Translator and manga industry expert Dan Kanemitsu submitted the following opinion piece on the recent ban of Barefoot Gen from the perspective of being close to the ground in recent battles involving manga regulation in Japan. In December of 2010,…
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New Zealand Library Refuses to Carry Lost Girls
When New Zealand cartoonist Dylan Horrocks (Hicksville, Batgirl) requested that his local Auckland library purchase a copy of Alan Moore’s Lost Girls, the library denied his request with the argument that the book potentially violated New Zealand law. Horrocks received…
Obscenity Case Files: Smith v. California
It was established in Roth v. United States that the freedom of speech would not extend to materials that were considered obscene. But what happens to a book store that unknowingly carries books that contain obscene material? Is a book…
Indianapolis Library Refuses to Censor Erotic Novel
An Indiana library is facing some heat after a 9-year-old obtained an erotic novel using the self-check out system. After the child left the library with a copy of the erotic novel Night Games by Crystal Jordan, the child’s grandmother,…
Supreme Court Justices Played Video Games During Brown v. EMA
At 53, Elena Kagan is the youngest member of the U.S. Supreme Court. Kagan recently spoke in Providence, Rhode Island, and Michelle R. Smith with Talking Points Memo wrote about Kagan’s comments on how the Court uses technology. Kagan admitted…
Barefoot Gen Pulled from Matsue School Libraries
Keiji Nakazawa’s internationally renowned manga Barefoot Gen, which depicts wartime atrocities from the perspective of the seven-year-old protagonist, has been pulled from primary and middle school libraries in the Japanese city of Matsue. Citing “portions that warrant consideration as appropriate…
TFAW and DCBS Team Up to Support First Amendment Rights as CBLDF Corporate Members
Discount Comic Book Service and Things From Another World are proud to announce that they are joining the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund as corporate members–the first comic book retailers to do so since the CBLDF’s inception in 1986. In addition to this…
Muslim Cleric Renounces Prior Protest Against Danish Cartoons
Seven years after Danish political activist Ahmad Akkari began protesting the caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad featured in Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten, he has publicly renounced his former stance and apologized for the affects his protests had. Akkari, a practicing Muslim,…
Youth Voices Important in Fight for Free Speech
Recent attempts to ban Marjane Satrapi’s Perseoplis and Stephen Chbosky’s The Perks of Being a Wallflower have been met with vocal opposition. Central to these protests are students themselves, and their vociferous protests and savvy with social media helped prevent…
CBLDF’s Comic Market Speech On Manga Freedom
Last weekend, CBLDF Executive Director Charles Brownstein traveled to Tokyo for the Manga Freedom Speaking Tour, a series of presentations and meetings about free expression issues facing manga and how fans in the United States and Japan can band together…