I'm not sure it was a poor choice for him: with the current supreme court there is no guarantee that the current law, while it seems clearly unconstitutional to me, would be invalidated if he took it that far. And if he did take it that far and they DIDN'T invalidate it, that would only further cement said law.

No one wants to be that test case. I'm disappointed because I think this was a relatively strong case since Handley had no real-life kiddie porn, but for his own personal sake I understand his fear. And I'm VERY glad for him that he won't have to register as a sex offender.

Stay strong, Chris! We all rooted for ya, man! Six months will fly!

That's bad times, though it was fortunate he didn't have to register as a sex offender. But it will still be awkward in that job interview when they asked about his jail time. How exactly do you explain that? As long as he wasn't planning on acting out fantasies based on the said "materials" I don't think he did anything wrong. I hope things will work out better for him.

@getsuyoubi

I didn't root for him. I have no idea what he had on him, but if he didn't have any child pornography containing children and pleads guilty to it he deserves his sentence/name on the sex offender list.

I still think he had something that they could bring up against him.

I truly hope he'll get through this and be okay. As the defense articulated in their memorandum before sentencing, all the evidence suggests that this is someone who simply "wished to be left alone in his room, to read his comic books and to revel in his fantasy life, literally without hurting anybody." I wish the world would let people alone. I hope he knows that there are a lot of people out here who wish him well, and didn't want this to happen to him.

He can just read manga all day for 6 months.

I hate how the government hate loli lovers. Which I mean in manga and anime form of course . Not real people......heck I should be arrested as well for looking at /cake/.

This is stupid. The court was wrong. Period.

Sorry to be so blunt, but I don't take any crap from those who try to destroy freedom of speech. This is a horrible ruling, and the prosecution should be ashamed of itself. On the other hand, kudos to the judge for handing down a lenient sentence.

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Isn't arresting someone for "obscene" materials unconstitutional?

"Obscenity" is a matter of opinion. Opinion should not be legally enforced, unless we're talking about a dictatorship.

Jon, I read the legal documents surrounding the sentencing, and it doesn't seem that lenient to me. At least, if I were in his place, it would pretty much destroy me. After he gets out of jail he's being forced to go to a court-appointed psychologist, basically for sex offender treatment. He's got years ahead of him of being treated as if he's almost a rapist, despite the fact that he did nothing but use drawings as a visual aid for his fantasies. There are also provisions in his terms of probation that state that he will be forced to undergo polygraph tests during his "treatment" and that he can be forced to undergo "inpatient treatment" if the psychologist deems it necessary. So on top of everything, the psychologist can basically force him back into imprisonment without him committing any additional "crimes."

the7k, yeah obscenity laws are frightening. They apply to legally produced live action porn involving consenting adults as well. The notion that something produced by consenting adults and distributed between consenting adults who want to see it can lead to people being put on jail based on the standard of whether the "average person in the community finds it obscene" (that's the definition of obscenity, basically) is terrifying and really makes no sense.

well 6 months isn't too long....

provided he can survive it, American prisons are hellholes

maybe he'll tunnel out and hide the tunnel entrance behind an anime poster in his cell

This would never had happened if he was a Nanoha fan.

This is ridiculous. What a violation of rights.

I don't know so much about this guy. Kiddie Porn and Loli Manga... there's a blurry line between them. I mean, sexualizing youths, real or not, is kind of squicky, we've become desensitized to it, being anime fans after all, but I guess it's not really a crime.

Really though.

I do think we've become desensitized to the sexualization of minors though. It's just because anime and manga tend to center around junior high or high school relationships, yet still tell more "mature" stories using those settings. It's just a matter of setting, the characters don't really represent persons of that age. It's sort of like how medieval fantasy doesn't really represent the lives of people living in the middle ages. It's just a construct, an abstraction, a fantasy. However, take that out of context though and you've just got something... unsettling. For the uninitiated, I can see how some of the things that seem innocent to us might seriously concern an outsider.

Although, no matter how unsettling, it's not really a crime.