Every one of the readers will agree that Child Porn is despicable and should not be condoned.
I was watching this develop on the news and certainly I agree. I also am somewhat doubtful about drawings.
There are edges of the controversy that need exploring.
I admit that I have pictures of my kids, naked, my wife also, nursing a new born. Is that criminal? I used to bathe my kids, male and female, when they were under 1 year. Criminal? What if I send them to my brothers and sister? My mom and dad?
I really do understand that the exploitation of kids for sex needs to stop. On the other hand, the U.S. and others have outlawed drawings of naked children, whether engaged in sex or not. Take a look at any early bible.
I am not saying it is the same but the U.S. net is wide and far flung.
It doesn’t take much to make you a criminal under these laws. A topless child sliding down the ladder into a pool; a semi nude child sleeping with mom and dad.
Skinny dipping at the watering hole.
You get the idea. Before you rant on me, I am totally, 100% opposed to child porn. Unfortunately the innocent get caught up in the net.
How about pictures of child porn, as obnoxious as they are? America says they are illegal and the “Thought Police” disagree. Japan left that part out and it is a big current day contention.
On the other hand, do you want the government to exercise control over thought, regardless as it is as perverted as it is.
|I want to compare child sex to child murder. The murders are nightly entertainment, fictionalized for sure, but that’s what we are talking about.
On a final note; I was sitting with family watching Sat TV and clicking Stats for a good movie. The Sat stopped on a XXX movie and, although the kids were glued, the wife was hysteric, “Chang it” Chang it” OK, well it was just a stop on the way to the next channel.
I got to a movie that showed a fight scene on the back of a boat where one guy blew the brains out, in graphic detail. I attempted to move on but was told by wife to return. That looks like a good movie.
Why? I have to admit that I am opposed 100% but I am also so opposed to child and adult murder. Where to reconcile.
You seem rather confused.
I would have thought the definition of child porn should be fairly well known. Obviously, benign photos of one’s children do not fit the bill. And equally obvious, anyone that takes anything other than benign images of children deserves a certain swift.
Also, any adult channels on the TV can be set up with a password. I strongly urge one and all to do so, especially with any children in the house.
Obviously, you don’t get the point. It is my freedom to do what I think appropriate, to some degree, with my own family. I don’t need the government to condone nor condemn.
It seems you agree that child porn is far beyoyond the limits but can you tell us where you think the limits are?
Benign photos of my children DO FIT THE BILL in the U.S…
[quote=“TheGingerMan”]You seem rather confused.
I would have thought the definition of child porn should be fairly well known. Obviously, benign photos of one’s children do not fit the bill. And equally obvious, anyone that takes anything other than benign images of children deserves a certain swift.
Also, any adult channels on the TV can be set up with a password. I strongly urge one and all to do so, especially with any children in the house.
[/quote]
I know I am curious, possibly others. Would you please define child pornography worthy of prosecution, in any country. Also, hell, my kids know the passwords better than I do. It is usually me that has to go ask for a password.
Obviously, you don’t have teenagers.
Might I suggest a cup of simmer down?
So, what brought this on? Does Taiwan have something to do with child porn that I’m not aware of?
Taiwan follows U.S. trends. This week Japan followed the U.S. trend and banned child porn, good for them. They did not ban cartoon characters as the U.S. has done. My guess is Taiwan will pass a law, even though it’s not an issue here, that I know of.
Blah!! Benign innocent naked pics, that a parent takes of their kids is benign. Because kids upto a point are naked all the time, and we see them as kids not as naked kidsm. I haven’t heard of a single parent being blamed for taking pics of their children.
And you are confusing pornography with sex on TV. Pornography is a violation of the child.
I could be wrong but I think OP’s concern is the vagary of the law which conflates innocent images with pornography.
OP has a point that innocents are punished all the time due to misapplication of poorly constructed laws.
My response is that at a certain point we also have to recognize that accepting perfection or nothing leaves us in a position just as bad or worse. Essentially, I’d rather see a swing and a miss than no attempt at batting. Part of living in society is being involved in selecting the people who apply the legal system, then trusting their judgement to apply something which is inherently standardized on a case by case basis.
