Today’s Handley/manga law updates
§ Wired interviews Christopher Handley’s lawyer, Eric Chase, who explains what he was up against.
Chase says he recommended the plea agreement to his client because he didn’t think he could convince a jury to acquit him once they’d seen the images in question. The lawyer declined to describe the details. “If they can imagine it, they drew it,” he says. “Use your imagination. It was there.”
The case began in 2006, when customs officials intercepted and opened a package from Japan addressed to Handley. Seven books of manga inside contained cartoon drawings of minors engaged in sexually explicit acts. One book included depictions of bestiality, according to stipulations in Handley’s plea deal.
(Note: This confirms that it was Customs, not the Post Office, which opened the package,)
§ Manga expert Matt Thorn clarifies some of the language from his previous posts. There is no “literal gag order.” Also, Thorn, who lives in Japan, is attempting to find out what are the actual manga involved in the case, as that really seems to be the crux of the matter. Some descriptions of the material make it sound like out-and-out hentai type porn; others sound like yaoi/lolicon, where the characters may appear younger than they are.
And two from:
§ Brigid Alverson. FINDER, a gangster manga by Ayano Yamane, has been “indexed” in Germany, where it’s published by Tokyopop’s German arm. This means it’s been deemed “harmful to minors,” but apparently that has something to do with minors being able to buy it, unchecked. In the US, FINDER was published by BeBeautiful.
§ AND, Yamila Abraham on Yaoi Press reports that her printer refused to print a yaoi-themed coloring book calling the images “disturbing.”
“Because of the nudity of this file we are unable to print this for you. The order before this one should not have been printed but did slide by without us looking through the entire book.”
It doesn’t pay for us to throw tantrums over things like this. However, I feel they’ve made a mistake. The coloring book is 16+. There are side views of nude characters, but naughty bits are not visible. There are no sex scenes, but some images are suggestive that sex is coming. It didn’t even cross my mind that a printer might not agree to print it. I called and told them that the characters are all male. I think they might think the characters are female and we’re showing bare breasts.
The images can be seen in the link, so judge for yourself.
05/29/09 at 5:40 am
I’m really curious what those manga were in the Handley case. I know I have disturbing ones from Viz and Dark Horse that have adult content with characters of questionable age. Berserk for one. Anyone remember the whole seinen line of adult titles from Viz under the Pulp line? Plus that Blood the Last Vampire 2002 manga was pretty graphic. Though in that case I guess the vampires are over 18 even though their bodies don’t age. What does US law say about naked teenage vampires? See. (This is the type of BS when you start treating fiction as reality. Again, lines on paper are not real children.)
As for that Finder manga, I would think Germany of all places would have learned how bad it is for the government to come down and essentially start banning books. Wasn’t that long ago that they tossed books with ’subversive’ material like homosexuality into fires. Crap. The bastards in the government tossed homosexuals themselves into the fires. Though maybe that “Distributors of that medium are then no longer permitted to sell, rent out or even present this object in public or to broadcast it. The same goes for advertising for this object. Violations of these restrictions will be punished under German jurisdiction.” isn’t as bad as it sounds. Still it sure sounds like the book is effectively banned unless it is more like selling a Hustler or NC-17 movie with the ID comment. Still, disturbing language used there, especially since the issue is homosexuality.
05/29/09 at 5:46 am
As for the yaoi, I’ve had roommates hang up more explicit stuff they bought from fan artists at cons. On the wall there was Light.. and L.. and.. fluids.. And let’s even get into some of that twincest some certain female friend of mine likes. () Really. I’ve seen much worse. Heck, I think one of my roommates books I looked at was by this publisher and there was a hilarious tentacle story in that. How did that get by and not this?
I guess it is up to the publisher, butI’m sure they lost more than one client with that lame homophobic cop out.
05/29/09 at 3:10 pm
The ‘Protect’ Act really needs to be rewritten or dropped in favor of other laws more specific to what child abuse laws are trying to protect.
05/30/09 at 7:40 pm
Yeah, no sense in going after people for works of fiction. It’s a waste instead on going after people who commit real crimes on real children.
05/30/09 at 8:20 pm
An article at Anime News Network mentions one possible artist involved. Looking up that aritst Hanmaru Machino, I found that I recognized his work. I have a book of Takashi Murakami’s art that shows a small image of one of his images.
Here it is. (NSFW)
http://www.artnet.com/Magazine/features/drohojowska-philp/drohojowska-philp1-18-2.asp
Is that the bestiality child pornography artist the lawyers refer to? I bought an image of his work from the Boston Museum of Fine Art. So is the MFA selling child pronography or is this total BS?