Regardign the first half of your post: paedophilia is sexual attraction to pre-pubescent children, however if for some reason a person hadn't developed properly and looked pre-pubescent at 18, there would be no legal problem. The person who would be attracted to such an individual would still be a pedophile though, but paedophilia is not a crime, child sexual abuse is (and there are no children invloved). The examples with people being tunred into children and other fantasy stuff are just ridiculous.

Regarding the second part of your post: It's quite simple to determine whether something has artistic value or not. Works of art have several levels of meaning, because an artist uses the art medium as a sort of language to send a message. The most basic level of meaning can be called "denotative" and reffers to the basic things portrayed (for example two people having sex), the thing that you see and that anyone can realize. In a word of art there will be deeper meanings, not just he basic thing you see, however if there are no deeper meanings, and what you see is all that the articular work has to offer, then it is not art (for example in the case of porn, you'll just see two people having sex, with no deeper message present).

Most people cannot interpret art, and they're stuck at the most basic superficial level. A person will see sexual perversion in works that are actually pieces of social criticism (like Sade's works), because they cannot see part the dennotative level. I've noticed though that there's another bran of people who cannot really interpret art, but who take the opposite stance: they see art in everything, thus they elevate even things like porn to that status, and they take an extreme relativist position ("oh, but who can say what is are and what isn't?").

Regarding drawings, use Erwin Panofsky's iconological method. If you can interpret lolicon beyong the pre-icnonographic level, then you have yourself an actual work of art. If no... well, then it's just porn... child porn to be exact.

(note, portraying children in sexual scenarios is illegal, even if we're dealing with a genuen work of art).

P.S.: Welcome to the site!

Homosexuality is no longer considered a menta disease because research conducted by psychiatrists and psychologists have shown that it does not fit the criteria. Paedophilia still fits the criteria to be considered a mental illness. I'm well aware that lots of things labeled as "mental diseases" are done so because they're considered negative by said culture, and it's really just a way to "naturalize" dominant ideology (for example heterosexuality is "normal" and "natural" and homosexuality is "abnormal" and a "disease", as the dominant category - heterosexuals - wanted people to believe in order to assert and legitimize their dominance).

The problem with your nudist example is that you're describing an act, and not the reason for doing said act. The person walking down the street naked could be doing so for several reasons: protesting against social norms (not crazy), someone stole his clothes (not crazy), the voices in his head told him to walk naked (crazy). I'm not saying that looking at such material is related, but rather that being aroused by such material, is part of the symptomatology of paedophilia. I assume that they could just be attracted to cartoon characters, and not real life children, but I do think that such an individual should be made to visit a psychiatrist just to make sure that he poses no danger. This really isn't punishment. He's not being sent to jail or anything.

I'd be intrigued to know how, unless it can just isolate multimedia files, images, RAR, and ZIP files

Compressed files such as .zip can easily be scanned. Easiest example is a virus scanner, it can see what's in the compressed file.

For images, they probably use some sort of image recognition. I.E. cameras can tell where and how many faces there are and auto focus for you.

I think we'll just have to agree to disagree :)

and in relation to your last point, its true that therapy isn't punishment in the conventional sense. However i feel its a similar scenario to a law that was overturned here recently in the uk. The police now get rid off the dna records of people who were found to be falsely accused of rape. Its really a double edged sword. Keeping their dna records on file would be beneficial for society as would sending people who may be considered to have paedophillic thoughts to a therapist. However if the person hasn't done anything wrong, then for the convenience of society shouldn't everyone have their dna records on a database so police can find rapists more easily. Its similar in this scenario, surely everyone should get counselling for every 'bad' thought they have? I think its unreasonable to tell people that the way they're thinking is wrong, and as someone mentioned on an earlier page, if it doesn't affect anyone what harm does it do?

My interpretation of laws are limitations on people's freedom that are imposed to protect the "natural" or "inalienable" rights of others. A secondary (and controversial, although both American liberals and conservatives both use and decry it for their own purposes) feature is to use it for the benefit of the entire society (utilitarianism). So an example of the former would be property rights, and an example of the latter would be bans on trans fat.

My take on lolicon bans is this. It causes really damage (imprisonment, fines, humiliation, etc) for no benefit whatsoever to society or to individuals.

Let's analyze bans on child pornography though. I like the logic to ban it, not based on obscenity, but because it harms the rights of individuals (the children involved in the making of the product). Obviously the making of the material involves harming the child, and the circulation of the material goes against the child's will and further humiliates them.

The circulation of the material and ownership of the material should be stopped, not just based on the issue of consent and humiliation, but because it will cripple the MARKET that exists for such material. Crippling the market, will greatly decrease the supply and demand for the product (yes, demand too. If you increase the risk of being caught and arrested, that adds a cost to each purchase).

Now let's look at lolicon. There's no individual harmed in the process of making the material. None. Therefore, there's no reason to ban the creation of it, as well as the ownership and circulation of it as well. There's no need to attack the supply and demand of it, since there's no harm with the market existing.

The only possible argument that exists, the one that all anti-videogame/movie/music/etc proponents fall back to is that such material increases risk for dangerous behavior (this falls into the secondary usage of laws: utilitarianism). But there is not an overwhelmingly strong evidence for such a thing. It's not a scientifically proven fact yet. We shouldn't base any law, or limit the rights of individuals based on unproven things. A few dubious studies (if there are any) aren't enough.

Well, there a difference between someone who was falsely accused of rape and someone who clearly shows signs of being a paedophile. Keeping those people's DNA records added stigma a sort of stigma, which would not exist if everyone's DNA records were kept. Whether such a thing should be done is a topic for another thread.

