Netflix, Inc. indicted by grand jury in Tyler Co., Tx for promoting material in Cuties film

[Captain Manning]

I'm trying to remember the legal term for the idea that you can't be prosecuted for committing a crime if it wasn't actually a crime when you did it. "Grandfathered" maybe?

Ex post facto.

The actual legal concept in the US you are thinking of is the prohibition of ex post facto (lit. "out of the aftermath") laws. See US Constitution, Article 1, Sections 9-10.

It is unconstitutional for the government to punish somebody if the act was not codified as illegal at the precise moment it was committed.

In some countries, they can still do ex post facto bullshit. For example, the British Parliament follows the doctrine of "parliamentary supremacy." They can scream "I AM THE LAW!", criminalize something, and then retroactively apply the penalties to acts prior to them criminalizing it. The founding fathers thought that was ripe for abuse, so they made it so that neither the Federal government, or the states, could ever do it.

 

[CiaphasCain]

If we kill all the children with thermonuclear war, at least they won't be diddled and filmed by the Japanese.

Pedophiles are not the problem, sexy children are.

 

[BScCollateral]

That's up to the French. At the very least, they need stronger regulations as to what workplace conditions can be allowed for children, and if there's some special showbiz loophole, get rid of it. There was absolutely no justifiable reason to audition 650 kids for one role in this for instance. In fact it really raises the question of whether the movie was intended to make money or whether the real money will come from selling the audition tapes to pervs.

Logical, but it does sound like an exploitable loophole. Should it be legal to show a film in Jurisdiction A, if the act of making that film would be illegal in Jurisdiction A? It's not an obvious question, but I'm very troubled by the possibility of someone making CP in some shithole like France, and making money on it in the US.

 

[Smug Cat]

(3) has no serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.

lmao this is going absolutely nowhere. The film premiered at Sundance, for fuck's sake. This is a Texas DA pulling a political stunt and a group of jurors so viscerally disgusted by the content of the film that they voted to indict even though there's no case.

Don't get me wrong, the film is absolutely disgusting and should not have been made. But anyone who thinks this case is going anywhere but the circular filing bin is kidding themselves.

 

[AnOminous]

Logical, but it does sound like an exploitable loophole. Should it be legal to show a film in Jurisdiction A, if the act of making that film would be illegal in Jurisdiction A? It's not an obvious question, but I'm very troubled by the possibility of someone making CP in some shithole like France, and making money on it in the US.

Distributing CP is illegal in the U.S. regardless of where it's from or otherwise what the provenance was. So if CP was legal in the Netherlands in the '70s, or wherever, CP produced in the '70s in the Netherlands is still illegal in the U.S.

lmao this is going absolutely nowhere. The film premiered at Sundance, for fuck's sake. This is a Texas DA pulling a political stunt and a group of jurors so viscerally disgusted by the content of the film that they voted to indict even though there's no case.

The grand jurors had the text of the Texas law and the facts. The facts as they are fit the broad contours of the Texas statute, so their job was to indict. They are not constitutional scholars, jury nullification aside.

The film will definitely be considered protected under 1A, and since the US-release poster was really the only promotional material causing any controversy (it was gross but wouldn't meet the legal criteria for CP), I don't see this going anywhere.

That's not true. The poster raised some eyebrows in a few places, including here, but it wasn't until the trailers were released that the scandal started getting some real traction. And those were fairly overtly pandering that the contents of the film were lewd and lascivious portrayals of children engaging in at least quasi-sexual behavior.

 

[BScCollateral]

Distributing CP is illegal in the U.S. regardless of where it's from or otherwise what the provenance was. So if CP was legal in the Netherlands in the '70s, or wherever, CP produced in the '70s in the Netherlands is still illegal in the U.S.

Since the definition of CP apparently requires the work to have no artistic merit, I suspect this case will fail, because Cuties is not without that.

So the lesson is, make your child pornography abroad where it can be produced legally, and make sure it's in a good movie.

 

[mindlessobserver]

It's not even a constitutional question yet. This is in State Court. The law already factors in a constitutional limitation, that the offending work cannot hold legitimate artistic or scientific purpose. It must be of an entirely sexual nature.

