The NSW courts have ruled cartoons featuring Simpsons characters having sex to be child pornography. New South Wales, Australia’s oldest state, looked at the images and ruled that a fictional cartoon character is a “person” within the meaning of Commonwealth and NSW laws while also recognizing that they really aren’t a depiction of a human.

This is an incredible precedent. In the U.S. there are a lot of rules around child pornography. For instance, a 17 year old boy was handed felony charges for the distribution of child pornography for posting nude photos of his girlfriend on Myspace. Alright, we can all agree that it isn’t o.k. to post nude photos of anyone without their permission and especially not photos of someone under the age of 18. How about the 16 year old girl with felony charges for posting nude photos of herself on Myspace? How about the two teens that were prosecuted for merely emailing photos between themselves without sharing them with the rest of the world?

Despite the interesting ways the U.S. has decided to view how child pornography should be interpreted, prosecuted, and punished, Americans can share their Simpsons Cartoons because of the ruling from Ashcroft V. Free Speech Coalition. It was this ruling that struck down two provisions of the Child Pornography Prevention Act. The majority opinion claimed that the act was too vague and could create a chilling effect on works that did have artistic merit. The majority opinion also stated that the provisions prohibited works that “record[s] no crime and create[s] no victims by [its] production.”

If you’re in the porn business, it’s really important to follow the changes in the laws and regulations around porn. To be considered obscene, a work must satisfy all three conditions of the Miller Test:

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

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

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

This isn’t something vague and obscure that producers only have to think about on a theoretical level. Remember that Max Hardcore/Paul Little is currently incarcerated, pending an appeal, for 4 years based on an obscenity conviction. Acts that are legal to commit, that were performed by consenting adults, and part of paid work for adult film performers to be consumed by legal adults were found to be obscene and worthy of time behind bars and some very hefty fines. Ira Isaacs is on trial for obscenity as well. His last court date had a mistrial, however, because the judge presiding over the case had a website with sexually explicit material. Joe Francis of “Girls Gone Wild” Fame had a lot of press of his jail time as well. Filming your kink just might land you in a world of trouble depending on who gets their hands on it.

The Obscenity Prosecution Task Force within the Department of Justice doesn’t always play fair either. Max Hardcore lived in Los Angles and produced his films there as well. His trial took place in Florida because a very smart prosecutor took the opportunity to use the digital sale of content to a Florida resident as a reason to move the case out from a community that houses the vast majority of all porn produced in the U.S. to a much more conservative region. Los Angeles has very different community standards than Tampa.

Although we are miles away from the Deep Throat obscenity convictions (which were overturned) there is still the question of which way the political winds will blow. Although I think that cartoons featuring sex acts within the Simpsons family are a little juvenile for my tastes, I’m not all that fond of the works in Max Hardcore Canon, I’m not at all into scat, and I absolutely believe that exploiting children is repugnant I still follow all of these cases because they’re all lumped into the ABC’s of obscenity- animals, bondage, children, domination, excretory functions, and fisting. It just so happens that I happen to like bondage, domination, and fisting and it would be really nice to keep consuming and participating in their production without wondering if I’ll go to jail because someone else might get offended.

Filed under: Stories, politics |
Posted on December 11th, 2008
Posted by Miss Maggie Mayhem