Scorpions and Simpsons - child porn?

Two interesting internet events have happened in the past couple of days - both of which are a result of an unrestricted format butting up against national child pornography laws.

The first is in the UK, where some Wikipedia images have been censored - specifically the original 1976 album cover of a German Heavy Metal band called Scorpions. The album cover was the image of a naked pre-teen girl with her private parts obscured but her chest still visible. The album was called "Virgin Killer". The Wikipedia page, where you can see the image, is here. The image was recently censored in the UK because it was considered "child porn".

The second case occurred in Australia where a man who had images of naked Simpsons characters - including the children - found on his hard drive. Many of these images were of a deliberately sexual nature.

Now I'm not a defender of child porn at all. I've actually known three paedophiles who kept their sexual dysfunction secret from the people around them, only for the police to eventually arrest and charge them. I support international efforts to close down and expose child porn rings - even more so after knowing these three paedophiles.

Yet I have to say that there are some rather important issues that have been raised as a result of these two recent cases.

Consider the poor Scorpions, that German Heavy Metal band with the tasteless album cover. Even back in 1976 the cover was controversial and they were forced to change it (to the one shown above). In hindsight I'm sure that some of the band members are probably regretting their decision. Yet even so, images of the original cover can be found throughout the internet, not just at Wikipedia. Moreover, the album image is also shown in books that can be legally purchased. If the UK has decided to censor that particular image then they should be consistent and prevent access to the album cover from all websites. They should also ban the sale of books that contain that image as well.

The case of the naked Simpsons images is no less problematic. The fact is that the characters depicted in the images are cartoon characters and are not just fictional but have no bearing to real life. Yet at the same time there are images of Bart, Lisa and even Maggie engaged in sexual acts.

But this issue gets even worse when you consider the fact that the characters of both Bart and Maggie have appeared naked in official Simpsons animation, not just in the sick minds of internet artists. Anyone who has seen the latest Simpsons movie knows that one of the more humourous moments involves Bart skateboarding in the nude, the highlight of which occurs when objects just "happen" to pass in front of his genitalia as he skateboards along that prevents us from seeing them... only for his entire body to disappear behind a hedge with only his penis visible (see bottom image).

So while a judge may rule the sick fan-drawings of naked Simpsons characters to be child porn, the fact remains that naked Simpsons characters are broadcast on a regular basis on Network TV and, in the case of Bart and his exposed penis, available to buy from the nearest K-Mart store.


In both of these cases (Scorpions and Simpsons) a decision has been made by someone in power that determines that something is "child porn", while at the same time opening up a whole new area of censorship on legally available images (whether in books or on TV/DVD). This is not necessarily a problem (I'm not a huge supporter of the anti-censorship brigade) but the law needs to be enforced consistently - and if it can't then what is the point of having the law?

Back in 1978, actress Brooke Shields, then 12 years old, appeared nude in a film called Pretty Baby, where she played an underage prostitute. This was certainly controversial at the time yet the film itself has not been banned nor have Shields' nude images in the film been deemed underage porn by authorities. Nor have the authorities banned the Led Zeppelin album Houses of the Holy or the film The Song Remains the Same, which also contain images of nude children.

By the way, this is not some attempt to defend images of child porn - all I'm trying to point out is that authorities have been inconsistent in their application of censorship.