MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA — The New South Wales Supreme Court has ruled that even though cartoon characters are not flesh and blood, they are people.The news came as something of a shock to Alan John McEwan and his defense team. McEwan was convicted on child porn charges in February, after explicit cartoon pornography was found on his computer. The images included several of Bart and Lisa Simpson — “underage” characters from Matt Groening’s “The Simpsons” animated television series — engaged in sexual activity. The ruling came in response to McEwan’s appeal of the conviction.
Evidently the clincher for the court was the Commonwealth’s assertion that cartoon characters meet the definition of “person” under Australia’s child-porn laws.
Justice Michael Adams agreed, saying that although the cartoons made no attempt to simulate real persons, they violated the spirit of Australia’s law. While he admitted the cartoon characters in no way resembled real people — and thus did not violate the legislation’s prima facie purpose of preventing the exploitation of actual children — they did run afoul of the law’s secondary purpose: to deter the creation of material that “can fuel demand for material that does involve the abuse of children.”
“In my view, the magistrate was correct in determining that, in respect of both the Commonwealth and the NSW offenses, the word ‘person’ included fictional or imaginary characters,” he said in dismissing McEwan’s appeal. “The mere fact that the figure depicted departed from a realistic representation in some respects of a human being did not mean that such a figure was not a ‘person.’”
McEwan was fined AU $3,000 and placed on a two-year good behavior bond.
