Protect Act Madness

[SnEptUne]

I don't know if this is the proper place to discuss this issue, but I have recently read that in United States, one can get into prison for having "drawings, sculptures, and pictures of such drawings and sculptures depicting minors in actions or situations that meet the Miller test of being obscene, OR are engaged in sex acts that are deemed to meet the same obscene condition."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protect_Act

Maybe I am just not good at English, doesn't obscene meant dirty, ominous, or obnoxious? Does that means if someone draw a picture of children playing with dirt, he/she will be sent to prison? The standard seems arbitrary, one can argue any kind of drawing with children as being obscene, wouldn't make it so that the court can arrest and put anyone they want in prison using this act? What have the world become in the last 10 years.

[chibiphonebooth]

i think when they mean obsene and dirty, they are referring to sexual things including children. not children playing in mud.

[Nate]

I loathe and despise the PROTECT Act. It's a horrible piece of legislation that should never be. But I won't get into that. This thread already runs the risk of being too political, but I'll do my best to explain a bit.

The Miller test is the standard test to figure out what would be classified as obscene. The Miller test has three different requirements, and something must meet all three requirements to be classified as obscene. They are:

1. Whether the average person, applying contemporary community standards, would find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest,

2. Whether the work depicts/describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct or excretory functions specifically defined by applicable state law,

3. Whether the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value.

As you can see, the problem with the Miller test is it leaves far too much to interpretation. Who really can judge whether something lacks artistic value?

Without going into rant mode, though, this means that more or less, innocent pictures of children would not be classified obscene. A parent who takes a picture of their six month old in the bathtub wouldn't be prosecuted. The picture of the Vietnamese girl that was burned by napalm wouldn't be classified as obscene either.

Anyway, that's all I'll say before I get this thread locked... XD;;

[Etoh*the*Greato]

The act exists mostly to address people like the nasty Shota ladies at the convention I used to work for who have absolutely no problem with drawings of young boys (8, 9, 10, etc) engaged in sexual acts with older men.

[SnEptUne]

The act exists mostly to address people like the nasty Shota ladies at the convention I used to work for who have absolutely no problem with drawings of young boys (8, 9, 10, etc) engaged in sexual acts with older men.

Wow... You meant those kind of people actually exist in real life? And there I thought it is just a fiction/myth created from rumours. It seem the more I know about people, the less I can understand them. What for?

[uc pseudonym]

Maybe I am just not good at English, doesn't obscene meant dirty, ominous, or obnoxious?

Here is the common usage, though it's not relevant to legal matters:
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/obscene

Wow... You meant those kind of people actually exist in real life? And there I thought it is just a fiction/myth created from rumours. It seem the more I know about people, the less I can understand them. What for?

You mean "Why do they create that kind of thing?" It's the same reason there is fanservice, or soap operas, or anything else that appeals to someone sexually. Shota isn't a huge market, but it definitely exists.