Category: Legal

Last weekend cartoonists crossed the border for TCAF, the Toronto Comics Art Festival, where several were greeted with intrusive customs searches that led to the seizure of at least two comics titles — Black Eye, an anthology, and Young Lions, a graphic novel by Blaise Larmee.

Tom Neely, a contributor to Black Eye was the first to release word of his ordeal through Facebook status messages. Neely explained that copies of the Black Eye anthology were seized, and would either be returned to him or destroyed, pending “further action,” prompting the cartoonist to write:

“I just hope “further action” doesn’t involve being arrested the next time I try to cross the border. They went through everything in our car. Opened every suitcase and looked through every book.”

In the The Comics Journal comments thread where the story broke, Black Eye editor Ryan Standfast noted that copies of Blaise Larmee’s Young Lions were seized from Sparkplug Comic Books publisher Dylan Williams.

Current coverage of this story includes: The Comics Journal, Ryan Standfast, Robot 6, and The Beat.

The CBLDF is investigating these incidents, and will continue to report on developments as they occur.

This incident is part of a recent, growing trend of customs searches and seizures of comics that the CBLDF has been following. The CBLDF has issued an advisory for travelers on crossing borders with comic book materials that is available here as a Word document, and here as a PDF file.

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The Comics Journal reports that copies of the anthology Black Eye were confiscated from artist Tom Neely when he was entering Canada for this weekend’s TCAF festival.

According to Neely:

“… They took ‘em. I tried to get them to just ship them back to me at home, but they said they were required to send it to Ottawa for review… if they found the material to be ‘obscene’ they would take ‘further action.’ I asked what ‘further action’ meant and he said they would just destroy them. Or there is a chance they might ship them back to me.

This incident is part of a recent, growing trend of customs searches and seizures of comics that the CBLDF has been following. The CBLDF has issued an advisory for travelers on crossing borders with comic book materials that is available here as a Word document, and here as a PDF file.

Read more →

Following a successful legal challenge from the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts, local booksellers, and others, including the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, Governor Deval Patrick yesterday signed into law an amendment to controversial 2010 legislation that imposed severe restrictions on Internet content, including discussion of topics such as literature, art, and sexual and reproductive health.

The amendment, which goes into effect immediately, is a direct response to the granting of a preliminary injunction by U.S. District Judge Rya Zobel last fall that found the law likely violated the First Amendment. Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley filed the bill in order to address the constitutional flaws in the existing law. CBLDF joined the Harvard Book Store, Porter Square Books, the Photographic Resource Center, a licensed marriage and family therapist, trade associations, and the ACLU of Massachusetts in filing suit last July to block the law because it made providers of constitutionally protected speech on the Internet criminally liable if such material might be deemed “harmful to minors.”

“Comic book creators and retailers are pleased to see this amendment go into effect, because it protects their constitutionally protected works as they are circulated and sold online,” said Charles Brownstein, Executive Director of the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund.

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The Comic Book Legal Defense Fund today published the advisory document “Legal Hazards of Crossing International Borders with Comic Book Art.” The advisory was created in response to an increasing number of reports from travelers who have been stopped, searched, and/or detained by customs agents because of comic book art they carried in print and electronic forms. CBLDF legal counsel Robert Corn-Revere prepared the advisory for the Fund’s constituents and members.

“Most people do not know that their constitutional rights are not guaranteed, even from U.S. Customs agents, when they cross international borders,” Corn-Revere said. “Their books, papers, laptop computers, and even cell phones are subject to routine search and possible seizure by the government, even without any suspicion of criminal activity. This is important to know in an age when many people carry with them a great deal of highly personal information in electronic form.”

The CBLDF’s advisory shines light on Immigrations and Customs Enforcement policies pertaining to the search of information, and also explains how border searches lack traditional legal protections otherwise afforded to speech. Finally, the document offers suggestions for avoiding intrusive border searches and protecting the safety of your information.

The CBLDF Advisory is available here as a Word document, and here as a PDF file.

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For their dedication to the preservation of First Amendment rights for members of the comics community, the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund (CBLDF) has been selected to receive the 2010 Robert B. Downs Intellectual Freedom Award given by the faculty of the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

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In a Washington Post op/ed piece that draws heavily upon ground covered by the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund’s amicus brief in EMA v. Schwarzenegger, pundit George Will discusses the moral panic facing the video game industry today and its roots in the censorship in comics. Check out his perspective here.

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