Had the case been more well known (or with a more sympathetic defendant), what groups might have filed amicus briefs?
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There are a few.
Amicus briefs are intended for parties with a stake in the matter to step in and voice their concerns.
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The Free Speech Coalition
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The American Civil Liberties Union
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The Comic Book Legal Defense Fund
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The National Coalition Against Censorship
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The Prostasia Foundation (us)
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The American Psychological Association
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The American Booksellers Association
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The Cato Institute
I honestly don’t know why we couldn’t have filed a brief with the court. Maybe if we had more time, or if we had been monitoring this more closely, we could have reached out to Arthur’s council sooner.
@terminus pinging for visibility
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This only underscores the importance of cooperation with regard to these matters.
According to Wikipedia, in Lawrence v. Texas, there was coordination between Lambda Legal and other like-minded orgs to submit Amicus briefs.
In a petition for certiorari filed in the U.S. Supreme Court on July 16, 2002, Lambda Legal attorneys asked the Court to consider:[37]
Whether the petitioners’ criminal convictions under the Texas “Homosexual Conduct” law—which criminalizes sexual intimacy by same-sex couples, but not identical behavior by different-sex couples—violate the Fourteenth Amendment guarantee of equal protection of the laws; Whether the petitioners’ criminal convictions for adult consensual sexual intimacy in their home violate their vital interests in liberty and privacy protected by the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment; Whether Bowers v. Hardwick should be overruled.
On December 2, 2002, the Court agreed to hear the case. Lambda Legal coordinated the submission of sixteen amicus curiae briefs to complement their own brief. Submitting organizations included the American Bar Association, the American Psychological Society, the American Public Health Association, the Cato Institute, the Log Cabin Republicans, a group of history professors, and a group of religious denominations.[38] An op-ed in support by former Senator Alan Simpson appeared in The Wall Street Journal on the morning scheduled for oral argument.[39] The attorneys for Texas did not control the amicus briefs submitted in support of their position by representatives of religious and social conservatism, including Jay Alan Sekulow and Robert P. George. Several, including that of Liberty Counsel, depicted homosexuals as self-destructive, disease-prone, and promiscuous. The states of Alabama, South Carolina, and Utah advised the Court that unlike heterosexual sodomy, homosexual sodomy had “severe physical, emotional, psychological, and spiritual consequences”.[40]
The contentions against Arthur’s activities are no different than those had against homosexuals during this time period. Based around moral offense and outrage. Lawrence should have opened the door to the retirement of the doctrine in its entirety.
There is a legitimate interest against the return of obscenity law, and our position of freedom of speech over this moralist outcry is untenable.
A lot of people just don’t know about it because obscenity varies so much, and because it’s a mostly private matter anyway and people just assume that works representative of their interests have artistic value (because it does, objectively), it doesn’t get as much attention.
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I think the comic book legal defense fund is specifically interested in comic books, but im not certain.
One group that would almost certainly be interested are The Organization for transformative works . The OTW are the governing body of the website AO3 which is probably the largest fanficrtion site. they might be interested since a lot of storiess on that sight could be judged to be obscene as well. They’ve submitted amicus briefs for other things before.
Some other foundations that might be interested, but im less certain about these:
foundation for individual rights of expression (FIRE)
the electronic frontier foundation
reason foundation
The NCAC group you mentioned has a list of other groups interested in free speech:
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It applies just the same. Narrative and visual artistis elements are expressive.
Within the US, there are companies who license and publish lolikon hentai manga for distribution within the United States specifically, namely Fakku, JastUSA, and Denpasoft, all of which are recognized by the CBLDF.
This type of matter would be intrinsic to their business model since obscenity applies to ALL pornographic expression.
Add them to the list, then!
Can never have too many friends in this regard.
I do sincerely hope that they can get a reconsideration motion filed for Mr. Arthur, I would dedicate my time to helping this man get his life back and get this vague, arbitrary, and overwhelmingly problematic legal doctrine put back under the microscope and erased from jurisprudence, or at the very least, narrowed to where anything that doesn’t have a victim isn’t affected.
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does prostasia plan to contact those organizations and/or tell his lawyer about them?
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On my own according, I’ve already inquired with Mr. Haygood, the counsel of record, via email. I’ve not yet received a correspondence with him, but I’ve made my suggestions and recommendations very clear.
Our former Executive Director, Mr. Jeremy Malcolm @terminus, may be able to chime in on this, but he’s since taken up an advisory role with the organization.
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I think one of the main things holding us back from making a bigger splash here is the current lack of any person on our staff dedicated to activism and lobbying campaigns. If anyone is interested in being that person, I’d encourage you to apply for our activist role.
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Another organization that might be interested is Article 19.
theyve sent letters with your organization in the past:
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Wait. He got 40 years for stories? It is hilarious how you can do much worse stuff in the USA and receive joke sentences as long as it is “one charge” of a disgusting crime. That is one of the many reasons why I dislike the penalty system where you get charged for every single crime (every single text in this case) and how it then turns into a way too harsh punishment.
It is in the very nature of some crimes to be very easily inflatable when it comes to the amount of charges. A criminal cannot as easily rob 20 people as he can create / distribute fictional media.
