![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Right, so, in relation to the latest LJ/6A mess. Just me doing some thinking. See, I get that LJ is private company and therefore under no obligations to actually provide freedom of speech. I accept that LJ is ultimately allowed to decide what content they want to allow, though I think it is very bad customer service to not do so upfront rather than the latest mess. I also get and accept that LJ has to obey the relevant laws of the US and California, because, well, laws exist (mostly) to be obeyed and if a journal-blog-site is going to be made that will not occasionally run into such problems, then I suspect that the servers will have to be located in some obscure Pacific island country with a distinct lack of laws about a lot of things. Not that that might not be a good idea, but still.
What annoys and confuses me, though, is all the talk of artistic merit and obscenity and such. Perhaps it is simply due to my background, as a Dane and all. Still.
In short, I am confused, and sorry, but so far LJ hasn't been so kind as to alleviate my confusion. Of course, knowing LJ, they'd probably think my pretty userpic is obscene. Shows what they know...
Also, I still think Kim Larsen's "Vi er dem de andre ikke må lege med" would be a excellent song for fandom to use, apart from the whole language issue. Ah well...
What annoys and confuses me, though, is all the talk of artistic merit and obscenity and such. Perhaps it is simply due to my background, as a Dane and all. Still.
First of all, artistic merit. Now, me, I'm currently studying to be cand.scient.bibl. at the Danish School of Library and Information Science, and have an interest in culture and such. Admittedly, library studies involve mostly texts, but anyway. The thing is, as I understand it, artistic merit is impossible to judge, because we live in a hypercomplex/postmodern/latemodern/whatever age. The great stories are dead. There are no absolutes. There are a thousand perspectives to view a thing through, and especially with art, what one person considers a great work of art, another can think is junk, and they are both right! Taste is individual and therefore difficult to judge.
Still, people judge artistic merit - reviewers, buyers for museums, etc. What I want to know is what qualifications LJ has to do this? Longterm fans involved in fandom, 30 years working for a museum of modern arts, took Art 101 50 years ago, what?
Also, I'd be careful saying that a thing does not have artistic merit. At various points in the not too distant past, such things as a urinal, tin cans containing the artist's feces, a dead and rotting pig, stuffed puppies, the slaughtering of a horse, a naked man spending several days in a big glass box and goldfish in blenders have all been considered as having artistic merit. Admittedly, there was plenty of people saying things like "I don't get it", "I don't like it" and "That's cruelty to animals" (blended goldfish, anyone?), but nevertheless, all those things have been found on respectable museums (admittedly, the pig left prematuraly - it stank) and surely must have some artistic merit, right? My point is, artistic merit is in the eye of the beholder, and trust me, anything can have it.
Right, on to the obscenity. Now, it seems to me that mostly people seem to be equating obscenity with porn, especially hard-core stuff. Personally, I find stuff like various terrorist execution videos and the pictures from Abu Ghraib considerably more obscene than a few cum shots, but that's a discussion for another day. So, obscenity seems to equal porn.
See, this is where my background means that I am confused. Because in Denmark porn was legalized in the 60's and we tend to be proud of being the first country in the world to do so, because we tend to imagine ourselves to be all about freedom of speech and such. Our government likes to think of itself as very pro-freedom of speech (remember the whole Muhammed cartoons thing?), even though there has been some unfortunate stuff about e-mails to public service television. Still. Our grundlov plainly states that censorship can never be a thing. We still have to be careful not to run afoul of laws about libel, racism, blasphemy (funny thing - before the recent Muslim troubles the last time this was tried was in the 70's, with a song that's all about how God is dirty old man who spies on little girls when they masturbate - it wasn't found blasphemous. I heard that song in school, I remember.), insulting the queen (which has recently been done by a naked woman posing on the throne...), stuff like that. We have rating systems for movies and the like, but even these differ from foreign systems - try comparing the Danish and American ratings on movies like Love actually or American pie. Besides, the highest Danish rating is 15, meaning that once you are over this age, you can see anything you want in the cinema. Have fun with that.
Now, we do have laws about porn in Denmark. One is that you have to be 16 years old to buy it (like you have to be for buying alcohol, cigarettes, lottery tickets, that kind of things.)
