalise paedophilia.
Oh, I very well realize that: fans of loli are some of my least favorite people exactly because they don't seem to see a problem with it.
That said, that excuse never flies for anything else. Just like in your example: it's not okay to place controls on racist works even though they DO normalize racism.
EDIT: Wait a minute, this is the Loli Rape Bunker guy?!
I'm sort of surprised. They just used one of the most common excuses for consuming material like this, next to "But it has a good story!" or "the characters are well-developed!", as the means to unban it in an actual country. Okay, so they're not actual children, but it doesn't stop the fact that material like this normalizes pedophilia, which is the last thing anyone should do.
Yeah, but, see, the reason that it's one of the most common excuses is because it's actually a pretty legitimate and good excuse, and it's somewhat ridiculous to say that it must be meaningless just because people say it a lot.
I think this is a good thing because censorship is bad and stuff. Also what BlackHumor said.
Sure, if it legitimately makes people more likely to molest children or whatever if they see this stuff, then that's reasonable grounds to ban it, but the burden of proof is very much on those who claim it does, unless we want to outlaw all forms of fiction that depict socially unacceptable behaviour in a positive light. Pedophilia is extra-icky, sure, but to accept that sort of argument without proof in one case (lolicon manga) and not in another (Grand Theft Auto, say) is blatantly and worryingly inconsistent.
This.
Nyktos gave a better explanation of my point than I have. We agree that things like homicide and organized crime are wrong, and we have laws against them in real life, yet we also have media--including interactive media--that could be said to reward simulating such behavior in a virtual setting.
I don't know if there have been studies examining whether loli porn leads to more sexual abuse of children, or whether thug life games lead to more violent crime, but given that these presentations are not reality--and given that the vast majority of us have the ability to distinguish reality from fiction--I am inclined to err on the side of benefit-of-the-doubt.
If you feel that these two situations aren't similar in the way I described, though, I'm willing to consider what you have to say.
There have been more than a few, actually, especially in the realm of violent videogames, though I don't have any specific examples on hand. The general result is "no it doesn't," for the main reason that it results in said antisocial urges being released in a private and relatively harmless fashion.
Two things:
1. There's still the question of child sexualization. Even if no actual children are not harmed directly by fictional child porn, it's still a step in normalizing child sexualization. Any step, no matter how minor, is something that should be avoided at all costs.
2. Pedophillia in any form is not healthy, period. By allowing a pedophile to indulge in his/her fetish you are validating it, same way casual rape jokes can validate a rapist. Pedophiles should be seeking help, not validation.
Forbidding stuff like this is one thing I would relenting free speech for. This and hate speech.
Banning a work because its contents are morally wrong sets an extremely dangerous precedent.
Crimson's anecdote would be more akin to Rapelay and other rape wank material than rape jokes, methinks. The problem is that there's no conclusive research whether or not such shite validates those niche tards or that it helps as a form of catardsis.
I have yet to see various porn involving rape fantasies be outlawed in a western country and I'm not sure I see a big difference. It's fictional and unlike said porn there aren't even any actors performing the fantasy. Banning drawings, especially the ownership of them in the privacy of your own home, not display of them in the public space is absolutely ridiculous. It's draconian, it borders on thought-crime legislation and it is utterly ridiculous. How do you define the age of a drawn character? By looks or by stated age? If the latter, it's incredibly easily circumvented by slapping ridiculous and untrue ages on the characters, if it's the former then who decides what drawing looks underage and what drawing is simply a small adult? In most cases it's easy sure, but there are certainly borderline examples. If I make a drawing of two stick men having sex and write child over the head of one of them, is it then illegal?
I'm perfectly comfortable with keeping such pictures out of the public space though (in effect a restriction of free speech, though the kind that I don't mind), IE don't print them in newspapers don't sell magazines involving this kind of thing in supermarkets etc. Keep it to the internet and pornography stores. But beyond that it's fucking ridiculous. I'm happy that someone in my neighbouring country had enough common sense to realise this, I remember some politicians here started talking about the issue a year or so ago, pointing out that "hey, it's illegal in Sweeden so we should do it too" as though that is somehow a good reason to follow their example. I just wanted to remind them of a few little drawings involving a certain muslim prophet at that point and their own ardent defence of free speech in that case. Because insulting muslim sensibilities is a-ok, but if we ourselves are morally offended those principles are quickly forgotten and outlawing drawings is suddenly perfectly acceptable. Well, nothing much came of it, but still.
It is my opinion that making it a punishable offence to own any drawing, regardless of subject matter, is not just an attack on personal freedom and speech, but on common fucking sense. It's a drawing, it's fictional and it should never be the cause for someone to go to jail.
I apologize for getting on my high horse and all.
Why hello there Australian ban on flat-chested women in porn.
That is almost certainly legal, and is really not a borderline example. A better example of the borderline would actually be loli porn itself--drawn to look roughly human-like, but with clearly exaggerated and otherwise unrealistic features.
I think that the Swedish Supreme Court had a reasonably good basic idea they were following--does it look like real children? If it doesn't, then give it a pass. Of course, there's still room for dispute in the definition of "look like", so I would expect legislation to more clearly define this in the future, based on this very limited information about the state of Swedish law on this topic.
Amusingly enough, many of the same arguments in this thread can also be used to support the distribution of The Pedophile's Guide to Love and Pleasure: a Child-lover's Code of Conduct.
Sadly, yes, this is a real book.
I didn't mean that as a borderline example, just as another ridiculous consequence of taking this law to it's logical extreme.
Also, is that Australian ban for real? Because if so, wow just wow. That's not just ridiculous, but downright insulting, implying that certain women could only ever be found attractive by men with paedophilic tendencies.
It also enforces the idealisation of large breasts, which is a shame.
I don't like the sexulisation of children in any form, so I am strongly against the overturn.