This will be a hard sell but at a minimum the case can be made. Whether or not a jury goes along with it is another matter. Then if they do, there will be all sorts of appeals. Its gonna work it's way through the texas courts before it can land in Federal. I expect the US Supreme Court via writ from the Texas Supreme Court. I suppose Netflix could try and get a federal judge involved now if they wanted too, but that shit almost never flies. Federal Courts will almost never step into the middle of an ongoing State level criminal case. They wont act until the State has concluded all it's own legal deliberations.

 

[TwinkLover6969]

Nick did talk briefly about this last night, his opinion was that the movie is likely protected under 1A.

Short answer on the reasoning is that this outcome would be consistent with prior case law. He also specifically brought up that "prurient interest" is not as broad as it may at first seem.

So that likely plays in Cuties favor.

He did a quick case law search though and there is no case law or decisions surrounding the Texas law that is being invoked here available in Westlaw, which bodes poorly for Netflix in Texas specifically, assuming this gets past pre-trial and gets in front of a Tyler Co. jury.

Given his track record doesnt that mean that Netflix is fucked?

 

[Getting tard comed]

Why people assume constitutional law is going to be applied fairly in a small Texas county in a case related to CP is weird. If it goes to trial I bet the jury says "fuck it" and convicts any way. Netflix probably wins when they appeal it past jury trial and go to the appeals courts but that's not even guaranteed in Texas. People who follow Vic's case on this site are talking as if the law gets followed to the law in the appellate courts in Texas when we've already seen that isn't true.

Ideal scenario is it goes to SCOTUS and Netflix *should* win there but hey SCoTus most famous cases have been the ones they've fucked up on so that's no guarentee.

Stop being wet blankets and let people enjoy something for a little bit

 

[BrunoMattei]

Why people assume constitutional law is going to be applied fairly in a small Texas county in a case related to CP is weird. If it goes to trial I bet the jury says "fuck it" and convicts any way. Netflix probably wins when they appeal it past jury trial and go to the appeals courts but that's not even guaranteed in Texas. People who follow Vic's case on this site are talking as if the law gets followed to the law in the appellate courts in Texas when we've already seen that isn't true.

Ideal scenario is it goes to SCOTUS and Netflix *should* win there but hey SCoTus most famous cases have been the ones they've fucked up on so that's no guarentee.

Stop being wet blankets and let people enjoy something for a little bit

I just find it amusing that all Netflix has to do is remove the movie and admit their mistake but they refuse to back down.

Edit: I guarantee if it was a movie accused of anti-Semitism or whatever then they would have removed it due to the controversy.

 

[YarrBlueballs]

Given his track record doesnt that mean that Netflix is fucked?

By the letter of the law Nick is right. The issue is that if the Cuties issue is pushed hard enough then courts/ect may say that the current 1A protections don't matter and decide to invent a different/extended version of the current process. Their best bet would be to tell SCOTUS that their previous ruling was incomplete or outright wrong and push a stricter, more concrete process.

There is no way a reasonable court in Texas of all places would let CP slide just because it has 'artistic merit'. Everyone with two brain cells to rub together will quickly realize that if Texas doesn't win then we've opened Pandora's Box.

It'll be interesting to see if a state like Texas decides they've had enough and go all-out. Texas is in a perfect position to challenge these matters considering it's real political, economic, and social power, even if it rarely flexes in this day and age.

 

[AnOminous]

It's not even a constitutional question yet. This is in State Court. The law already factors in a constitutional limitation, that the offending work cannot hold legitimate artistic or scientific purpose. It must be of an entirely sexual nature.

Depends on what the offending work is. If the objection is to the advertising and promotion, that doesn't have artistic merit. It's an advertisement. Its purpose is to advertise.

The movie itself almost certainly passes Miller. Artistic merit is a legal question separate from whether it's actually any good. It can be an atrociously bad movie and still pass the test. It doesn't have to be James Joyce's Ulysses, to pick a classic that was prosecuted.

This could easily be dismissed even by a rural Texas judge, without even directly reaching the constitutional issues, if the judge feels the movie does not qualify under the language of the statute as such statutes are interpreted in Texas, even if the prosecution is bringing the case in the reasonable belief that there is probable cause, and a grand jury has returned a true bill.

 

[Captain Manning]

Logical, but it does sound like an exploitable loophole. Should it be legal to show a film in Jurisdiction A, if the act of making that film would be illegal in Jurisdiction A? It's not an obvious question, but I'm very troubled by the possibility of someone making CP in some shithole like France, and making money on it in the US.

