{"id":332,"date":"2003-08-14T07:04:36","date_gmt":"2003-08-14T15:04:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.amptoons.com\/blog\/archives\/2003\/08\/14\/censorship-followup\/"},"modified":"2003-08-14T07:04:36","modified_gmt":"2003-08-14T15:04:36","slug":"censorship-followup","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=332","title":{"rendered":"Censorship followup"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jim of Unqualified Offerings<\/a> responds to my previous entry thus:<\/p>\n

Two notable dissents from the outrage have been raised by Ampersand and William Dwyer<\/a>. Both argue that Castillo’s lawyers did a poor job defending their client. Ampersand further expresses a feminist approval of obscenity laws generally and their application to the comic in question – which is to say, contentment that a retail worker should spend 180 days in jail for selling a magazine to a grownup, pay a $4,000 fine out of his retail salary and record a felony conviction for an inflammatory charge on every job application he completes for the rest of his life.<\/div>\n

* * *<\/p>\n

Apparently Jim entirely missed the point of my previous post, which was<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. the reason the jury found no serious artistic or literary merit in Demon Beast Invasion<\/i> is that there was none to be found; and\n<\/li>\n
  2. folks like Jim <\/a>who think this ruling strips first amendment rights from the entire comics medium have misunderstood the decision, and are needlessly spreading panic. Contrary to Jim’s opinion, the sky has not fallen.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    * * *<\/p>\n

    I’m not sure what Jim means by a “feminist” disapproval – as anyone who knows feminism knows, many feminists disagree about obscenity laws. (Try asking Nadine Strossen, the very feminist president of the ACLU, or Avadon Carol<\/a> what they think).<\/p>\n

    More importantly, Jim’s putting words in my mouth. Of course, I don’t think Jesus Castillo deserves a felony on his record, a $4000 fine, or any jail time. I’d rather that Texas had never put Mr. Castillo on trial at all; as I said in my previous post, prosecuting this case was a waste of court time and taxpayer money.<\/p>\n

    The good news for Jesus Castillo is that Jim has again misunderstood the case. Mr. Castillo was sentenced to a year’s probation; assuming he doesn’t break probation, he won’t spend any time in jail. And his conviction is a misdemeanor, not a felony, so he’s spared reporting a felony conviction on future job applications. (I got this info from William Dwyer’s excellent post<\/a> on the case, by the way – link via Jim).<\/p>\n

    Of course, $4000 is still way too high a fine (it certainly seems like a whopping sum to me – that’s a third of my annual income!), but compared to other miscarraiges of justice (innocent folks on death row, Patriot-Act-related travesties, etc) it doesn’t seem like a world-shattering injustice. And the good news (via Tom Tomorrow<\/a>) is, the fine has been paid ” by customers of the shop and other local supporters.” (Good for them!)<\/p>\n

    * * *<\/p>\n

    It should be pointed out that first amendment crusaders like the CBLDF are part of the problem in Mr. Castillo’s case, not part of the solution. Without the drumbeat of first amendment crusaders demanding a courtroom fight, Mr. Castillo might have chosen to cop a plea, and would probably have gotten off with a $500 fine. Since he was clearly guilty under the law, that would have been the most sensible course for him to take.<\/p>\n

    It’s only because he went to trial (and because his lawyers failed to get a record of the sentencing hearing, making it impossible for Mr. Castillo to appeal his sentence) that he wound up being sentenced as harsly as he was<\/p>\n

    * * *<\/p>\n

    By the way, don’t any<\/i> of the CBLDF’s donors and supporters care that the defense in this case seems to have been rather on the incompetant side? If I were a CBLDF donor, I’d be pissed off; those folks are definitely not getting their money’s worth.<\/p>\n

    * * *<\/p>\n

    More generally, what censorship laws would I approve of?<\/p>\n

    Personally, I think that child porn and rape porn should be censored as heavily as possible (within the bounds of the Miller decision<\/a>) and driven as far underground as possible. Allowing a market for child or rape porn (including “virtual” stuff) to flourish is wrong, because those markets encourage porn producers to harm real people.<\/p>\n

    Beyond that, I really don’t give a damn. But for me, “not giving a damn” goes two ways. I don’t agitate for Demon Beast Invasion <\/i>and its ilk to be censored; but neither am I going to panic and start screaming “comics have lost all first amendment protection!” when a piece of worthless porn crap with zero artistic merit like Demon Beast Invasion<\/i> gets censored.<\/p>\n

    UPDATE: I’ve removed a couple of paragraphs speculating about how the fine could be paid, replaced by the good news that customers and local supporters have paid the fine. Thanks to Lis <\/a>for providing that info in the comments. Also, to prevent confusion, I changed my wording in the final paragraph; see my exchange with Eli in the comments for details.<\/p>\n

    SECOND UPDATE: See this response <\/a>to me from Jim at Unqualified Offerings. The area of disagreement between me and Jim has gotten much narrower.<\/p>\n

    I also very much agreed with this post <\/a>of Jim’s, in which he calls for the comics press to investigate this case, and in particular investigate whether or not the $60,000 CBLDF defense screwed up the case..<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Jim of Unqualified Offerings responds to my previous entry thus: Two notable dissents from the outrage have been raised by Ampersand and William Dwyer. Both argue that Castillo’s lawyers did a poor job defending their client. Ampersand further expresses a … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,91,65],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-332","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cartooning-comics","category-free-speech-censorship-copyright-law-etc","category-sex-work-porn"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/332","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=332"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/332\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=332"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=332"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=332"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}