Tagged: Censorship

CBLDF: Protect Yourself at International Borders

CBLDF: Protect Yourself at International Borders

by Betsy Gomez

The Toronto Comic Arts Festival takes place this weekend, and CBLDF wants to make comics fans and creators crossing the border into Canada aware of their rights. Last year, several creators were subject to intrusive search on their way to TCAF, and creators Tom Neely and Dylan Williams had books seized by Canada Customs. In 2010, comics fan Ryan Matheson was arrested when he crossed the Canadian border with what Canada Customs thought were objectionable comic books on his laptop. You need to know your rights when crossing international borders with comic books.

In an interview with CBLDF, Neely and Williams described the search that led to the seizure before last year’s TCAF:

Neely: They asked us to stand by the wall of the building and asked for the keys to our car. They opened up our suitcases and pulled out a random sampling of about 5 comic books we had in our bags. Those included Blaise Larmee’s Young Lions and the Black Eye anthology published by Rotland Press, of which I’m a contributor. The security guy asked us what the books were. We described them as “art comics,” and he said he was going to take them inside for review. While we waited, two other security guards came out, opened the car and proceeded to pull out everything in the entire vehicle, pulled out a copy every book, and then went back inside.

Williams: The customs people pulled us over because we were importing merchandise. One agent went through our bags and pulled out a sample of books. He then came back out with Black Eye and Young Lions and asked us about them. Then two more agents came out and searched every bag in our car. They damaged some books. They were all really nice however, especially the first agent who talked with us about the content of the book.

Neely and Williams’ experience with Canada Customs agents doesn’t align with the experience faced by Matheson:

“I believe my treatment throughout the entire ordeal was unfair and unjust. I was abused by the police. The police station jail cell was kept unreasonably cold, and I was given a freezing cold slab of concrete as a bed. I asked for blankets or a pillow but was denied. I asked for food but was denied even after asking at least five times. I politely asked an officer at the police station if I could speak to the U.S. embassy, but she replied, “Are you serious? I don’t think we have that here,” and walked away. I was never able to talk to the embassy, and even when my brother arrived for my bail, he too was denied from seeing me at all. Police officers who transported me would slam metal doors on my head and laugh at me, saying “This one’s easy!” And finally, after being transported to the long-term detention center, guards would torment me with phrases like, “You know, if you get raped in here it doesn’t count!”  I was jailed for five days before bail, longer than most people. These are the horrible things I had to go through when I was simply accused of something.”

The good news is that Matheson’s ordeal is now over, and Neely and Williams were never accused of wrongdoing or arrested, even if they didn’t have the confiscated books to sell during TCAF. The bad news is that this kind of persecution can happen again.

CBLDF is pleased to offer important resources that you should read before you cross a foreign border. These tools aren’t designed to take the place of your lawyer. Nothing in them is intended as legal advice. But they are important overviews of the concerns travelers now face when crossing borders with comic art in printed form and on digital devices. These resources are must-reads for anyone crossing international borders with comic books.

Legal Hazards of Crossing International Borders With Comic Art — Prepared by Davis Wright Tremaine, this general advisory addresses issues concerning entering the United States with expressive materials, provides an overview of the phenomenon of border searches of expressive materials, describes the basic legal framework governing such searches, and offers some general suggestions for international travelers planning to transport expressive materials.

Pornographic Anime and Manga Under Canadian Law — Prepared by Edelson, Clifford, and D’Angelo, in light of the issues faced in R. v. Matheson, this memo addresses the disposition of Canadian law towards anime and manga, outlines the powers of Canada Border Services Agency, and provides a detailed discussion of the definition of child pornography under Canadian law, alongside the related sentencing guidelines and defenses for that offense.

Electronic Devices Privacy Handbook: A Guide To Your Rights — Prepared and hosted by the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association, this handbook is focused on privacy issues concerning travelers crossing the Canadian border with electronic devices. This tool addresses your rights at the Canadian border, including a discussion of the Customs Act, an overview of CBSA policies, best practices when crossing the Canadian border, and information on what to do if you’ve been searched.

Defending Privacy At The U.S. Border — Prepared and hosted by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, this resource provides an overview of privacy issues at the U.S. border, and detailed tips on how to protect your privacy and data, and what to do when interacting with border agents.

