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Twenty Years for Sailor Moon?

I'm going to out myself as a bit of a nerd by posting this, but my interest in comics and the law collided today, when I came across this. It seems courts are upholding child porn convictions for porn that doesn't actually involve children. Twenty years for possessing erotic anime featuring girls that appear underage? (Don't all girls in anime look underage?)

The Comic Book Legal Defense Fund (one of my favorite NPOs) has become a special consultant for the defense of a manga collector charged with possessing child pornography. This has split the comics community between those who view this as a first amendment issues (like Neil Gaiman) and those who view it as simply defending perverts.

I side with the former. I don't buy the argument that people inevitably act on their fetishes, so I don't see why we should imprison people for fantasizing. In this case, I certainly don't approve of the fetish, but once you allow censorship of drawings, where do you draw the line? As Gaiman points out in the link above, the law is a blunt instrument, and it's very difficult to ban animated porn without also banning art.

Full post as published by Nuts & Boalts on December 23, 2008 (boomark / email).