The second is about child porn. Child porn is of course illegal. In Denmark it includes fictional images, such as Harry Potter. Child porn is defined as pornographic images of people younger than 18. However, it is legal to own porn of people who are as young as 15 with the consent of the specific people. This is most likely the result of complications such as age of consent, EU standardization (curved cucumbers, anyone?) and the thought that it would be ridiculous to be allowed to have sex with a 16-year-old, but not to make a dirty homevideo for one's private enjoyment of it.
Child porn is disgusting. There, that's my humble opinion. Still, when I think child porn, I tend to think pre-pubescent. Little kids. Not a 17-year-old, for instance. Still, the law is the law. But when you're dealing with drawings, how are you supposed to be able to tell if someone is 17 or 19? The naughty Harry/Snape picture, would it have been alright if there had been a tiny card lying around saying "Happy 18th Birthday, Harry :-)"? How about photo manips and such involving characters from television series - is one supposed to go by the age of the character or the age of the actor? For instance, in Buffy, in the first seasons Xander is probably 16-17, but the actor playing him was born in 1971. And how about a character's apparent age versus real age? If someone is making naughty pictures of, for instance, Armand from Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles. After all, Armand is supposed to be around 500, well above the age of consent, but his appearance is that of a 15-year-old. Is that acceptable?
Still, people judge artistic merit - reviewers, buyers for museums, etc. What I want to know is what qualifications LJ has to do this? Longterm fans involved in fandom, 30 years working for a museum of modern arts, took Art 101 50 years ago, what?
Also, I'd be careful saying that a thing does not have artistic merit. At various points in the not too distant past, such things as a urinal, tin cans containing the artist's feces, a dead and rotting pig, stuffed puppies, the slaughtering of a horse, a naked man spending several days in a big glass box and goldfish in blenders have all been considered as having artistic merit. Admittedly, there was plenty of people saying things like "I don't get it", "I don't like it" and "That's cruelty to animals" (blended goldfish, anyone?), but nevertheless, all those things have been found on respectable museums (admittedly, the pig left prematuraly - it stank) and surely must have some artistic merit, right? My point is, artistic merit is in the eye of the beholder, and trust me, anything can have it.
Right, on to the obscenity. Now, it seems to me that mostly people seem to be equating obscenity with porn, especially hard-core stuff. Personally, I find stuff like various terrorist execution videos and the pictures from Abu Ghraib considerably more obscene than a few cum shots, but that's a discussion for another day. So, obscenity seems to equal porn.
See, this is where my background means that I am confused. Because in Denmark porn was legalized in the 60's and we tend to be proud of being the first country in the world to do so, because we tend to imagine ourselves to be all about freedom of speech and such. Our government likes to think of itself as very pro-freedom of speech (remember the whole Muhammed cartoons thing?), even though there has been some unfortunate stuff about e-mails to public service television. Still. Our grundlov plainly states that censorship can never be a thing. We still have to be careful not to run afoul of laws about libel, racism, blasphemy (funny thing - before the recent Muslim troubles the last time this was tried was in the 70's, with a song that's all about how God is dirty old man who spies on little girls when they masturbate - it wasn't found blasphemous. I heard that song in school, I remember.), insulting the queen (which has recently been done by a naked woman posing on the throne...), stuff like that. We have rating systems for movies and the like, but even these differ from foreign systems - try comparing the Danish and American ratings on movies like Love actually or American pie. Besides, the highest Danish rating is 15, meaning that once you are over this age, you can see anything you want in the cinema. Have fun with that.
Now, we do have laws about porn in Denmark. One is that you have to be 16 years old to buy it (like you have to be for buying alcohol, cigarettes, lottery tickets, that kind of things.)
The second is about child porn. Child porn is of course illegal. In Denmark it includes fictional images, such as Harry Potter. Child porn is defined as pornographic images of people younger than 18. However, it is legal to own porn of people who are as young as 15 with the consent of the specific people. This is most likely the result of complications such as age of consent, EU standardization (curved cucumbers, anyone?) and the thought that it would be ridiculous to be allowed to have sex with a 16-year-old, but not to make a dirty homevideo for one's private enjoyment of it.
Child porn is disgusting. There, that's my humble opinion. Still, when I think child porn, I tend to think pre-pubescent. Little kids. Not a 17-year-old, for instance. Still, the law is the law. But when you're dealing with drawings, how are you supposed to be able to tell if someone is 17 or 19? The naughty Harry/Snape picture, would it have been alright if there had been a tiny card lying around saying "Happy 18th Birthday, Harry :-)"? How about photo manips and such involving characters from television series - is one supposed to go by the age of the character or the age of the actor? For instance, in Buffy, in the first seasons Xander is probably 16-17, but the actor playing him was born in 1971. And how about a character's apparent age versus real age? If someone is making naughty pictures of, for instance, Armand from Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles. After all, Armand is supposed to be around 500, well above the age of consent, but his appearance is that of a 15-year-old. Is that acceptable?