CBLDF Advisory: Crossing International Borders — Compiled by CBLDF in conjunction with our initial announcement about the Canada Customs Case and an increasing number of searches and seizures at international borders, this document discusses US Customs policies, the lack of legal protections during border searches, and suggestions for avoiding border searches.

In the event of a First Amendment emergency, call CBLDF at 1-800-99-CBLDF or send us an email at info@cbldf.org. We’re here to help!

Please help support CBLDF’s important First Amendment work and provision of resources such as this by making a donation or becoming a member of the CBLDF!

Mindy Newell: Books, Banned and Burned

This one’s for Martha …

Nothing like a good book to get the rabble-rousers going.

In Field Of Dreams, Ray Kinsella’s wife, played by Amy Madigan, successfully shuts down the effort to ban Terence Mann’s books from the local Iowa school system. Terence Mann – played by James Earl Jones – was based on J.D. Salinger, the reclusive author of Catcher In The Rye.

Catcher was published in 1951, and has pretty much stayed on “attempts to ban it” lists since its publication. In fact, it was the most censored book in America from 1961 to 1982, even though, according to Wikipedia, it was the “second most taught book in United States public schools.” It most recently reappeared on the “most challenged books” list, published by American Library Association, in 2009.

These are some of the books I remember being on the curriculum when I was in school, along some that I missed because I was already out of school by the time they made the list of required reading, courtesy of my co-workers, although I have read them all:

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn The Adventures of Tom Sawyer Animal Farm
Antigone Brave New World Beloved
Call of the Wild Catcher in the Rye The Color Purple
The Crucible Death of a Salesman The Diary of Anne Frank
Fahrenheit 451 The Glass Menagerie The Grapes of Wrath
Great Expectations The Great Gatsby Hamlet
Invisible Man Johnny Tremain The Light in the Forest
Lord of the Flies Macbeth The Miracle Worker
1984 The Odyssesy Oedipus
Of Mice and Men Othello One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest Othello
Our Town The Outsiders The Pearl
The Pigman Pygmalion The Red Badge of Courage
The Red Romeo and Juliet The Scarlet Letter
A Separate Peace Shane A Tale of Two Cities
To Kill a Mockingbird Where the Red Fern Grows Wuthering Heights

And here are the books on that list that have been banned at one time or another – or on which attempts have been made ban, courtesy of the American Library Association (ALA):

The Great Gatsby The Catcher in the Rye
The Grapes of Wrath To Kill a Mockingbird
The Color Purple Beloved
The Lord of the Flies 1984
Of Mice and Men Catch-22
Brave New World Animal Farm
Invisible Man One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
The Call of the Wild A Separate Peace
The Diary of Anne Frank The Outsiders

Call Of The Wild?

Are you fucking kidding me?

Other books on the list I found from the ALA include the Goosebumps series; the Earth’s Children series; Gone With The Wind (but not anywhere in the South – oh, for those good old antebellum days!); The Handmaid’s Tale (in the South, I bet!); the Harry Potter series; Slaughterhouse Five; Native Son; Cujo, Carrie, and The Dead Zone (someone really doesn’t like Stephen King); Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret, Forever, Tiger Eyes, and Deenie, (they don’t like Judy Blume, either); A Wrinkle In Time; Flowers For Algernon; James And The Giant Peach (but Charlie And The Chocolate Factory is okay?); The House Of Spirits; The Bluest Eye and Song Of Solomon (or Toni Morrison); and That Was Then, This Is Now (ditto for S.E. Hines).

And you wonder why this country is so frakked.

TUESDAY: Michael Davis Spills The Beans

 

MIKE GOLD: Fellowship and Censorship

This week I’ve been ruminating about the Internet and free speech over at Michael Davis World. Whereas I don’t want to discourage you from checking out my pearls of wisdom in its awesome glory let alone the interesting and edifying comments in response thereto, I do want to clue you in on what the whole thing’s about.