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Most people do not care about the rights of MAPs and most of those who do are too afraid of being slandered publicly. The first step would be to encourage early outings of people who can afford it (no punishment for being a MAP where they reside). Much more likely for a friend, or family member to accept it and then automatically be against very oppressive laws since the fog has been cleared up a bit and all the wrong informations and fear mongering does not look as real anymore since you have met an actual MAP.
Other, more daring individuals can publicly talk about their attraction and thus make it more public. Nobody ever hears the word “pedophila” in a non-negative way. It is always in the context of a crime which further worsens the stigma.
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I agree. CSAM possession often gets higher penalties than actually committing CSA because you get charged for each and every piece you have. And if you make copies of said CSAM, that counts as production (adding production charges to your already numerous counts of possession). Most people, even those vehemently against CSAM, can agree that this makes no sense.
Using this system to toss what amounts to a fanfic writer into the clink for almost half a century highlights how counterintuitive this can be.
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Heres a comparison in regards to actual Child sexual abuse material. The website Playpen was a darknet CSAM distribution ring that had 150,000 users. The creator of the ring received 30 years in prison. His 2 codefendants recieved 20 years:
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Another example is that Ghislaine maxwell recieved 20 years in prison:
it is absurd to consider the distribution of obscene fiction a worse crime ,than sex trafficking or CSAM creation. Even if a person does think that the sort of stuff on the mrdouble website is morally repugnant or that it should be discouraged, The sentence is supposed to reflect the severity of acrime.
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The issue here - not just the sentence imposed - is completely at odds with any and all forms of rational thought. I’ve gone into detail, countless times, for why none of the arguments put forth by those who support the censorship and prohibition of this type of content or material are completely devoid of reason and consistency.
These materials do not normalize the acts or subject matter depicted, nor do they disinhibit or increase risk of subsequent offenses. I’d argue that reading about the pederasty of Ancient Greece serves to ‘normalize’ offense-supportive attitudes or ideals people may have, since those are perceived as genuine accounts of real-life, not merely idealistic and fantastical portrayals, something the human mind knows and instinctively separates from reality.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. This type of philosophy that it’s built upon is not believed to last. Conservatives may dominate the SCOTUS, but with the oncoming retirements of Justices Thomas and Alito, there may be reason to expect change. I’ve corresponded with numerous jurists and lawyers who specialize in Constitutional law, including former clerks and law professors at some of the most influential and prestigious universities, and they all universally agree - even with respect to this type of content - that the obscenity doctrine itself is fundamentally flawed and rests solely on nothing more than dated, anti-intellectualist presuppositions which conflate morality with prejudice.
Change is inevitable. I just hope that those who, like Arthur, are able to get their convictions thrown out once the doctrine is abolished.
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I liken the obscenity doctrine to a cancerous, bone-like enamel carapace that forms and continues to expand across a man’s heart and mind, necrotizing the otherwise robust and confident sense of self.
This carapace can be broke, shattered even, with relative ease, but it’s always there. Always creeping, always expanding, waiting for your resolve to weaken more and more until it can expand to such a degree that you can’t help but cave in.
It’s a repugnance far more harmful than the sense of arbitrary disgust felt by those who dared deprive Arthur of his right, one that I hope people will stop trying to dress up and attempt to reconcile with the rest of their mind and body, while actual acts of abuse continue to receive disproportionate, if not positive attention.
The carapace will be broken, and the cancerous condition that grounds it cannot be allowed to remain, for it plagues society.
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Any country with “obscenity” laws is pathetic. Even the UK has relaxed their obscenity laws recently, which says a lot:
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since the denial of certorari was on the 21st of february and the rehearing must be submitted within 25 days after that. so it seems like they have about 2 more weeks to make their rehearing petition. I dont know how likely they are to do that, or how much time the legal counsel would need spend on the rehearing request.
in anycase one can check if they filed a rehearing at the same spot as you can examine the original request for certiorari:
https://www.supremecourt.gov/search.aspx?filename=/docket/docketfiles/html/public/22-6519.html
if a rehearing is filed, another group that might be interested is the Electronic Frontier Foundation, as they are invovled in websites and free speech from my memory.
its worth noting that there are some (rather confusingly worded) deadlines for amicus brief filing as well:
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Hmm. Seems like amicus briefs may not be accepted for petitions of rehearings.
From the pdf
- Prohibition on Certain Types of Amicus Briefs
The Clerk’s Office will not accept a reply brief from an amicus. Nor is it
permissible to file an amicus brief in connection with a petition for rehearing.
Rule 37.3.
The text from rule 37:
The Clerk will not file a reply brief for an amicus curiae, or a brief for an amicus curiae in support of, or in opposition to, a petition for rehearing.
It seems like amicuses can still file amicus briefs in regards to the merits of the case for the oral arguments, if the rehearing petition is accepted.
But I’m not entirely sure if understood this correctly.
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So the lawyers didn’t file any rehearing requestt.
i wonder if we’ll see any court case involving obscenity in the future. from what i can tell obscenity prosecutions aren’t currently common, but i dont know if that will change or not.
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