"Cartoon characters are people," says judge

[Darkside55]

We just had that lolicon thread, and Stern brought you that thread on the Japanese petition to marry cartoon characters, now this:

CARTOON characters are people too, a judge has ruled in the case of a man convicted over cartoons based on The Simpsons, in which children are shown having sex.

Link

 

[Asknoone]

Yeah, Ariel is a person too guys!

 

[Steven]

Someone draw a picture of that judge being murdered.

 

[highlander]

Oh lawd. Electric retard would be put too death :\

 

[Azner]

In that case, the accused should be convicted in a cartoon.

After all it was cartoon crimes

 

[Raziaar]

What's next?

Gravel is people.

Trees are people!

Oil is people!

 

[Eejit]

He should pay the fine with a drawing of the money.

 

[mechanicallizard]

^lmfao.

Gravel is people.

OMG IM SCREWED.

but seriously, the judge is an idiot.

 

[Eejit]

We have a winner.

 

[Darkside55]

Soylent green is people!

Let's not get ridiculous.

 

[Omnomnick]

He should pay the fine with a drawing of the money.

Or pay with the drawing of a spider.

 

[Eejit]

That makes no sense in the context of this thread. Take your meme elsewhere sir!

A drawing of a spider is a spider, and spiders aren't currency.

 

[Kyorisu]

Oh wow, this is too funny.

 

[Druckles]

Oh wait, does that mean I have friends?

 

[DEATHMASTER]

It means you're a cartoon too!

 

[99.vikram]

By those standards, I raped Judy Jetson a whole buncha times as a child.

 

[Bad^Hat]

Man, what.

I don't even know what to say to this.

 

[Tollbooth Willie]

Oh lawd. Electric retard would be put too death :\

If only he would continue it.

 

[Vegeta897]

Ya'll have to admit this is one thing America has gotten right... Drawn child sex.

Being legal.


Yup.

It's worth the rest of the shit, tbh.

 

[Tyguy]

this is retarded...somebody draw cartoon penises on his house

 

[Bad^Hat]

Come to think of it, if they're "people," doesn't that make them subject to the effects of human aging? Which, needless to say, puts them well over the age of consent?

:O

 

[Jintor]

DAMN YOU JUDICIARY STOP MAKING RETARDED DECISIONS

This is why our legislation is so goddamn restrictive, because you idiotic judiciary keep making stupid decisions.

Hopefully the ONE sensible member of the High Court J. Kirby will overturn your dumbass decision Adams. If they appeal.

 

[Acepilotf14]

Come on Vegeta, let's get the shit out of here!
/runs

 

[Kyorisu]

Thought crime should not be illegal. The argument is that the drawn content will create a demand for the real thing. This makes no sense if someone wanted the real thing they'd get the real thing. People getting the drawn stuff will only create more demand for drawn materials.

 

[Vegeta897]

Edit: delete me.

Yeah Krynn, I talked to Kyo on MSN about it, his opening line right after quoting me makes it seem like I think thoughtcrime should be illegal. I guess it's just how I interpreted it, my bad.

 

[Krynn72]

I dont think he was arguing against your point, but rather just elaborating on it.

 

[_Z_Ryuken]

He should pay the fine with a drawing of the money.

Come to think of it, if they're "people," doesn't that make them subject to the effects of human aging? Which, needless to say, puts them well over the age of consent?

:O

I like wut wut you said, there.

 

[Kyorisu]

Backwards country.

The Australian legislation is different from that of the US for two reasons. Firstly,
Australian legislation relating to child pornography is informed by a ‘zero tolerance’
policy that is extremely wide-ranging. The drawback to this approach is that ‘zerotolerance
makes no concession to freedom of speech or the right to privacy’.26 In addition,
Australia has no citizen’s charter or bill of rights guaranteeing the right to privacy and
free speech which means that citizens have no recourse to challenge legislation that
infringes on these rights.27 One of the ironies of the zero tolerance approach is that it
effectively criminalizes much sexual communication that takes place between teen-agers,
one of the constituencies the laws are designed to protect. For instance, a 15-year-old28
who writes about her or his sexual encounters and then posts this information on the
internet is both a producer of and possessor of child pornography under Australian law
and is liable to ten years imprisonment.29

http://ro.uow.edu.au/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1152&context=artspapers

http://www.parliament.nsw.gov.au/prod/parlment/publications.nsf/0/289C584B88554BCBCA2574B400125787/$File/Child%20pornography%20law%20and%20index.pdf

Page 35

Check out the table.

 

[Steven]

for instance, a 15-year-old28
who writes about her or his sexual encounters and then posts this information on the
internet is both a producer of and possessor of child pornography under australian law
and is liable to ten years imprisonment.29

ffffffffffuuuuuuuu

 

[Jintor]

This is both true and retarded.

Australian legislation is extremely effed up. And if you slam it, you get labeled a pedophile.

 

[Kyorisu]

I won't be living here permanently in a few years at least. We have the whole NBN joke and now this, what's next?

 

[Sulkdodds]

I'd love to make a funny joke, but the drawn characters only count as people in the relevant laws. All this means that if the law says "a drawing of young people having sex", the 'people' in that sentence will mean drawn people too. It is not a comprehensive redefinition of the word 'people' in law.

 

[Eejit]

Cartoon porn doesn't exploit anyone. It's retarded that anyone should face the same charges for drawing some pictures using their imagination as would be faced by someone making child pornography with child 'actors'.

We're making sarcastic jokes assuming a slippery slope because it's a ludicrous ruling fuelled by paedo-paranoia.

 

[Sulkdodds]

I understand the joke and agree with its point, I just wanted to make sure nobody thought this had implications outside a quite specific area of law.

Except maybe it does? But I don't know about those.

 

[Eejit]

It could have implications outside that specific area of law. Treating a cartoon drawing as a person creates a precedent which could theoretically effect a lot of things.
It probably won't however because in other areas of law the judges probably have enough wits about them to dismiss e.g. a case that copyright to a character can't be sold as it constitutes slavery.

 

[Sulkdodds]

The thing is that within the law one finds a great many contradictory principles that if extrapolated across the whole system would cause a bigger mess than already exists. If a principle does not 'create a precedent' in the legal, formal sense, it cannot be said to have created a precedent in any more floaty informal or philosophical sense.

In this case, the judge specified that this new idiot notion applies only within the relevant laws. It wouldn't be legally valid to bring the principle up in a case concerning slavery, and moreover it would probably never occur to the judge in such a case to try!

The joke has therefore been to highlight how absurd this principle is by describing what it would be like if it could be or were extrapolated across other areas of law. Of course, how this has really come about has to do with the structure of the law, how it is about someone possessing a depiction rather than reasonably believing that the creation of the depiction has entailed real harm.

 

[Captain M4d]

Soylent green is people!

Chokey chicken is people!

 

[kupocake]

Yeah, Ariel is a person too guys!

You can't hassle a haddock, no matter how fictional it is.