I agree completely, the main problem being that anyone who runs around litigating for the right to watch/read about animated kiddies do it (which is how the argument will be framed by its detractors or worse) is not going to gain traction of any kind

First amendment rights could be brought into play (Free Speech Coalition v Ashcroft already defeated a similar law in the past, and likely if this guy raised a big enough stink about this to get the ACLU's attention, or the attention of the porn-industry-representing Free Speech Coalition, they could fight it and get the current anti-lolicon US provisions overturned as well), but you're never going to get support for such a thing, and then Congress would just try to weasel around it, because it's an easy target soft-button issue that no one except people who enjoy the stuff (though as i said, i'm not into loli, but i am into resecuring my right to own these non-loli Sailor Moon doujins which are equally illegal), and really hardcore libertarians would find any reason to object to.

The first part of my post was meant to highlight the differences between a drawing and an actual image of a pre-pubescent human, which I don't see acknowledged in your post. The reason why I did this was to show how many of the concepts regarding paedophilia that you're arguing about don't really apply when it comes to drawings, as their origin, discussion, purpose and execution is based on actual humans, not fictional characters. Not only that, but as I mentioned before there's no evidence (at least, that I know of) that proves that lolicon and real child pornography have the same effect on paedophiles, so you can't assume there's a link between being sexually aroused by a lolicon drawing and the actual thing. Even a person that can't perceive the difference between reality and fiction (what you argue that is a characteristic of all paedophiles) might see lolicon and actual child pornography as different things. Until there's conclusive evidence of lolicon having exactly the same effect from a mental perspective as real child pornography (and therefore, being able to prove that someone is a paedophile by being aroused by it, as you claim) compared to "regular" pornography (drawn or real), I believe there's enough reasonable doubt to not assume the person is a paedophile. In addition, while the fantasy example I used was indeed an extreme, the point still remains, which was basically that in a fictional world, fictional rules apply (no "cherrypicking" !). You can't prove that a character that doesn't exist has a certain age and many lolicon images have inconsistent or ambiguous body proportions which make their nonexistent biological "age" to be subject to interpretation.

Also, regarding your example about a paedophile, I urge you to consider that the biological process of our bodies is not "black or white", nor is our perception of them. In order to prove that a person is a paedophile you have to be certain that the person is only sexually attracted to pre-pubescent individuals and not cases in between that are rather ambiguous, just like in your example. Surely an 18-year old person has at least some traces of their age, even if it looks mostly pre-pubescent, not to mention the fact that the whole concept of choosing 18 as the age of consent is predicated on the notion that any individual at that age should be ready (from a biological point of view) to engage in a sexual relationship.

As far as evaluating whether something is art or not, I'll have to respectfully disagree, again. While I admit that I'm certainly unqualified (AKA a complete ignorant...) to discuss the definition of art, I do know that... there's not one definition of art. There's just many, many, many (a lot) of definitions by "experts" or "erudites" through time and their subsequent discussions of them, including varied perspectives/points of view, which is logical to assume that are affected by the overall views of the respective culture and time. With this in mind, there's indeed some definitions that are much broader than others and I would go with those because of their capacity to encompass different perspectives about a concept so fundamental to all cultures. Like for example, Britannica Online's definition: "the use of skill and imagination in the creation of aesthetic objects, environments, or experiences that can be shared with others", which is available on Wikipedia.

Personally, I consider the idea that only those that can "interpret" (in a specific form, like what you described) art are able to recognize its value to be pure elitism. Yes, artistic value always depends on interpretation, but that interpretation is not subject to any particular process, cultural view (including moral views, of course) or school of thought. While a certain knowledge might be required to understand some artistic elements from the creator's point of view or its process, the overall value of the work doesn't depend on it. In fact, what can be considered meaningful by an individual could be considered irrelevant for another and someone might even discover new elements of the work or have a different perspective than what it was intended by its creator. I would even argue that interpreting art doesn't have to be a purely rational exercise like you are proposing.  

Besides, even with your interpretation of art, we would have to analyse porn, lolicon or other hentai works on a case by case basis in order to determine whether it qualifies as art or not, instead of just assuming that everything that's labeled as "porn" is devoided of artistic value like you were doing.

Regarding drawings, use Erwin Panofsky's iconological method.

From what I saw on Wikipedia his ideas seem to be about understanding art to different degrees, not defining/identifying it. Nevertheless, his views would still be opinions, no matter how knowledgeable or respected are. Art is not a science, nor it should be. For the record, I'm not arguing against his views, just claiming that they're not the only valid ones. 

(note, portraying children in sexual scenarios is illegal, even if we're dealing with a genuen work of art).

Yes, although cases like Lewis Carroll's photographs are quite arguable as nudity alone is not necessarily sexual... (and assuming parent consent was given, even if this is also arguable in itself) But I don't have a conclusive opinion about that so I can't argue in favor or against it.

PS: Thanks for the welcome. ^_^

Really ? Absolute madness... So not only there's no basic right to privacy, but you also lose your right to private property, even without any accusation ?

Madness, madness I tell you !

But the use of scans through some sort of recognition software raises more questions than it answers... I'm guessing it works with terms and not image recognition, as I'm having a hard time believing such technology exists at that level. Not even the actual security officials can recognize lolicon from echii/hentai, yet the software can ? Or does anything manga gets labeled as "ilegal" ?

Anyway, I guess I shouldn't care too much as I don't even have a laptop... or travel outside my country...