I would love to hear alternatives which address both the need to protect children and the need to avoid prosecuting the innocent. Though I think everyone will have a different idea of the correct balance.
Yeah, the latest U.S. legal hassle is teenagers who sext each other, then get prosecuted for disseminating child pornography (which it technically is). And a few years ago, some U.S. comic shop owner got prosecuted for importing hentai-themed manga.
An image of a naked child–say, urinating into a fountain–is art. To be pornography, they at least have to be doing something sexual (provided we can narrow down what “sexuality” means). Also, we probably need to distinguish between “child” porn and “teen” porn. And there are always going to be relationships on the borderline–like that recent case in Texas, where a 30-something year old man married a 14-year-old girl (legal), but was prosecuted because evidence was found that they had had premarital sex.
Age-related standards vary from culture to culture, as well as over time. (Some of our ancestors probably married at 14.) Where laws exist, half the time they are ridiculously unrealistic (e.g., the age of consent is 18 in California, and I think here as well.) Unfortunately, the phrase “child pornography” is like a bright red murder flag which turns off rational thought. Nobody wants to defend kiddie porn, but everybody likes Romeo and Juliet.
Guess it depends on what country your in…
Japan Outlaws Possession of Child Pornography, but Comic Book Depictions Survive
By MARTIN FACKLERJUNE 18, 2014
A street last month in Tokyo’s Akihabara shopping district, one of the city’s top tourist draws, where the sexuality of young girls is on prominent display.
TOKYO — Yielding to years of pressure to fall in line with the rest of the developed world, Japan’s Parliament outlawed the possession of child pornography on Wednesday. But the new law left untouched the nation’s popular and sometimes sexually explicit manga comics as well as other portrayals of young girls as objects of sexual desire.
By an overwhelming margin, lawmakers from the governing and opposition parties joined to pass the legislation to close a loophole in a 1999 law that had banned the production and distribution of child pornography. While the older law did remove much child pornography from public view, critics including prominent conservative politicians have lamented that Japan was the only member of groups of developed nations like the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, or O.E.C.D., that still allowed its possession.
Creating and consuming the erotic fiction known as danmei is a vehicle for young Chinese women to explore new identities.Sinosphere Blog: Why Many Young Chinese Women Are Writing Gay Male EroticaMAY 21, 2014
The exemption in the new law for the popular comics, and also of Japan’s “anime” animated cartoons, was a concession to the nation’s powerful publishing and entertainment industries. It also leaves untouched a vast gray area in which young girls are depicted in sexually suggestive ways. This includes everything from images of the all-girl bands of Japanese pop music posing in lingerie and bikinis, to fantasy illustrations with the faces of prepubescent girls atop the scantily clad bodies of voluptuous adults.
Such images attest to Japan’s more casual social attitudes when it comes to the sexual objectification of women of all ages, and also toward the consumption of pornography itself. (Reflecting those attitudes, the passage of the law barely merited a mention on the nightly news.)
Manga comics with graphic illustrations of sex are sold in neighborhood convenience stores and on train station platforms, and until the proliferation of smartphones, it was common to see men openly reading the comics and magazines featuring nude women while commuting to work.
The fascination with the sexuality of young girls even has its own name in Japanese, “rorikon” — which stands for the “Lolita complex” — and is on prominent display in Tokyo’s Akihabara shopping district, one of the city’s top tourist draws. Foreign visitors and locals can be seen there ogling explicit manga-derived posters, shirts and even small plastic dolls of young girls with highly exaggerated hourglass figures. The new law on child pornography is partly the result of a push by the Japanese police, who said that the failure to outlaw possession in the 1999 law had created enough continuing demand that the number of criminal cases involving the production and circulation of child pornography skyrocketed. That number jumped tenfold since 2000, to 1,644 cases last year, according to the National Police Agency.
