stupid question time

[kaigou]

I figure someone on my elist is gonna know the answer to this one. Maybe?

Context: I'm aware that different countries have different laws about what is, and is not, legal. Like the fact that the US considers the demarcation of child pornography to be 18, not 16, as it is in some other countries. Or, perhaps purchases of drug paraphernalia. And whatever else: but essentially, things you cannot just walk into a local store and buy, because of your country's laws. (Cuban cigars, anyone?)

But over the internet, wouldn't that be a different matter? Let's say we're talking about... oh, hmm, like, ebooks. Righto. There's a good example. I order one by going to the publisher's or distributor's site, I put in my c'card -- or I use Paypal -- and within a few minutes, I download the book and read it. If I'm ordering from an international publisher (and yes, I do, actually), then my bank or credit card converts the foreign currency into my local rates based on the most recent exchange and I'm good to go. No extra effort on my part.

And, more importantly, no customs officials to rip open my email or download and inspect it thoroughly. It's true that any computer can track my IP, and that some countries do have domain-wide blocks, but there are oodles of ebook publishers and distributors and they're growing with every month and week. I have real trouble believing that any govt has the capacity to track down all those domains and block them for all in-country IPs -- yes, it can be done, but outside one really notable example, I've not heard of any other country having such major domain-blocks on its citizens' access to the internet.

Without those blocks, I can't see anywhere else -- technologically -- that I could be prevented from purchasing something over the internet that arrives in my email box, or that I then download from a site. If I can see the site, I can interact with it. At least, that's my understanding.

Am I wrong? Does anyone on my flist live somewhere that even online-purchase-and-download is limited or restricted (such as ebooks, or software, or any other kind of completely-electronic money-for-goods exchange)?

I'm not advocating breaking the law, if law it be. But it does seem to me that it's one thing to shy away from purchases that will be shipped internationally and inspected by customs... versus a purchase made in the privacy of your own home, that gets lost in the morass of internet traffic and about which no one would ever freaking know.

Or a better way to put it: if one is so worried about breaking the law by purchasing certain types of electronic materials, wouldn't possession of those materials also constitute breaking the law? Would it really amount to much of a defense if you told the judge that, well, the child pornography was a gift, so it's not like you actually spent money on it. Based on what I've seen of the way the world works, I don't think it makes any difference at all -- so if the laws are such that ordering a book, or a software, or whatever, would be bad, then it would follow that just owning such would also be bad... right?

Anyone?

Comments

[rurounitriv.livejournal.com]

Free or paid for, possession of kiddie porn is in itself a crime in the US. It does not matter if the kid in question is legal in his/her home country - what matters is, was that kid legal age according to US law at the time it was filmed.

It doesn't even have to be a real kid - look into the case of Christopher Handley, who was arrested for possession of child pornography because he collected manga, including lolicon and yaoi manga series. (Both genres can involve explicit sex, and the typical manga drawing style means that the characters tend to look pretty young.) All of his collection were legitimately acquired, and perfectly legal in Japan... but the cops in Iowa thought that the characters looked like kids, so into the slammer he went. http://www.yaoi911.com/how-to-keep-manga-fans-out-of-jail/ has a good review of the case, if you're curious.

[kracken.livejournal.com]

I think they did find that art images, that did not involve photography, or the depiction of real children, were ruled to not be child pornography.

[kaigou.livejournal.com]

Setting aside the case of the comics-collector (which is fraught with a number of issues in and of itself, including the strong impression that the guy had a bad lawyer and got totally railroaded), it's not true that photography automatically makes it porn. There was a case of a celebrated photographer, maybe ten or so years ago?, who was arrested for pornography and after going through the entire court-thing, found not guilty -- that is, his artwork was found 'not obscene'.

(Which was more than a little distressing when I first heard about it, since we own a number of his books. One day I have a collection of gorgeous coffee-table photography books, the next day I have pornography that I could be arrested for? What? You ask me, things like that should be grandfathered, or something -- because how am I supposed to know the law has changed overnight, or thanks to a single arrest, or whatever?)

