The Daily Almanac: A Man Goes to Jail for Manga
Christopher Handley, the man who pleaded guilty last year to possession of “obscene” lolicon manga, was finally sentenced today to 6 months of jail, followed by 3 years of supervised released and an additional 5 years of probation. ANN has the complete details on the court documents released today, which includes a lot of background information on the case that had yet to be known to the public.
There are no words to describe this. Somebody is actually going to be in jail for 6 months just for his manga collection, and that is one of the most ridiculous things that could possibly happen in this country’s judicial system.
I’ve been writing about this issue for years on this blog, about the dangerous precedence being set when you make such works of fiction illegal. But the problem is not getting better, it’s been getting worse – far worse – year after year.
And nobody seems to care. Because after all, what about the children? Won’t somebody please think about the children!
Those fictional, big eyed, blue haired children!
But what’s worst is that when looking over Handley’s background information, you realize that this guy is your average American otaku. He had no prior criminal record, graduated college with a 4.0 GPA, spent a brief time in the US Navy, and then had a solid 12 year professional career as a computer programmer.
The guy had no criminal record! He was a regular, law abiding, tax paying, American citizen.
And now he’s going to jail for fictional pornography?!
He’s spending time behind bars because he read comic books?!
How the hell did this happen?
How the hell could this possibly happen?
But most of all, where does it go from here? Will more American otaku get sent to prison for the contents of their anime and manga collection, or will we finally get rid of this ridiculous law once and for all?
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Well, changing gears to the more lighter news today, tomorrow is Katsucon and the Anime Almanac will be down in DC to cover all the goings on.
If you’re unfamiliar with the way I cover anime conventions, for the most part, I tweet them. I tweet all the news and announcements the moment they’re said at an industry panel, and I tweet pictures I take from my iPhone on the convention floor. And then when the day is done, I gather all these tweets into an aggregrate and then post them onto this blog in one solid “Day in Tweets” blog entry.
The big blizzard that blew across the east coast yesterday did completely throw me off schedule, so I’m quickly gathering everything I can for the big trip down to DC tomorrow morning. Because of this, I might not have all my equipment set up to pull off my “Day in Tweets” posts this time around. But even if this blog goes silent for the next few days, be sure to follow my Twitter feed for everything at Katsucon the moment it happens.
Also, I’ll be going with the crew of Time Out Productions, so you can expect to see me pop up in some of their video coverage this year.
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Micheal Pinto of Fanboy.com shows off some awesome emoticon sushi! (^_^) Yum!
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And finally, I was shock to read that my good ol’ tweet peep, Serial, only just started watching Time of Eve yesterday. This series has been legally available online for well over a year now, so there really isn’t any excuse why any of you have not seen it yet. It is the best video on Crunchyroll, no doubt about that!
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And that will wrap up the Daily Almanac for this week. See you all at Katsucon tomorrow! (^_^)