I said “Arizona House Bill 2549 states if you post an offensive annoying comment online, you are guilty of a Class 1 misdemeanor. What is offensive? What is annoying? The bill criminalizes behavior that is used “to terrify, intimidate, threaten, harass, annoy or offend (using) any electronic or digital device.” Of course, it also outlaws lewd or profane language. You could be fined $250,000, and you could be sentenced to six months in the clinker.

 “Do you think this un-American attack on liberty could not possibly pass? Well, you’re wrong. The folks in the Arizona house and the Arizona senate have already passed this bill and it presently awaits their governor’s signature.”

Given this nation’s fear-based cultural drift towards repression of our freedoms, the chilling affect of this law is as overwhelming as it is overwhelmingly depressing.

Then I looked at some of the comments we’ve received on our March Madness campaign here at ComicMix.

As I’ve stated repeatedly, I am a First Amendment absolutist. As long as it’s legal, there is no reason why advertising cigarettes should be illegal (and no, I do not smoke cigarettes). I don’t believe in the concept of “hate crimes.” Hate speech might be evidence of the motivation behind a crime and that’s fair – freedom of speech does not absolve you from the consequences of your actions. But speech is not in an of itself “action” and we have the right to express our opinions. And I certainly do not want to censor or limit in any way anything anybody might comment on here at ComicMix, even if the ox you’re goring happens to be mine.

However, given some of the comments I read recently here on ComicMix, I am making a request for a higher level of civility. There’s no enforcement behind this, and if you want to comment on this column with a “fuck you, you crawling piece of shit,” well, that’s your prerogative… you asshole.

One of the things I like most about ComicMix (and, for that matter, Michael Davis World where ComicMix columnists Martha Thomases, Marc Alan Fishman, Michael and myself also blog) is that, by and large, this is a pretty civil operation. We tend to respect one another’s opinions, or at least we’re usually polite. I realize this places a burden on impulsive wits, but I figure if I can usually rein it in, then anybody can.

ComicMix Sorcerer Supreme Glenn Hauman and I have been discussing all this, and Glenn summed it quite up nicely when he said “Welcome to the Internet.” I’m too much of a Tex Avery / Bob Clampett fan to ever be that cartoon bunny rabbit dancing in the sunshine, but I sometimes recognize being a jerk has its limits.

So, on one hand, I want to compliment us all on being such polite and considerate folks. On the other hand, I’d like to ask those who feel the phrase “flame on!” refers to something other than Johnny Storm to please play nice. We’ve all got enough trauma in our lives, and I hate the idea of chasing anybody out of the sandbox.

THURSDAY: Dennis O’Neil

 

Simpsons Toys Banned In Iran

Simpsons Toys Banned In Iran

  • News
  • February 6, 2012
The Simpsons sports a vast array of secondary ...

Isn’t it nice to know that after nearly five hundred episodes, The Simpsons still have the power to shock and offend censors?

The Simpsons have now joined Barbie as targets of an Iranian crackdown, putting one of the iconic blonde doll’s biggest critics on the same blacklist as her. Citing some kind of vague moral opposition to The Simpsons, Mohammad Hossein Farjoo (who Reuters awesomely describes as the head of an agency that “oversees what Iranian children can play with”) said authorities would crack down on sales of toys based on the series and its characters.

That means Lisa Simpson, who famously campaigned for a less sexist Malibu Stacey (the show’s thinly veiled version of Barbie), now joins Barbie as a threat to Iranian morals.

via Iran Bans Simpsons Toys – Global – The Atlantic Wire.

MARTHA THOMASES: Copyrights … and Copywrongs

MARTHA THOMASES: Copyrights … and Copywrongs

Last week, ComicMix, along with most of the Internet, protested against SOPA and PIPA, two bills that would have seriously compromised our ability to use the web to share information … and gossip … and pictures of cats.

The protests were so widespread that Congress backed down and sent the bills back to committee. It was a victory for those of us who spend all day enthralled by our computer screens, and, more important, it was a victory for the free exchange of ideas.

Still, I can understand the motivation behind the bill, despite how crudely and ham-handedly it was written. The purpose was to protect intellectual property. As a writer, I enjoy getting paid for my work. It would make me grumpy if someone else made money from my efforts and didn’t include me in the payday.