Anyway, it's "The Age of Innocence," by David Hamilton, and "Radiant Identities," by Jock Sturges, and both are just AMAZING works of art, especially Radiant Identities -- as an artist, if you can find copies of Sturges' work, DO. You will be absolutely amazed. Here's an article-overview on the two cases: http://articles.latimes.com/1998/mar/08/news/mn-26778 -- but the upshot is "not obscene" ... so no, not all pictures of naked children are automatically pornography.

Although I'm not sure if the law has truly been changed, or if it's just finding exceptions here-and-there. Last thing I ever heard, taking pictures of your naked toddlers playing in the bathtub could still be considered "child pornography", which is absolutely utterly freaking ridiculous.

But that's a rant for another day, eh?

[rurounitriv.livejournal.com]

Excerpt from the Miller test for obscenity:
"(a) whether the average person, applying contemporary community standards would find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest; (b) whether the work depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by the applicable state law; and (c) whether the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value."

If you notice, there is nothing in there that says that the art in question has to be of a real child. And in fact, there is this from the PROTECT Act of 2003 (which is the law he has been convicted of violating):

(b) Additional Offenses.— Any person who, in a circumstance described in subsection (d), knowingly possesses a visual depiction of any kind, including a drawing, cartoon, sculpture, or painting, that—
(1)
(A) depicts a minor engaging in sexually explicit conduct; and
(B) is obscene; or
(2)
(A) depicts an image that is, or appears to be, of a minor engaging in graphic bestiality, sadistic or masochistic abuse, or sexual intercourse, including genital-genital, oral-genital, anal-genital, or oral-anal, whether between persons of the same or opposite sex; and
(B) lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value;
or attempts or conspires to do so, shall be subject to the penalties provided in section 2252A (b)(2), including the penalties provided for cases involving a prior conviction.
(c) Nonrequired Element of Offense.— It is not a required element of any offense under this section that the minor depicted actually exist.

So, according to the PROTECT Act, unless Handley could convince a jury full of ordinary Iowans that his manga were "serious works of art", he was up shit creek. This would probably be the main reason why his lawyer convinced him to plead guilty - there's way too many people out there who don't think anything that could be described as "comic books" could be considered real art.

[kaigou.livejournal.com]

I'm versed in the Miller test -- but the issue here isn't US laws, like I said, or of things that are obviously illegal per US law. But the simplest reply is probably just: so basically possession is an issue regardless of means of access. Given that US laws aren't at issue at all, here, anyway, which renders the Miller Test utterly moot.

[kaigou.livejournal.com]

*cough*

Off-topic, actually. I know the US's laws. My question wasn't about that, nor about purchase of physical goods. My question was whether the purchase of electronic materials -- such as ebooks, software, etc -- are restricted by any countries. And I don't mean for underage-pornographic-literature either; I mean just straight up everyday ebooks, software, and other bought-online-and-downloaded items.

The child pornography was only meant as an example of an item that I know full well is illegal no matter what form it was purchased (or given).

[rurounitriv.livejournal.com]

I imagine that it would depend on the country, and how draconian their laws are - but I wouldn't give two cents for your chances of staying out of jail if you were, say, an Iranian who got caught with the e-book version of The Satanic Verses or a Saudi who had Sports Illustrated's Swimsuit Edition saved on your hard drive.

I know that both of those countries have some serious filters going to keep their citizens out of certain social networking sites. I don't know that they could track down every individual e-book and podcast that their people download, but I wouldn't be surprised if some of them tried to at least flag the ones that were widely known and track down the people buying them.

[rezendi.livejournal.com]

Sure. F'rinstance, in theory you can't buy the Kindle iPhone web app on a Canadian iPhone. (In practice (http://www.iphoneincanada.ca/tips-tricks/how-to-download-books-to-kindle-iphone-app-canada/) is a different story.)