The police efforts on legislation had been blocked, however, by the nation’s publishing houses, which feared that manga — including illustrated depictions of naked or nearly naked prepubescent girls, sometimes engaged in explicit sexual acts — would be included in the ban. The popularity of manga comics has mitigated the decline of a publishing industry hit hard by falling sales because of competition from the Internet.
Political leaders explain the exemption for manga by saying the depictions are imaginary and do not victimize actual children. They also said they opposed curtailing artistic expression.
“While there are concerns that such illustrations might encourage the viewing of children as sexual objects, freedom of expression is also an important issue,” the top government spokesman, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, said Wednesday.
However, there has also been growing frustration at the central government’s refusal to pass a more sweeping ban. Three years ago, the city of Tokyo imposed its own prohibition on the sale of sexually suggestive material involving children, which the city’s governor at the time, Shintaro Ishihara, said encouraged pedophilia. But even that ban did not include less well-defined areas, such as the popular genre of “junior idols,” often 12- and 13-year-old girls who are photographed in sexually suggestive poses for magazines.
While some questions remain about what will actually be deemed pornographic under the law, lawmakers said the aim was to ban sexually explicit photographs and videos showing actual children. Possession of such materials will be punished with a prison term of up to one year, and a fine of up to about $10,000.
The new law, which is expected to go into effect next month, will give violators a one-year grace period to get rid of pornographic images before they will be prosecuted.
Speaking in Parliament, the justice minister, Sadakazu Tanigaki, said he hoped the new law would spur a broader change in social attitudes by sending a clear signal that it is no longer acceptable to objectify children.
“We must fight against a tendency of looking at children as sexual objects, and allowing them to be taken advantage of, sexually and commercially,” he told the upper house on Tuesday, a day before it voted the bill into law. The lower house had passed the bill earlier in the month.
And then there is the issue of realistic-looking computer images which look like child porn, but do not involve real children. (Think Fumetti.)
Okay, so what does the law say in Taiwan?
[quote=“2Enigma”]Every one of the readers will agree that Child Porn is despicable and should not be condoned.
I was watching this develop on the news and certainly I agree. I also am somewhat doubtful about drawings.
There are edges of the controversy that need exploring.
I admit that I have pictures of my kids, naked, my wife also, nursing a new born. Is that criminal? I used to bathe my kids, male and female, when they were under 1 year. Criminal? What if I send them to my brothers and sister? My mom and dad?
I really do understand that the exploitation of kids for sex needs to stop. On the other hand, the U.S. and others have outlawed drawings of naked children, whether engaged in sex or not. Take a look at any early bible.
I am not saying it is the same but the U.S. net is wide and far flung.
It doesn’t take much to make you a criminal under these laws. A topless child sliding down the ladder into a pool; a semi nude child sleeping with mom and dad.
Skinny dipping at the watering hole.
You get the idea. Before you rant on me, I am totally, 100% opposed to child porn. Unfortunately the innocent get caught up in the net.
How about pictures of child porn, as obnoxious as they are? America says they are illegal and the “Thought Police” disagree. Japan left that part out and it is a big current day contention.
On the other hand, do you want the government to exercise control over thought, regardless as it is as perverted as it is.
|I want to compare child sex to child murder. The murders are nightly entertainment, fictionalized for sure, but that’s what we are talking about.
On a final note; I was sitting with family watching Sat TV and clicking Stats for a good movie. The Sat stopped on a XXX movie and, although the kids were glued, the wife was hysteric, “Chang it” Chang it” OK, well it was just a stop on the way to the next channel.
I got to a movie that showed a fight scene on the back of a boat where one guy blew the brains out, in graphic detail. I attempted to move on but was told by wife to return. That looks like a good movie.
Why? I have to admit that I am opposed 100% but I am also so opposed to child and adult murder. Where to reconcile.[/quote]
…
A grave dig.
But recently I randomly came across a Japanese guy on twitter who was selling anime porn depicting minors. That way I found out there are websites dedicated to selling this sort of things operated in Japan.
This is illegal in many countries but not in Japan. How is Japanese legislation so prudent about porn (genitals must be censored), but allows manga child porn.
Some background info:
Japan WTF!
The people in charge probably like it