Hello. I’m obviously trying to stay anonymous, but what I’ll reveal is that I’m currently residing in Germany.
I’m an NSFW artist in the brony community and would like to hear your opinion about whether I could get into trouble for drawing “feral” lolicon art, aka stallion on filly or mare on filly.
I am aware that the German law prohibits the distribution and creation of lolicon art, however I do not know whether this is applicable to animals or animal-like fantasy creatures.
I think those are all good points to consider. I feel like Germany has a very “don’t tell me any details and we’re good” kind of thinking where artists can skirt by only advertising on English plattforms and keeping their real identity seperate from their artist identity.
In some ways, this may even risk me legal troubles (which I doubt would be very big, as long as I’m paying taxes), but if I’m drawing foalcon anyway, that might be the way to go.
The letter of the law explicitly states that the creation is also penalized.
§ 184b Verbreitung, Erwerb und Besitz kinderpornographischer Inhalte
“(1) 4) einen kinderpornographischen Inhalt herstellt, bezieht, liefert, vorrätig hält, anbietet, bewirbt oder es unternimmt, diesen ein- oder auszuführen, um ihn im Sinne der Nummer 1 oder der Nummer 2 zu verwenden oder einer anderen Person eine solche Verwendung zu ermöglichen, soweit die Tat nicht nach Nummer 3 mit Strafe bedroht ist.”
“Gibt der kinderpornographische Inhalt in den Fällen von Absatz 1 Satz 1 Nummer 1 und 4 kein tatsächliches oder wirklichkeitsnahes Geschehen wieder, so ist auf Freiheitsstrafe von drei Monaten bis zu fünf Jahren zu erkennen.”
But what you’re saying might be true, because I have read a scholarly article on this law in particular by someone who took it for granted that the creation of it cannot be illegal.
You’re completely right. I misread.
Edit: Sorry, I missed this. It wouldn’t be illegal, considering laws against depicting bestiality describe human-on-animal action, correct? I specified horse-on-horse love.
Do you have any suggestions for countries that may allow both (feral + lolicon) and generally offers more freedoms for artists?
No offence to Finnish people, but are there any other countries you can recommend?
Thank you for the info.
Denmark seems fine. I’m closer to Denmark than I am to the Netherlands.
Do you happen to know what their law thinks about bestiality?
That’s… unfortunate. Though I highly doubt I’d be on their radar as long as it stays fictional.
Well, anyways. Thanks a lot for the help.
Despite many of the strict laws that my country has, I think I’ll finish my studies first and I’ll think about living in Denmark in few years to come. It’s definitely a travel destination I’m interested in, either way.
I strongly urge any and all consideration for challenging these statutory provisions which target images or materials which do not involve the use of actual children in their production within the German courts.
This is an egregious break with German tradition, and is astoundingly and fundamentally incompatible with the most basic notions of ideological autonomy and privacy.
We have near-draconian laws when it comes anything to do with media (fictional rape/violent sex isn’t allowed either).
But unlike countries like Australia, we seem much less interested in applying these laws (except maybe the hellscape that is further to the south, our largest advocates for anti-freedom are conservatives).
I’m kind of inclined to just “try it out” and eat the fine or whatever I’d get in the unlikely scenario I get caught. And after that happens, I’ll probably decide to stop or just live in another country for the rest of my life.
I am not sure how you expect me to “challenge these statutory provisions”. You mean like producing studies in front of a judge? Sending fan mail to my favorite politician? It seems like none of the big boys give a fuck as long as they can virtue signal about fighting pedophilia.
If you’re not comfortable with your posts being public, please send them in DM, rather than deleting multiple posts and making the conversation unreadable for other users.
Ah, that’s what it was. I was so confused!
Over the last few years Germany has seen a string of child abuse scandals come to light, one seemingly more shocking than the other. Unfortunately this has been used by opportunistic politicians and less professional child protection agencies to drive the German population in what I would almost call a mindless frenzy, where it is impossible to have any kind of neutral discussions about anything that has even the remotest connection to the sexual attraction of children.
Instead, the last years have seen a long list of “law & order” - type politicians enacting harder punishments while criminalizing more and more behavior, regardless of whether it actually harms anyone or not.
The result is that the police are currently mercilessly pursuing lonely people for trying to cope via child dolls, parents for having innocent pictures of their kids and even minors for sexting among themselves.
I would be very cautious with this. If you are convicted, you might end up in jail (as ridiculous as it is). Even more importantly, there are a lot of additional conditions for people convicted for child pornography, like an extended criminal record and a professional ban for more or less every job in the social sector. Meaning that if you work with minors, elders, immigrants or anything of the sort you are basically forbidden to work your job for at least the next ten years.