Similarly, there was a time when you weren't allowed to download a certain kind of cryptographic software to any IP number outside of the USA. Not sure if that's still true.

I expect there are many other examples.

[kaigou.livejournal.com]

Similarly, there was a time when you weren't allowed to download a certain kind of cryptographic software to any IP number outside of the USA. Not sure if that's still true.

That's still true, but that's regulated differently; it's not a matter of say, your country telling you that you can't buy so much as my country telling me that I can't sell it to you. We had all sorts of nightmares when I was in telecomm and dealing with a major AsiaPac project -- which meant potentially sending telecommunications sourcecode, over the internet, to a Chinese contracting company. OMFG you would've thought we'd offered to sell the baby jaysus to satan's minions -- all we were actually sending was the source code for an HTML page. But noooooo, it originated from telecom, so it was restricted. Heavily.

Hell, if you have security clearance and there's word you may have allowed citizens of certain countries access to certain softwares, you could lose your clearance.

But that's not the same as going on versiontracker and picking up a copy of shareware then paypalling your $10USD or 20SEK or whatever to the developer.

[rezendi.livejournal.com]

all we were actually sending was the source code for an HTML page. But noooooo, it originated from telecom, so it was restricted. Heavily.

That is hilarious.

[cosplayeriori.livejournal.com]

from my understanding of things if you own it..gift or not..it still illegal. IF found you probably will get in trouble. :/

But with your first part with say ordering something from a non-domestic site that is like an ebook or a program. I agree that it proably would get lost in the fray of other internet exchanges. And not be looked at.

I order from a japanese bishoujou game/doujin place (for the lay person that would be H-games, hentai, adult, however you wanna put it) that has now started into the e-book/manga range as well. I've seen this starting to pop up now. E-manga, buy your stuff online, now you REALLY don't have to leave the house. But there OH LORD, the stuff you can get that if ever opened up at a post office you could potentially get in trouble for. (re the guy that is now going on trial for japanese doujins = child pr0n cause someone decided to open up a package at the post office. I am getting ready to do a order of BL stuff from jpqueen before they close their site and this is making me MILDLY antsy about it. There shouldn't be anything in that would get me in trouble but still. Its disconcerting)

If your internet savvy enough, and know at least very very basic japanese you can EASILY order from this site with a CC card. (I have as well!)
This sites word to foreign users? The stuff on the main site are for Japanese users only. If you buy something on the Japanese site and it doesn't work on your system or your can't figure it out? Too bad we won't help you or refund you. (since the site DOES have an English side but its offerings are pretty bad..and by bad I mean bad quality)

So the internet is full of gray, and their really isn't much (I think) of people policing non domestic orderings of things like ebooks and programs.

This turned really rambling and inane =_=

[kaigou.livejournal.com]

Hmm. Maybe I shouldn't have distracted folks with real-world examples -- I'm talking about just plain books. As in, if you don't know the publishers, how would you know it's anything other than an electronic text? It's not like someone can open the download mid-send and eyeball a few paragraphs. (Well, it's possible, but very very hard above an ISP-level, and not really worth it for say, the FBI.)

No, not rambling, because you did answer some of the question -- I was under the impression that overseas companies wouldn't sell to non-domestic purchasers, in some cases (like physical goods), but apparently that's not always so. Good to know.

[haya5h1.livejournal.com]

Amazon and Real won't let me buy downloadable media (software and music and in the case of Amazon, I can't buy ebooks from them because they won't sell the Kindle to me) because of where I live, but I think that's more corporate stupidity than local law. That said, these days I hesitate to buy doujinshi through the mail because possession of porn (of any type not just kiddie) is illegal here, and if the Customs or postal authorities go through my snail mail, which they are more wont to do than not, I'd be in a whole heap o'trouble.

