ComiPress (a manga news site) has published a long but interesting look at the battle between child porn laws and manga readers. Regular readers are probably tired of my harping on the subject, so I’ll just include this quote from the article that expresses my opinion perfectly:

Given all the qualifying facts in the Whorley case, one might ask, why should anyone care? Setting aside questions of fundamental justice for the moment, the answer is: because cartoons and drawings aren’t child pornography and should not be treated as such under the law. The moral slippage in the law is palpable in the way it conflates images of actual minors with fictional representations: it refers to “depictions of minors,” and, by reference to the other provisions in the law, defines acts engaged in by “persons,”[17] but how is a cartoon character a person? It talks about engaging in sexually explicit acts, but how does a cartoon character engage in anything? It defines “actual or simulated” conduct, but how can a cartoon character’s conduct be “actual”? Ultimately the law denies the reality that these are not “depictions of minors” at all but pure fantasy. One should care about this case because United States v. Whorley was a testing of the waters. With Whorley behind bars, some people in the government believe they have a mandate.

Here’s the link if anyone is interested:

Read it all!