![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Law like love
Over the years I've seen a number of fan fiction/copyright debates, and (as with most ideological disputes) people's convictions about fan fiction's legality correlate strongly, but not perfectly, with their convictions about its morality. But there's always a set of fan writers & readers who say, often without investigating the subject much, "I know it's illegal but it shouldn't be," and I assume some on the other side who say the opposite, though I don't hang out with them.
The exact same thing happens with discussions of art & fiction featuring underage sex. And here, frankly, we're on firmer ground than with fan fiction & copyright, since there aren't any litigated cases on fan fiction. Depictions that aren't pictures or video of actual minors are judged by the standards for obscenity, not child porn. It is true that the moral panic doesn't distinguish between those, so what the law actually says is not the end of the matter. It is also true that a given piece of fan art could be obscene (writing is much less likely to be so, though it's not legally impossible), just as a given fan story could infringe. The reason lawyers give unsatisfactory answers to reasonable questions is often that the truest answer is "it depends." Moreover, there are of course a huge number of things it's immoral but not illegal to do or say; citizens must populate that set for themselves, whether in communities or as a matter of individual choice.
I'll leave you with the Auden poem.
The exact same thing happens with discussions of art & fiction featuring underage sex. And here, frankly, we're on firmer ground than with fan fiction & copyright, since there aren't any litigated cases on fan fiction. Depictions that aren't pictures or video of actual minors are judged by the standards for obscenity, not child porn. It is true that the moral panic doesn't distinguish between those, so what the law actually says is not the end of the matter. It is also true that a given piece of fan art could be obscene (writing is much less likely to be so, though it's not legally impossible), just as a given fan story could infringe. The reason lawyers give unsatisfactory answers to reasonable questions is often that the truest answer is "it depends." Moreover, there are of course a huge number of things it's immoral but not illegal to do or say; citizens must populate that set for themselves, whether in communities or as a matter of individual choice.
I'll leave you with the Auden poem.
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject
Yes I found that too.
In the latest stupid over at lj biz, I can never get the communities to make pretty pictures like the users, Burr says that particular Ashcroft vs the Free Speech Coalition decision 2002 was...
"Some people have noted a Supreme Court case from a couple of years ago striking computer-generated images from the definition of child pornography and asked whether, as a result, drawings of children in sexual situations can be considered illegal. The answer is, yes, in some cases. Congress reacted to the Supreme Court's decision in that case by changing the obscenity laws to put back what the Supreme Court struck down from the child pornography laws."
I asked him for a source on that one.
spike
Do you know what he is talking about there?
Cuz I don't.
no subject
thanks
I appreciate that.
spike