...that is, if they didn't just steal it.:p

[kaigou.livejournal.com]

Well, I can't order from Amazon, either, because I don't have (and will likely never have) a Kindle. But can you order from say, iTunes? Or Fictionwise? Or purchase software over the 'net? Any other kind of electronic material?

And I guess we'd have to define porn -- does that cover the literary (book) as well as the more obvious visual (comics, pictures, videos)? If you buy a romance novel and it has a sex scene in it, does this constitute breaking the law? If you downloaded it as an electronic exchange, my semi-sarcastic note about the child porn was that in the US, downloading for free versus paying for it doesn't change the legality, so wouldn't that logically be a likely situation elsewhere, as well?

[branchandroot]

To the best of my knowledge, no government has bothered with the set-up that would be necessary to 'inspect' electronic goods transfers yet. Aside, as you note, from the Government With Too Much Time On Its Hands, and even they only block. We both know it would be possible to do, but it would be a hella pain to set it up and extremely heavy on the man-hours unless they went with some kind of text-scanning algorithm which would be... well probably just as many man hours to look at all the false positives. And I'm not sure it could be done invisibly (that is without noticeable delay of delivery), so in some countries you'd also have huge public outcry about reading a person's mail since that's how most of the first world public would probably think of it, foreign purchase or not.

[kaigou.livejournal.com]

As CP pointed out when I was discussing it with him over dinner, it'd be unsurprising if in certain Islamic countries it's illegal to purchase an electronic copy of a Salmon Rushdie book. Sure. But it's one thing to look for all electronic signatures that say "rushdie" versus to look at all electronic signatures and just know which one is ebook, which is not, and selectively toss some out and let others through. That effort would be immense.

[muffiewrites.livejournal.com]

Some countries restrict the purchases/use of electronic materials. Iran and China are excellent examples of places that do these things. In these countries, possession is enough of a crime. Many places have laws based on purchase and based on possession. In the US, for example, you can be charged with possession of illegal drugs, possession with intent to sell, and for purchasing drugs (depending on your locality) because of RICO.

Data has the same kind of thing going on. I have a friend who runs a porno site that archives stories and supports it by selling movies. It's international with the servers based in California. It's blocked in about half of the world. China can't read it, if the country has Sharia Laws, they can't read it. Sometimes Taiwan can, sometimes they can't. It's illegal to access the site and possession of it's contents on the harddrive is (temp files, cookies, etc.) is prosecutable. People do it anyway. I haven't heard of anyone prosecuted for doing so, but it has been done. China regularly prosecutes people for accessing websites. They prosecute bloggers. Owning a blog is prosecutable. So, yeah, just possessing the electronic copy of forbidden material in the State in which a person lives can be enough for prosecution.

China is currently attempting to restrict the purchase of Operating Systems so that only State approved websites may be accessed. That means no more Myspace, Facebook, Hotmail, etc. if they can get the OS makers to go for it. So far, it's not working.

[kaigou.livejournal.com]

It's blocked in about half of the world. China can't read it, if the country has Sharia Laws, they can't read it. Sometimes Taiwan can, sometimes they can't.

...which supports my supposition that if you can *see* it, you can *interact* with it. From what I've read, China doesn't intercept what you're doing -- it just doesn't let you do it in the first place. (Of course, it seems like China is constantly on the losing end of trying to keep up with new domains and IPs and sneaky bloggers etc, not that I'm crying for them losing and in fact am all for them losing that battle permanently but hey.)

In the US, for example, you can be charged with possession of illegal drugs, possession with intent to sell, and for purchasing drugs (depending on your locality) because of RICO.

RICO was a force for good. At some point. I'm thinking for maybe about fifteen minutes after it was signed into law, and then it went south with the very first sneaky prosecutor to come along. Hell, my biggest disgust for the Patriot Act is reserved for the fact that it was really nothing more than 'expand the powerz of RICO to the nth degree for the War On Drugs Mmmmkay' -- and vice-versa, but again, I suppose that's a rant for another time.