In short, I am confused, and sorry, but so far LJ hasn't been so kind as to alleviate my confusion. Of course, knowing LJ, they'd probably think my pretty userpic is obscene. Shows what they know...
Also, I still think Kim Larsen's "Vi er dem de andre ikke må lege med" would be a excellent song for fandom to use, apart from the whole language issue. Ah well...
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
From:
no subject
(can i link in the recap post i'm eventually going to make?)
(Can I move to Denmark please?)
From:
no subject
(and link away)
(Sure, if you can get past the immigration authorities... which might be a challenge)
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
Fandom needs to find a code-savvy person living in the Pacific to put up a domain where we can all congregate and live our happy, porn-viewing/writing/reading lives in peace.
(seconding
(And just because I can't help it... Museum Erotica! (the rebellious side of me wishes I'd actually gone in. =P))
From:
no subject
(sure, as I said, link away. I don't mind)
(Ah, Museum Erotica. It's the oddest mix of silly and extremely interesting, actually. :-) But you can see it the next time you come to Denmark, surely, and then proceed to Iceland and visit this museum: http://www.phallus.is/ )
From:
no subject
(yay. thanks. ^_^)
(*views site* ...o_O well then. That is interesting. I indeed need to remember to pencil in a visit to Iceland. And another visit to Denmark, of course.)
From:
no subject
Of course, I may have understood this completely wrong.
From:
no subject
Personally, I don't get how fictional minors can be hurt by being in pictures anyway...
From:
no subject
I keep thinking of it as a tourist board slogan:
"Welcome to the EU, where only the cucumbers have to be straight".
From:
no subject
Ah, but sometimes the EU can be fun, though usually they would just like us all to "come together": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=koRlFnBlDH0
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
LJ is strongly associating obscenity with explicit drawings of minors, but it can be used against any sexual material someone deems offensive.
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
Well, during the Victorian age it was considered offensive to be able to see a woman's ankles. Actually, even furniture was not allowed to show their legs. Does this mean that we could get the IKEA catalogue condemned as obscene? ;-)
Still sounds to me like the American use of the term obscenity is just a convenient way for the powers-that-be to get rid of whatever offends them...
From:
no subject
("Child pornography" in the US deals only with real children--people who have rights that are being violated by either putting them into erotic settings, or by distributing erotic pictures of them.)
So:
("Regular porn" can also run into obscenity laws; the standards are only as listed in 1B, and then you're still allowed to have it, just not to sell or publicly distribute it.)
Note that "is obscene" bit? That's what has people upset. The standard for "obscenity" is blurry as hell, and requires that a piece be "patently offensive by community standards" AND "lacks serious artistic... value."
Which community? The law says that's variable, and understands that it's different in different areas. What applies online? NOBODY KNOWS. And nobody wants to be the test case.
And, of course, LJ/6A won't even tell us what community's standards they claim to be applying.
(I am not a lawyer. This is not legal advice.)
From:
no subject
("Child pornography" in the US deals only with real children--people who have rights that are being violated by either putting them into erotic settings, or by distributing erotic pictures of them.)
As I understand it, the reason for the Danish law prohibiting child porn that doesn't involve real minors has a lot to do with what I suppose you can call "the escalation model". Experts are saying that if pedophiles are allowed to legally look at fake child porn, then sooner or later that will not be enough and they will want to move on to real child porn, and sooner or later that will not be enough and they will want to move on to a child. So, in the end, Danish law seems to intend to actually protect both children and the pedophiles by preventing this, hopefully. Not that everybody believes it will work, but one can hope, right?
From:
Hi, here from metafandom
It all goes back to various American obscenity trials, some of which generated US Supreme Court rulings. If I get anything wrong here, hopefully any lawyers reading will correct me.
In 1933, James Joyce's novel Ulysses was put on trial in New York state for "obscenity." It was ruled to not be so because of its literary value (ref (caxton.stockton.edu/ulysses/stories/storyReader$3).)