If anything, this hubbub shines a light on our wonky and unfair copyright laws. The purpose of copyright is not only to protect the rights of creators, but also to encourage creativity in a capitalist system. If my writing can make me money, I’ll be encouraged to write more. The same is true for songwriters, artists, choreographers, filmmakers, and comic book crews.

Unfortunately, our particular version of the capitalist system doesn’t work that way.

Songwriters, for example, collect royalties from those who record (and then sell) their songs. In many, many cases, they are not able to get their work published without giving away a large percentage (usually as a co-writing credit) to the publisher. As a result, a lot of musicians don’t care if their work gets downloaded illegally, because it increases their audience and they can make more money – which they don’t have to share – on tour.

On a larger scale, this is true in movies and television. We’ve all heard the stories about actors, directors or screenwriters who supposedly have profit participation in their films, but the studios claim there are no profits.

In comics, at least in so-called mainstream comics, the price for a chance to work for a company that would distribute your creation was your copyright. The most famous example is Siegel and Shuster’s Superman. Things have improved, and if you work for Marvel or DC as a creator, you can now get health insurance and a contract (so you can get a mortgage), but you will still most likely have to agree to work for hire.

The major media corporations try to defend their anti-piracy efforts by saying they are protecting creative people. If only. As Kyle Baker  recently explained, the entertainment conglomerates treat creative people as interchangeable widgets. If one artist wants a living wage, ship the job overseas.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1zJVnmpYR7U[/youtube]

The Internet should make it easier for artists to communicate directly with their audiences, without paying the toll of working for a Disney or a Murdoch. It should level the playing field for all entrants.

It should also reduce the price of an admission ticket. Just ask Louis CK.

SATURDAY: Marc Alan Fishman

How To Manage A Media Attack On Your Comic Book Store

How To Manage A Media Attack On Your Comic Book Store

  • News
  • January 20, 2012

Wednesday Bleeding Cool ran a piece linking to a local news promo promising a titillating exposé on modern comics that will offer tips on “HOW TO K.O. THESE COMICS BEFORE THEY CORRUPT YOUR KIDS!”

These media scare stories are nothing new. They’ve been plaguing comics since the very beginning, whether it was massive public comic book burnings in the 1940s, Frederic Wertham’s attacks in the 1950s, or the retailer stings of the 1980s that led to the CBLDF being formed.

While we’ve seen this type of story arise time and again, it should never be taken lightly. Below we offer some tips on how to deal with hostile cameras if they come to your store.

  • Know Your Rights. You control the media’s access to your store, not them. While media people can shoot common spaces not maintained by your store, such as public parking lots and walkways, they cannot enter your store and shoot without permission, and they cannot block access to your store.
  • (more…)

EDITORIAL: Why ComicMix Is Against SOPA

In 2009, we ran an article about Astro Boy and the then-upcoming movie. We got some grief from the law firm representing the movie studio IMAGI, complete with cease and desist letters, over using earlier released concept art as an illustration for the article. We responded by posting the C&D letter, and telling Imagi that we would remove not only the image, but all articles about the Astro Boy movie, and would no longer provide coverage for any IMAGI properties, just to be safe. The President of IMAGI apologized for the “error” and backed off.

Luckily for us, SOPA was not a law.

If it was, the law firm could have simply decided to not even contact us at all, but instead simply shut us down. Completely. Without warning and without legal recourse.

This is a prime example of what SOPA, the “Stop Online Piracy Act” (and the US Senate version of the same bill, PIPA) is intended to do by design: a law written by Hollywood interests that give them the right to shut down a website for “copyright infringement”. Ostensibly the law would protect against piracy, but as written, the law is overly broad and dangerous, putting the burden on website owners to police all material and allowing for the unnecessary blocking of entire sites without notification and without exemptions for fair use, and no safe harbor provisions. Small sites such as ComicMix won’t have sufficient resources to defend themselves, let alone survive a protracted shutdown.

We here at ComicMix believe that SOPA is designed to give corporations the ability to silence any web site they don’t like, with no oversight and no appeal. We are further disturbed that not only have DC and Marvel’s corporate parents, Time Warner and The Walt Disney Corporation, have come out strongly in favor of SOPA, but that Marvel has gone above and beyond in declaring their support for it.

