Person convicted of child pornography in Australia for possessing slashfic

[dryfter]

Hmm, just reposting this on, but have you seen this story?
http://www.theage.com.au/national/simpsons-cartoon-ripoff-is-child-porn-judge-20081208-6tmk.html

All you Harry Potter slash writers had best watch out, could you be next?

Edit: Although, I suppose the difference here is that it was an animation, rather than writing. However, the judges seemed clear that it was intention that mattered, not the medium.

Comments

[ms-maas.livejournal.com]

made me automatically think of the cartoon i once saw of homer doing marge doggy style.
and wow, early internet tasteless humour better start getting underground.
gov may end up giving up on its censorship path simply coz these kinds of court cases are doing the job for them :\

[ms-maas.livejournal.com]

oh and - i don't think they really make much of a distinction between text and imagery these days anyway.

[kriyanna.livejournal.com]

Yes, I read the article in the papers and was....... really quite baffled.
Cartoons are fiction... FICTION!!! Sheesh, can we please distinguish between fiction and reality here? Maybe a little bit? Or at all?

Fiction can take a reflection on reality, yes. That's why it interests most people - as it becomes something you can relate to. Whether you relate to it in a literal way, or you see the parody/sarcasm/dark-humour at play... doesn't matter, it's still fiction and can be a useful way to make a comment. But this doesn't make it reality, so the judges comments are really f!ing STUPID. Call it what it is at least: content censorship. Someone get me a soap box, I'm going to start my censorship rant again....

[nervegasattack.livejournal.com]

*agreement*
Fiction.
And also I thought that child pornography laws were there to prevent the exploitation of children. I don't know that it 'fuels demand'... -_-

I guess I'd better get rid of my old CD with Digimon fanfic archived on it then. :0

[sbp.livejournal.com]

Yeah, Gaiman mentions it on his blog.

http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2008/12/word-person-included-fictional-or.html

see also

http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2008/12/why-defend-freedom-of-icky-speech.html

[burritob.livejournal.com]

See, if only we had a clean feed, innocent people wouldn't be at risk of ludicrous child porn convictions like this. Or something.

[purplegril.livejournal.com]

What? That article made no sense. None of those characters were even originally drawn or voiced by children, were they? All adults as far as I knew.

I sincerely hope our legal system couldn't be interpreted that way...does it mean any depiction of abuse, such as a film about abuse, is now going to be impossible to make?

[wintrmute.livejournal.com]

But apparently the cartoon depicted children.. Albeit, cartoonish, freakish, non-human children.. but children nevertheless..

[purplegril.livejournal.com]

Still with the not-making-sense, though.