In 1964 two significant Supreme Court cases linked "not-obscene" to "artistic merit. Grove Press, Inc. vs. Gerstein declared Henry Miller's novel Tropic of Cancer to be literature. In the Jacobellis (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacobellis_v._Ohio) decision, the High Court ruled that a French movie ("The Lovers") wasn't "obscene." This case resulted in the famous quote from the Chief Justice,
Even the judges in our own Supreme Court have been divided. Back in the 1960s, Justice Hugo Black insisted that even the most obscene & pornographic material deserved First Amendment protection.
Later, in 1973, the US Supreme Court again took up the question of artistic merit and obscenity, in the famous Miller case (after which the "Miller Test," referred to in LJ's own comments, is named.) Miller was a California pornographer who sent out mass mailings advertising his books. Miller lost - the decision was that "obscenity" is NOT constitutionally-protected speech.
The consequence of the Miller case was that the High Court defined (or so it thought) a test by which "obscenity" could be measured. For our purposes something could be considered not-obscene if "the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value." (ref (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miller_v._California).)
So in short, IMO it's been US Supreme Court decisions which serve as the "artistic merit" engine which pull the "obscenity test" train - whether that's reasonable or not (probably not, as opinions about art widely vary.)
From:
Re: Hi, here from metafandom
something could be considered not-obscene
Ah, Freudian slips. Don't you just love them? :-)
lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value
Well, I admit porn doesn't always have those things, but it usually has entertainment value, so to speak. Is the Supreme Court being entertainment-ist?
something could be considered obscene if "the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value."
Sounds like I could make a case that "The Prince and Me" would qualify as obscene, if I really wanted to waste that much time on a crappy movie...
From:
Re: Hi, here from metafandom
That's pretty close to it, yes. The thing is, the US has *always* been in many ways a religiously conservative country. This gets reflected in our politics - and as you rightly point out, in the structure of our judiciary - and our laws.
You have to remember, we're a country that made it against the law even in the 1920s to send sexually explicit information (including birth control information and devices) through the mail (Comstock Laws (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comstock_act).) In the 1960s we still had states (Connecticutt and Massachusetts) where birth control was illegal in part or full.
Good point about entertainment - but under current US judicial decisions, something defined as "obscene" by the Miller Test (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miller_test) - even if entertaining - is considered beyond the pale of constitutional protection. Again, I think this belief arises out of American culture, which in many ways is still puritanical, especially about sex.
LOL, is my Freudian slip showing?
From:
Re: Hi, here from metafandom
I tend to find it somewhat ironic, that the US, a nation that is so very proud of its separation of church and state, nevertheless has some of the most religious people around and tend to mix religion into everything, including politics.
In the meantime, Denmark, a nation where the official head of state is also the official head of the official state church and where the church still handles several administrative duties, especially related to the registration of names and to cemetaries, still manages to have a very large amount of atheists and even when people believe in God, the majority tend to consider religion something private, so private that even going to church every sunday is something that tends to be viewed as a bit odd, and where the only place in any official speech for the mention of God is the "God preserve Denmark" that the Queen traditionally ends her non-political New Year's speech with. In fact, our lack of religious feeling has been one of the reasons why we have had so much trouble with our Muslim immigrants, who tend to be considerably more religious than the average Dane, which means that we tend to be mutually puzzling at best and, well, at worst we have had the cartoon mess...
Of course, I also find it ironic that Denmark, small and fairly peaceful as we are these days, are nevertheless descended from the Vikings, some of the most feared warriors ever. Ah well, it would be dull if everything was logical...
From:
no subject
From:
Here via metafandom; minor spoilers ahead for Star Wars III
Concerning violence in media: I watched Revenge of the Sith last night. The movie was rated PG-13 (meaning that anyone could attend it), and I think it's fair to say that movie was marketed heavily toward families. I was sitting there thinking, "I am living in a nation where it's considered acceptable for a minor to watch a person being burned alive, for the sake of light entertainment. This is despicable."
So yes, I heartily agree with you when you say, "Personally, I find stuff like various terrorist execution videos and the pictures from Abu Ghraib considerably more obscene than a few cum shots . . ."
From:
Re: Here via metafandom; minor spoilers ahead for Star Wars III
I can tell you that Star Wars III was allowed for all children older than 11, with children as young as 7 allowed if accompanied by a legal adult - my guess is that this is because the violence takes place in an obviously fictive setting. Taking a very young child to the cinema to see a foreign movie would probably be a bad idea anyway - if there is one thing that will earn you the hate of your fellow movie goers it's an innocent child voice asking "Mommy, what are they saying?"