One simply has to wonder how much Marvel would like SOPA if the heirs of Jack Kirby decided to shut down Marvel.com.

Numerous other sites such as Wikipedia, Google, Reddit, and WordPress have gone dark today to signal their opposition to SOPA and PIPA. We add our voices to the chorus, and ask that you contact your representatives and senators today to add yours.

For further information, read this brief from the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Related articles

MIKE GOLD: Steve Niles’ Courageous Act

gold-column-art-120104-150x112-9029409If you you’re inclined to keep an eye out, heroes pop up like Kleenex. Steve Niles just made the cut.

At the 2010 Baltimore Comic-Con Harvey Awards dinner, Mark Waid offered a courageous keynote address which offered a simple message: digital comics are here to stay, there is an international bootlegging community and we as creators and industry doyens must learn to deal with it. For this, Mark was roundly booed, hassled and harassed by his peers. Astonishingly, one of his tormentors was the otherwise quite gentlemanly Sergio Aragonés.

I don’t recall if Steve Niles was at the dinner, but if not, it’s likely he heard about it. Suggesting that any acknowledgement of those who pirate comics is akin to taking a dump on the bible. This is true throughout the media: records (yeah, it’s okay to call them “records;” look it up), movies and teevee shows, even books. And you thought nobody was reading.

The media industry’s response to this has been to advocate passage of the Stop Online Piracy Act, a.k.a. SOPA. Simply put, SOPA allows any intellectual property (IP) owner to legally compel any Internet Service Provider (a.k.a. ISP; we’re shooting for the entire alphabet this week) to kick off any website suspected of copyright infringement.

Well, here’s a clue for you. Well over 99% of the websites on the Internet infringe copyrights and trademarks. Pick-ups of news items, graphics used to illustrate anything, sound bytes and even some You Tube links – they are all infringing upon somebody’s IP. You rip off the Superman logo font because you’re artistic and just being cute? Well, that logo is a registered trademark, and you are now Lex Luthor.

So Steve, bless his 30 Days of Night heart, took a stand. “SOPA does more than go after so-called ‘piracy’ websites,” said he. “SOPA takes away all due process, shuts down any site it deems to be against the law without trial, without notification, without due process… Nobody seems to give a shit, or either they’re scared. Either way, very disappointing. I guess when it affects them they’ll get mad… I know folks are scared to speak out because a lot of us work for these companies, but we have to fight. Too much is at stake.”

He tweeted all these comments; I got them from our pals at Digital Spy, except they asterisked “shit.” We here at ComicMix are beneath that.

Here’s some facts. Every time somebody unlawfully downloads IP – and note I said “unlawfully” because it is unlawful – the media racket sees that as a lost sale. This is overwhelming bullshit. People sample, people are curious, people’s friends make a recommendation and said people check ‘em out. There’s plenty of stuff that you’d check out before laying down your plastic sight unseen. The actual number of downloads that defraud the owner (which is usually not the creator) is a fraction of the total. These downloads are still illegal, but IP moguls should pull the stick out of their ass and tell the truth when they are babbling about how much bootlegging is costing them. They are liars.

There are a great many services that allow you to legally purchase IP, and the largest of these is Apple’s iTunes, which offers music, television, movies, books, magazines, newspapers, software (a.k.a. “apps”) and probably jpg’s of papyrus scrolls. As of around October 2011 – the date varies by category – iTunes has sold over 16 billion songs, about one half-billion movies, videos and teevee shows, some 20 billion apps, and Crom knows how many books, magazines and newspapers.

Here’s the rub: in each and every one of these approximately 40,000,000,000 cases, the purchaser could have downloaded the damn thing for free. In most cases, it is far easier to illegally cop a boot than it is to purchase one. Let’s start with the fact that you don’t need to have a credit card or room left on your credit limit to procure your illegal bootie.

So. 40 billion downloads from just one – the biggest one – online merchant in a world that only houses seven billion people. That’s an average of four and one-half perfectly legal downloads for each and every person, including babies in the Amazon who don’t even have access to Amazon.

Hey! People are inherently good. Go know!

