What "thought crime". Paedophiles are insane, and cannot think rationally. That makes them a danger to society, the same way someone who was hearing voices telling him/her to murder people is a danger to society. You're confusing "mental illness" which causes uncontrolable actions with "conscious decision", which can be controlled.

Man I'm about to puke. A few years ago I went on a porn site that said it had lolita's. Me being a dumb idiot started searching that word, but I kept getting kiddy porn and was disgusted so I eventually stopped. I thought it was another word for Latina or racial even to this day I had no clue it meant kid. Fuck this shit I looked at kid porn ....pukes.... Man you know you have a porn addiction when you look up any term you hear about without knowing what they mean. The internet should be better policed, their is no way I should have been able to find that kinda shit on Google. I always assume the actresses are of age when searching Google.

Good thing I have been trying to stop watching adult movies, Bible is a better thing to read and look at.

As for the topic, No the man should definatly not be arrested or charged for having Manga or even Hentai. Its a cartoon and in no way can be viewed as under age content. I mean hell as it was pointed out Cartmen was nude in South Park well his character was a minor.

However if the US can charge a women for bringing a Kinder Suprise Egg into the US and say she was smuggling in illegal contriban. Then Canada should be able to arrest people for stupid reasons too!

Paedophiles by definition are "insane", and are not really capable of controlling themselves (often they won't even realize that what they're doing is wrong). Your argument only applies to sane people, but as I said, paedophiles are not sane.

This is not a long post, but some will be too lazy to read it all. Fair enough. However, I do urge you to read this if you think the manga-owning man got what he deserved. Please, read it all. It won't take long. Think about it.

Anyway, to my post: The US, like any country, does a lot right and a lot wrong. One of their biggest 'rights' is the First Amendment and its wide reaching implications. Freedom of speech is a constitutional right in the US, and long may that be the case.

If you, like I, think freedom of speech is important, then you will have to look at cases like this and accept that you must -- absolutely, must! -- defend the right of others to read, write, and speak on topics you fine unacceptable. It's either that or throw freedom of speech out the window, because clearly you care nothing for it.

Take a moment to think on that. Do you really want to discard freedom of speech? Do you really want the government to tell you what you can or cannot read, watch, or even think?

Lolicon porn is near the top of a slope that the First Amendment fences off. But, without that fence, watch your right to consider and explore many subjects disappear. Just focussing on the 'pre-18 sexuality' angle: outlawing lolicon manga and the South Park imagery, as shown above, would just be the beginning. Next, works of art such as 'Lolita' would be removed. As would publications such as 'Lost Girls', and 'The Game of Thrones'. Not long after, outlawing any work making an attempt to realistically view pre-18 sexuality would go. Trust me when I say that would include a lot of movies and music videos that you have almost certainly all watched. The law is not a pair of clippers ready to carefully cut off the over-long lolicon toenails of evil, it's a pair of shears that would cut of arms, legs, and heads. Dividing lines, unfortunately, are very hard to define, and such a change in the law would be heavily used by extremists of all kinds to ban all manner of artistic expression. Including porn.

I think freedom of speech is bloody important, and I'm not alone.

For an example of why we should be careful here, go read a professional in the publishing industry, and his opinions, and have a good think. Here's a link to Neil Gaiman's blog post on this very subject, an author many of you will be aware from such works as the Sandman comics, Stardust (the movie), Coraline, or American Gods.

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

@shuraiya:

Everyone who molests a child is in fact not a pedophile. Pedophilia--the public perception at least--involves sexual attraction to undeage children.

Yes, quite true. Not everyone who sexually abuses a child is a paedophile. Some people do it just to cause harm. Paedophiles generally like children a lot (obviously) and they do not want to harm them (they do not think that their actions are harming the child).

Pedophiles can very much control themselves, otherwise all instances of their... violations would not, and in fact, could not be a crime.

Yeah, see, the thing is that this argument is based more on wishfull thinking, and the the desire to neglect the real problem. Paedophiles are insane, they cannot control themselves, and their violations should not be considered a crime. They're dellusional (they have twisted ideeas, like "people reach full sexual maturity at the age of 5"), and they require psychiatric help. Sending them to prison will do as much help as sending someone who hears voices telling him to kill people to prison. Prison only really works with sane people who think rationally. Most people ignore this because it's much simpler to pain paedophiles as diabolical monsters who should rot in jail, rather than what they really are: mentally ill people who need help.

Another thing: animated child pornography feeds the paedophiles dellusions. Because it's animated, and it involves fantasy characters, the children will be shown actually enjoying the sexual acts, thus the paedophile will recieve confirmation of his/her dellusions from such material.

The root of your argument seems to be: anyone who reads or watches manga including pre-18s having sex is a paedophile, is that correct?

If so, how do you define a paedophile? What sort of manga (or, indeed, any other sort or media) do you feel is 'wrong'?

I must admit that I find many of your views quite extreme, and also quite unrealistic.

@Farmageddon:

Also, you claim paedophiles are "insane" and, furthermore, that anyone being turned on by paedophilic material is a paedophile, but it's not that simple. Please don't take this as to mean I'm ok with it, but it's true that paedophilia is the big taboo of today's society.

Paedophilia is considered a mental illness, and if you read the typical profile of a paedophile, it's pretty hard to not consider them insane. I mean, it's not any different than a schizophrenic, or someone who hears voices.

Is a rapist not just as "insane" as a paedophile? Is anyone who watches rape-porn insane?

Not really, unless the rapist has dellusional thoughts. The problem is that you're only thinking of the act itself, and not the motivation behind said act.

For example two people can shoot someone. One of them shot his father because he wanted to inherit his money. The other shot an old lady on the street because a voice in his head told him she was the antichrist. Which one of them is the crazy one? I think it's obvious.

The person watching rape-porn isn't really insane, unless they cannot distinguish reality from fiction.

But, more importantly, take a 13 year old girl. If an adult has sex with her, it's paedophilia. Ok. But is it if he just has any sort of attraction to her? According to you, yes it is. Then again, there are plenty of girls around that age that most grown men would actually find attractive, even if most would never ever admit to it, because it's a such a huge taboo. Are all these men secretly insane then?

There are lot's of pretty normal, even natural, reasons someone could like these things to different degrees.

The problem with your example is that it really wouldn't be paedophilia in any case (not to mention that paedophilia is a quality of the paedophile, it's not an actual act; the act is called child molestation). Paedophilia means finding pre-pubescent children attractive. Most 13-year-old girls are already going through puberty, and a girl I went to school with at that age looked like she was in her late teens or early 20s. It really wouldn't be paedophilia, unless she were severly underdeveloped and loked like an infant. Replace "13-year-old girl" with "6 year-old-girl" and now we're talking. That's paedophilia. I doubt you can find any excuses for that!

Well, paedophilia is the sexaul attraction towards pre-pubescent children. So no, not all manga would be paedophile material. It's hard to draw a line but I'd say anything depicting children under the ages of 11-12 is sexuual situations is paedophile material.

Regarding your previous post (the long one), no civilized country protects child pornography under the guise of "freedom of speech". And freedom of speech should be limited, like any freedom (no child porn, no promotions of racism/misogynism/homophobia etc., no instignations towards violence, no libel), else you'l have anarchy.

The term "lolita" comes from the novel Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov. It's a book told from the perspective of a paedophile. "Lolita" is a shortening of the girl he abuses's name, but it has entered pop-cultere as meaning "sexually precocious little girl".

Except homosexuality is not a mental disease (and psychological experiments carried out a couple of decades ago proved it). Paedophilia however is.