Posts by Emma Hart
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the obscenity laws are not new
Of course they're not. They are a little rusty on account of not being used for something like thirty years. The problem is not what the law actually says, but how it's enforced. In Canada it's still illegal to own or distribute a crime comic.
I am struck by the irony of a group of New Zealanders (by and large) worrying about a decision is a distant jurisdiction
Distant, and where my work server is. I belong to an international community, some of whom are Americans who produce this kind of material. I will worry about it, if it's all the same to you.
If you want to feel outrage about something in the United States
I think you under-estimate my ability to be outraged by more than one thing at once.
Actual child pornography doesn't get openly posted around the net (as far as I'm aware), but I hope we crush like a loathsome bug any password protected sites that are involved in moving it around.
I'm with you there. But actual child pornography involves harming actual children, right? I'm under the impression that with text, people were worried about the possibility of harm done by other people accessing it, therefore how easy it is to access is directly relevant. The Chief Censor agrees:
factors such as the publication being made available only to members of a specific group and only accessible through payment would be considered but do not negate the Office’s ability to classify a publication
But neither the US and New Zealand gives text an absolute exemption, although Emma seems to be arguing that it should.
Ah, the taste of words being pushed into my mouth. What I DO believe is that:
- there is a harm difference between text porn, and photographic or filmic porn, both in production and in accidental viewing, and
- it is not possible to effectively police net porn.Richard, can I ask you a couple of questions? Do you think that sending this woman to prison is just? And what would have to get banned for it to bother you, where's your line? I get some sense of where Jolisa's is, but not yours.
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there is not much more horrific to me than the thought of a work; written by the victim of a sexual criminal to help them deal with reality; being used by someone more like the offender than the victim for sexual gratification
Yeah, I don't know anyone who writes in the area of kink who wouldn't be horrified by that idea. I don't want to speculate about Fletcher's own feelings, but.
I'm also pretty horrified by the idea of an ex-victim getting an obscenity conviction which results in them being put on a sex offender register with actual paedophiles.
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Positively, positively. I think it's quite a remarkable forum you've got there.
Oh good. I'm always a bit worried people will think we're a bunch of sick freaks.
reminds me of one of the more inventive uses of google trends:
What’s Obscene? Google Could Have an AnswerIndeed, I saw that and assumed it was because of the Miller Test. And it reminded me of this:
in 2000 a jury in Provo, Utah, took only a few minutes to clear Larry Peterman, owner of a Movie Buffs video store, in Utah County, Utah, a region which had often boasted of being one of the most conservative areas in the US. Researchers had shown that guests at the local Marriott Hotel were disproportionately large consumers of pay-per-view pornographic material, obtaining far more material that way than the store was distributing.
That would seem to indicate that it should be a standard a community actually has, rather than one it pretends to have.
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This is truly quite remarkable.
There's a statement I have no idea how to take.
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You seem to be making a "slippery slope" argument,
I'm aware of that. But it's already clear that they're not just after the child pornography, because of the FBI memo. They're after stories written about doing things that are perfectly legal.They're already going after categories of material that stuff I've written falls into.
It is one thing to write the story as "therapy", it is a different matter again to post it on the internet.
Because why? The group was not visible to the general public - which is the reason I haven't been able to check if it was all done in the best possible taste, or if I'd have to go for a vomit and a lie down.
Not following you there. You can write a story in which a woman or child is sexually assaulted and then starts to enjoy it, and it won't be any less problematic than the same story represented in any other medium.
Actually, I was thinking of stories that have conveyed the harrowing horror of rape that I just couldn't see anyone finding 'prurient'. We've run a workshop on helping writers deal with the emotional impacts of writing this kind of thing. I think some people have a very strong mental picture of the kind of people who write this stuff, and it doesn't square with the people I know at all.
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But drawing sex involving children is also different than writing about it. If you believe that pornography corrupts, you'll aim to ban all forms of representation, but the written form generally comes last in the pecking order.
The other thing writing allows you to do is get inside the heads of the participants. It makes it possible to make issues of consent much more clear-cut where sometimes with pictures or film it can be very open to interpretation, especially with BDSM.
One of the things that really bothers me about so much censorship is that it seems to be based on what is portrayed, not how it's portrayed.
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This issue is of particular concern to fandom - last year LiveJournal, in response to complaints, deleted a whole lot of journals under the guise of purging child porn
Indeed. This has included banning Harry Potter slash-fic if it's not clear which book the writing is non-canon for, and therefore how old the participants are. Never mind if it's twincest.
I think it's also seen as an easy target - people are primed to be worried about sex on teh Intarwebs.
Yup. And I think the justification for that list of stuff to chase after in particular is entirely based on how reluctant people would be to defend them. People outside the scope of vanilla privilege are easier targets.
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I always thought that at least part or the illegality of "obscene" images was due to the potential for exploitation of real people in the making of. Unless the author has some very intense research methods this just isn't an issue with text.
Indeed, that's pretty much the crux of it: that photographic porn requires an actual real incident to photograph or film. But writing?
Also, according to the answers I got from a very helpful woman at the NZ Chief Censor's Office, in NZ the writing doesn't even have to be distributed to be considered obscene. Just writing something down could be a crime.
I'm not sure if the amount of technical obscenity on my hard-drive makes me feel cool or weird or what.
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Heh, there used to be an RFS classification for movies - Restricted to Film Societies.
They took the 'only for qualified academics' restriction off de Sade's Justine here almost simultaneously with me gaining the requisite qualifications. Now it's available free on the net in its entirety.
Let. Down.
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Church cnr Countdown is 24hrs
Not any more. Closes at midnight as of about a month ago.