Of course SOPA is being supported by all the big IP companies, including Disney (Marvel) and Time Warner (DC). If only they were so moral about how they treat their creative talent, without whom both companies would constitute another real estate bust.

On the other side: Facebook, Google, Twitter and Wikipedia, the latter of which threatens to disappear should SOPA pass. Then students will actually have to do research, and we can’t have that.

Also standing proudly on the other side: Steve Niles. Good for you, pal.

Good grief. Now Mark Evanier is going to hate me.

Thursday: Dennis O’Neil

ComicMix Quick Picks – April 16, 2009

ComicMix Quick Picks – April 16, 2009

Today’s list of quick comic-related items that have piled up here…

  • After three decades, Starlog shifts to the Web exclusively. That link points to ComicMix’s Bob Greenberger, who put in his time there and recalls what it was like.
     
  • How does Kevin Smith get to Carnegie Hall? Practice, practice, and pornography. Or something like that.
     
  • Our friends at FEARnet reported strong viewing numbers for Q1, up 72% over the same period in 2008 (48.5 million vs. 28.2 million). FEARnet views were also up for 13% from February 2009 (17.3 million vs. 15.2 million). Friday the 13th led the FEARnet movie pack with 1.9 million views, followed by The Descent with 1.6 million views and Already Dead with 1.5 million views.
     
  • Rorschach’s LiveJournal. Never compromise or use LOL.
     
  • io9 – Why Science Fiction Still Doesn’t Get Into The Inner Circle


  • SFWA Website Comes To Life, Starts Attacking Web Browsers: This story just makes me shake my head. You’d like to think that SF people are the most tech-savvy folks on the planet, and they so often aren’t.
     
  • "My wife’s consoling comment the other day — that I had lost all my credit cards and cash, but it could have been the Kindle…"
     
  • What the new Sorcerer Supreme needs to know.
     
  • And finally, I’m saddened to report on the passing of Judith Krug. A librarian by training, Judith became the director of the American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom and a champion for the First Amendment whether it was confronting efforts to ban books in pubic libraries (including public school libraries), creating Banned Books Week, challenging efforts to force libraries to place clumsy, ineffective filters on public computers with internet access or critiquing the intrusive provisions of the USA PATRIOT Act, especially as those provisions affected library patrons. I met her when we were co-plaintiffs in ACLU v. Reno, and she was classy as hell.

Any more? Consider this an open thread.

S. Clay Wilson Hospitalized

S. Clay Wilson Hospitalized

  • News
  • November 10, 2008

The Oregonian is reporting that S. Clay Wilson, “one of the seminal figures in the underground comix movement, suffered a "severe brain injury." Wilson’s partner, Lorraine Chamberlain, stated on Sunday, "I just talked to the neurologist a few minutes ago. He’s in a decline because of the pneumonia. They can’t seem to stabilize him."

The 67-year-old Wilson was originally thought to be the victim of a mugging when he was found but doctors now theorize that he may have repeatedly fallen given his medical condition. He’s been at San Francisco General since Saturday.

"That’s what we think now, that he fell several times and hit his head," Chamberlain said. "He has a fractured orbital bone in his eye and he fractured his neck. He looks like he’s been kicked in the face and beaten up. But if he’d been beaten up, he would have been robbed. There’s no way to know. But he had way too much to drink.

"It was very bad news today," Chamberlain said. "The most important thing is that he gets over the pneumonia, but he’s had a very severe head injury." Chamberlain and Wilson have known each other for four decades but have been together for only the last eight years.

As a youth, Wilson relocated from Kansas to San Francisco in 1968, just as the Underground Comix movement was gaining traction.  He found R. Crumb, who produced Zap Comix and showed his artwork off.

"I was just completely blitzkrieged by the guy," Crumb said. "I’d never seen anything like those drawings of his before." The founder of the movement credits Wilson for pushing him to cease self-censorship and let everything flow on the page including sex, drugs, and rock and roll.

"I get a lot of flak from feminists, but we all do," Wilson said previously. "But within that group of feminists, there’s all kinds of mentalities. Some don’t understand what we’re dong — making fun of everything. Spain (Rodriguez) gets a lot of shit about it, we all do. I like the idea of keeping the boat rocking."
 

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