And while there are not many known cases where people were convicted for drawings, there are some. At least one person was convicted for just the possession of comics depicting children. It’s a risky bet, risking your freedom and your future on the hope that the prosecution is too lazy or overworked to actually follow the law and the legislator’s intents.
The link you posted dealt with very realistic drawings which is clear from the charge, wording and literature surrounding this topic including statements from the prosecutors general office. Comic is a word that everyone sees as a synonym to cartoon, but you could also make a comic using photographs. I know marvel artists who do very realistic action comics (also see: Photo comics - Wikipedia). A comic is thus any media that accompanies visuals with text (e. g. speech bubbles, also see Wikipedia entry of “Comic”).
Is it illegal? Yes. I visited some german anime conventions over the years and there have been many artists dealing with such art, selling them and creating booster packs depicting sexual acts in partnership with the conventions. One of the conventions, located in cologne, has also created a company just to sell pretty sus ahegao tissue paper. They either do not know, or are provoking until they get warned, or shut down. I heard from a german visual novel site that they got warned once.
These german artists twitter profiles are littered with, from my PoV, illegal art, but either nobody is reporting them, or law enforcement does not care. Your life pretty much depends on the feelings of a state prosecutor and if he is interested in charging you, or not.
I do not think that you can do anything against it. Many artists (writers, musicians…) already failed with their constitutional complaints due to the insane youth protection laws which just got even stricter two years ago, or so. Age restricting the media does not matter if the produced product is “capable of confusing, or damaging children and teenagers in their development”. All media that is rated as such is illegal to publicly share. That is why a lot of adult media is censored (R18 violent games etc.) and books banished.
What you could do is wait for the EU wide age verification program and then file a complaint arguing, now that a valid and mandatory system is in place, there is no legitimate reason to prohibit the after mentioned media. There is no point in fighting against it now, as every attempt so far has failed. Last year a court has given permission to ban access to adult porn websites and confirmed that german youth protection laws must be obeyed by everyone in the world (lmao). One of the state bodies fighting against porn websites told news that they will never stop fighting, because taking down one big website will “send a signal” making other websites bow down in a domino effect. Also, I recommend you reading some of the publicized documents from the authorities where they quote studies from 1960-1980 which state that the combination of pornography and violence is very dangerous and “would lead to a society, where sexual violence is normalized”.
In short: your audience does not matter, it does not matter if only adults have access to your content and if that access is 100% proof (aka. ID-Card check). Your media will still be judged on if it is damaging to young people. Every media is rated with the idea “what if a minor would read/watch/play this”.
The gov. bodies responsible for digital media (they are not acting on a federal, but state level) are shat on by many, because as of now they are like a country of their own. They are legally independent which is unique in Germany, because usually you have a higher federal authority who is responsible for you, but not for them. Nobody is controlling them and nobody is allowed to sanction, or correct them other than one federal body that can only be triggered from very special individuals. You are not allowed to contact them.
What they say and what they rate is pretty much law. There are only two of these state authorities who are very aggressive and try to ban everything. You never hear of the others. You basically have multiple state authorities who are governing the internet despite the internet being a thing that is not controllable within a state border, but needs federal attention. They used to only be responsible for local TV / Radio shows, so it made sense, but now it is a shit fest.
In Germany, possession of fictional child pornography is only illegal when it is “realistic”, which is interpreted as meaning that an average person cannot say for sure anymore if it is drawn or a real photo.
The case is a confusing one. On the one hand the judge claims the images were “very realistic”, at the same time she talks of comics in a way that basically means that it was clearly fictional. I would argue that the way language is commonly used, the phrase “Comic-Darstellungen” is never used to mean something that cannot be clearly identified as fictional.
Furthermore there is the question of how the judge and the prosecution knew for sure that the images were cartoons, when they were supposedly indistinguishable from reality. At no point there ever seemed to be any doubt by neither the prosecution, the prosecuted nor the judge that those images did not depict anything real, which makes the conviction quite shocking and upsetting to me.
Honestly, I now remember why I left this website a year ago. It is not worth it to deal with problems that are not my own anymore. I get too worked up, researching, arguing and fighting so much so, that it is more of an exhausting chore than anything else. I deleted my comment above, but my points stand: makes no sense to me.
That’s sad to hear, I liked your effort-post.
I can honestly relate to taking too much time out of your day to create well-structured, fact-approved arguments in favor of something that won’t bring me any joy.
To give my own thoughts on it, I think Germany only really has an issue with “lolicon” related stuff if it is too on the nose, say, someone is depicted to be 6 year old, rather than a teenage girl that you have leeway into thinking they’re akshually 18+ or something.
The other part being, Germans probably just don’t care about it and may even just let you go as long as you wink wink, nudge nudge, “all characters in this media are 18 or above years old even if stated otherwise”.
For some reason I don’t feel the same pedo hysteria here as I do in America’s media.