It can already be illegal. Nation states ban foreign shit all the time. Japan is a frequent target. It's just way harder to do in the US, because of the 1A. It has to be outright CP, or fail the Miller Test. Cuties, unfortunately, will likely pass the Miller Test.

Good example here is the anime Puni Puni Poemy. It is outright banned in Kiwifarm's arch-nemesis: New Zealand. The fact it was made in Japan is irrelevant. Basically, the "other Kiwis" concluded it was too close to lolicon for their tastes. New Zealand is a country where it is fairly easy to ban shit, and they have governmental bodies to make such determinations.

Reasonable people can differ as to whether New Zealand overreacted in that case (they've basically banned *us*), but it is undoubtedly their sovereign right to not follow another nation's standards. All nations theoretically enjoy that right. If they couldn't, they wouldn't be nations.

If anybody wants to brush up on the hilarity of the Puni Puni Poemy saga, you can read about it on the below link. The weeb who appealed it made some headway, but the film classification board ultimately said "Nah mate. This is still degenerate weeb shit. Fook off!" I then like to think they all stood up and performed a haka at him.

https://www.hikari.org.nz/stuff/otaku/ppp/

 

[I can't imagine]

Logical, but it does sound like an exploitable loophole. Should it be legal to show a film in Jurisdiction A, if the act of making that film would be illegal in Jurisdiction A? It's not an obvious question, but I'm very troubled by the possibility of someone making CP in some shithole like France, and making money on it in the US.

If it's actual obscenity, it doesn't matter where it's made, it's illegal in the U.S. However, past history has shown that, depending on the context, everything from full-frontal nudity to simulating sex acts have managed to qualify as "not obscene" in the U.S. So let's say the bar might be higher than where people around here might be thinking it is.

 

[Billy_Sama]

This and Bucees is why I love Texas.

 

[Eris!]

The founding fathers thought that was ripe for abuse, so they made it so that neither the Federal government, or the states, could ever do it.

There are a lot of things in the US constitution that get outsized focus becuase the founding fathers were specifically pissed off about something. The third amendment is a good example. Most kids when they learn the bill of rights in elementary school are like "Speech.. Okay got it. Arms... okay got it. Quartering of troops? Wtf?"
It's there because in the various wars against indians in the west, the British would constantly quarter troops in people's villages, and the troops would take whatever they want. This is an extremely foreign experience to modern first world people, but dealing with foraging soldiers used to be a common fact of life. The british took it a step beyond normal, basically foraging off their own people. The founding fathers were like "Fuck you, no one can do this, it fuckin sucks. They ate all my goddamn saltpork for crying out loud."

 

[Ruin]

You know what really gets me about Cuties? By far the demographic most aggressively shilling for Cuties and defending it against the "Nazis" are unkempt bearded bugmen with nsfw Twitter accounts, aka obvious sex pests and possible pedophiles and no one on the progressive side of the political spectrum sees anything suspect or suspicious about this.

I bet they'd care if Americans with right of center political beliefs loved a movie that painted Jews in a less than flattering light.

 

[mindlessobserver]

There are a lot of things in the US constitution that get outsized focus becuase the founding fathers were specifically pissed off about something. The third amendment is a good example. Most kids when they learn the bill of rights in elementary school are like "Speech.. Okay got it. Arms... okay got it. Quartering of troops? Wtf?"
It's there because in the various wars against indians in the west, the British would constantly quarter troops in people's villages, and the troops would take whatever they want. This is an extremely foreign experience to modern first world people, but dealing with foraging soldiers used to be a common fact of life. The british took it a step beyond normal, basically foraging off their own people. The founding fathers were like "Fuck you, no one can do this, it fuckin sucks. They ate all my goddamn saltpork for crying out loud."

There is also the patent of nobility clause too. That's gonna be a fun one for prince harry and megan markle since those two tards seem to have delusions of grandeur. Markle probably thinks giving up a title she accepted will be enough to run for office. I disagree.

 

[CheesyBoy]

The state of Texas can't dissolve a Delaware corporation.

They can ban it in the state., which would no doubt cause them to lose a good chunk of subscribers.

 

[Eris!]

There is also the patent of nobility clause too. That's gonna be a fun one for prince harry and megan markle since those two tards seem to have delusions of grandeur. Markle probably thinks giving up a title she accepted will be enough to run for office. I disagree.

ABSOLUTELY NO EARLS ALLOWED
FUCK OFF EARLS