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Mar. 5th, 2005 06:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
which_chickRussian scientists are engaged in a long-term experiment to make foxes domesticated. They're cute. They're apparently tame enough now to be kept as housepets. My question is when will we see them on the market?
Important update for those of us who read... questionable manga. If you're in Canda, manga-style drawings of underage persons count as "child pornography" and you can be arrested for having 'em on hand. Also, apparently Canada looks through your mail. Ponces. More (scanned article) here. Just so that we're all on the same page, these are drawings. Odds are pretty good that they're drawings similar to those (except for the age thing) seen here previously in the yaoi bondage porn discussion. They're not real people. As sick as the drawings may be (and I've seen some really sick shit), no actual children were exploited in the creation of this stuff.
While nobody in his or her right mind would confuse manga with actual exploited children, Photoshop and similar technologies allow folks to create "virtual" child porn, stuff that looks just like real kids being exploited even though no real kids were actually used in any inappropriate way. Wither virtual kiddie porn? Well, if you're in Canada, don't do it. In the freewheeling U. S. of A, though, it's probably okay at the moment. Let's take a closer look, shall we? After all, ignorance of the law is no excuse.
Virtual child porn was made clearly illegal by the Child Pornography Prevention Act (CPPA) of 1996, which applied "to realistic images or videos, not anime or drawings" and was intended to help people trying to cut down on actual exploited children. Wotcha. I'm in favor of cutting down on actual exploited children. Grownup people should not exploit children for sexual gratification. It's a consent thing.
However, in April, 2002, the Supreme Court struck down the CPPA ban as unconstitutional, 6-3. Smackdown by the First Amendment and freedom of expression. Three cheers for the Bill of Rights. For non-Merkin readers, the nine justices of the Supreme Court are depended upon to read and interpret the Constitution. They are appointed to the job. They serve for as long as they want to, they can't be fired, and they don't have to run for reelection. This job security gives them (we hope) the freedom to do the correct thing, no matter how politically inconvenient it may be at any given time. The President appoints Supreme Court justices but the appointees have to be confirmed by the (Republican-controlled, 55 to 44, one independent) Senate before they are allowed to serve. The Senate can tell the President to go pound sand and pick someone else if he picks someone too out of line. This is important because we may get to see an appointee during Bush's second term because some of the currently serving justices are pretty old and/or frail.
In June, 2002, the House of Representatives approved H.R. 4623, the "Child Obscenity and Pornography Prevention Act of 2002" (COPPA), a bill designed to do what the CPPA of 1996 had failed to do... to ban computer images indistinguishable from real child porn images and prohibit all obscene pornographic images of prepubescent children including drawings, cartoons, paintings and sculptures. I'm not in favor of that, particularly, but it doesn't appear to have become law.
At the same time, the Senate had a bill, S. 2511, somewhat different from H.R. 4623, that they passed. Since it wasn't the same as H.R. 4623, apparently the two got sent to committee to be hammered out or (more likely) abandoned to die out of sight and sound of the public. According to the Schoolhouse Rock song, a bill gets proposed by a member of either the House or the Senate. The bill gets discussed, probably gets assigned to committee and discussed more, gets revised and a hot pork injection or two, and if all goes well, eventually it gets voted on in the assembly-of-proposal. Should it pass there, the bill gets sent to the OTHER assembly (because, y'know, we have a bicameral legislature), where it gets discussed AGAIN and put in committees and revised and eventually voted on. If it passes THERE, then it goes off to the President to be signed into law. If this strikes you as not-very-efficient, count that as a good thing. The last thing we need from the government is efficiency. Making laws should be hard.
Anyway, the last we heard from H.R. 4623 and S. 2511 was on 10-2002, when they were both referred to the Committee on the Judiciary and there were hearings held. News coverage of the subject claimed that the Congress intended to address the issue further in the 108th session.
A search of the events of the 108th Congress shows up H.R. 1161, COPPA of 2003. In March, 2003, it went to subcommittee and hasn't been heard from since. After that, it's been all quiet on the western front... so as far as I know, virtual kiddie porn involving no actual children is still A-OK in these yere Newnited States. Iffn I were you, though, I'd stick with the black-and-white line drawings and leave the photorealistic stuff to people on a first-name basis with the ACLU.
