Fuck Censorship

I heard via Twitter this morning that Christopher Handley has pled guilty to obscenity charges related to his manga collection. Handley got in trouble when an Iowa postmaster inspected a shipment of comics from Japan and decided to involve the police.

Handley faces a $250,000 maximum fine, up to 15 years in prison, and forfeiture of property siezed in the case, which I'm not sure but could be his entire collection. What's more, before the trial Handley was harassed by the state: as conditions of his release (while still "innocent") he had to turn over his computer to the investigators, agree to random inspections of his home, and submit to periodic drug tests. When the prosecutors learned that he was still visiting anime-related sites on the internet and had viewed some cheesecake-level Japanese fashion books (with adult models) they ordered him to cut it out, and to submit to mental health counseling.

The problem with Handley's collection is that it included a few drawn images of under-age characters in sexual situations. This set off the child porn detectors, despite the fact that no actual children were required to create the material.

Handley's collection included 1,200 manga comics, plus hundreds of DVDs, laser disks, and video tapes. The case focused on a few hundred images - I heard 150 to 300 individual pictures - that were considered to be obscene. This guy was not a porn collector, he was a manga collector. I'm sure I have objectionable material of the same sort in my house right now, and probably at the same rate.

It should be said that icky sexual situations are not terribly uncommon in Japanese popular art. Seriously, schoolgirl sex, rape, some nasty stuff with tentacles (well, also some hot stuff with tentacles) - all are tolerated much more by Japan than we would do in the US. Especially in anime and manga, which can provide a completely fantasy-based environment. Why do they look at that stuff? I don't know. But you don't have to find it titilating to find it culturally interesting.

Neil Gaiman covers this pretty well in this blog post: Why defend freedom of icky speech? In this post, Gaiman responds to a fan's well-reasoned argument that simulated child porn is potentially damaging with examples from literature, history, and even the bible. Yes, it's basically the slippery slope argument, but it's well done.

So. This is dumb. It's not the only dumb thing our government has done, but it shouldn't happen. There are lots more stories of woe you can read at the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, and while you're there you should make a nice donation too.

Here's the CBLDF news releases about this case:
CBLDF Disappointed By Guilty Plea in Handley Manga Case (May 2009)
CBLDF To Serve As Special Consultant In PROTECT Act Manga Case (October 2008)

And here's some more information from another blogger: MangaBlog - Editorial: The Handley case and the slippery slope

Project A-Ko DVD sleeve image from Amazon.com - there's actually no sex in this film at all, but what's going on with that skirt?