Where'd I get information on how various dead bills made out? Turns out that bill status is a free service helpfully offered by way of our tax dollars at work. Ain't that cool? Go lookit Congress in action!
Important update for those of us who read... questionable manga. If you're in Canda, manga-style drawings of underage persons count as "child pornography" and you can be arrested for having 'em on hand. Also, apparently Canada looks through your mail. Ponces. More (scanned article) here. Just so that we're all on the same page, these are drawings. Odds are pretty good that they're drawings similar to those (except for the age thing) seen here previously in the yaoi bondage porn discussion. They're not real people. As sick as the drawings may be (and I've seen some really sick shit), no actual children were exploited in the creation of this stuff.
While nobody in his or her right mind would confuse manga with actual exploited children, Photoshop and similar technologies allow folks to create "virtual" child porn, stuff that looks just like real kids being exploited even though no real kids were actually used in any inappropriate way. Wither virtual kiddie porn? Well, if you're in Canada, don't do it. In the freewheeling U. S. of A, though, it's probably okay at the moment. Let's take a closer look, shall we? After all, ignorance of the law is no excuse.
Virtual child porn was made clearly illegal by the Child Pornography Prevention Act (CPPA) of 1996, which applied "to realistic images or videos, not anime or drawings" and was intended to help people trying to cut down on actual exploited children. Wotcha. I'm in favor of cutting down on actual exploited children. Grownup people should not exploit children for sexual gratification. It's a consent thing.
However, in April, 2002, the Supreme Court struck down the CPPA ban as unconstitutional, 6-3. Smackdown by the First Amendment and freedom of expression. Three cheers for the Bill of Rights. For non-Merkin readers, the nine justices of the Supreme Court are depended upon to read and interpret the Constitution. They are appointed to the job. They serve for as long as they want to, they can't be fired, and they don't have to run for reelection. This job security gives them (we hope) the freedom to do the correct thing, no matter how politically inconvenient it may be at any given time. The President appoints Supreme Court justices but the appointees have to be confirmed by the (Republican-controlled, 55 to 44, one independent) Senate before they are allowed to serve. The Senate can tell the President to go pound sand and pick someone else if he picks someone too out of line. This is important because we may get to see an appointee during Bush's second term because some of the currently serving justices are pretty old and/or frail.
In June, 2002, the House of Representatives approved H.R. 4623, the "Child Obscenity and Pornography Prevention Act of 2002" (COPPA), a bill designed to do what the CPPA of 1996 had failed to do... to ban computer images indistinguishable from real child porn images and prohibit all obscene pornographic images of prepubescent children including drawings, cartoons, paintings and sculptures. I'm not in favor of that, particularly, but it doesn't appear to have become law.
At the same time, the Senate had a bill, S. 2511, somewhat different from H.R. 4623, that they passed. Since it wasn't the same as H.R. 4623, apparently the two got sent to committee to be hammered out or (more likely) abandoned to die out of sight and sound of the public. According to the Schoolhouse Rock song, a bill gets proposed by a member of either the House or the Senate. The bill gets discussed, probably gets assigned to committee and discussed more, gets revised and a hot pork injection or two, and if all goes well, eventually it gets voted on in the assembly-of-proposal. Should it pass there, the bill gets sent to the OTHER assembly (because, y'know, we have a bicameral legislature), where it gets discussed AGAIN and put in committees and revised and eventually voted on. If it passes THERE, then it goes off to the President to be signed into law. If this strikes you as not-very-efficient, count that as a good thing. The last thing we need from the government is efficiency. Making laws should be hard.
Anyway, the last we heard from H.R. 4623 and S. 2511 was on 10-2002, when they were both referred to the Committee on the Judiciary and there were hearings held. News coverage of the subject claimed that the Congress intended to address the issue further in the 108th session.
A search of the events of the 108th Congress shows up H.R. 1161, COPPA of 2003. In March, 2003, it went to subcommittee and hasn't been heard from since. After that, it's been all quiet on the western front... so as far as I know, virtual kiddie porn involving no actual children is still A-OK in these yere Newnited States. Iffn I were you, though, I'd stick with the black-and-white line drawings and leave the photorealistic stuff to people on a first-name basis with the ACLU.
Where'd I get information on how various dead bills made out? Turns out that bill status is a free service helpfully offered by way of our tax dollars at work. Ain't that cool? Go lookit Congress in action!
