On the other hand, it is true that Canada has different free speech laws than in the US. And it's true that I (who am, incidentally, an American, although I don't think of my values as necessarily 'American') don't approve of these free speech laws, or the way its border patrol behaves. I don't approve of many American laws either, for that matter, and many American government actions, both domestic and international.

This article is an editorial. io9 has never enforced any kind of 'absolute objectivity author-cannot-show-their-opinion law'. If you take issue with my coverage of the events, by all means write an alternate intepretation, or for that matter, you have the right to write an article denouncing the American government's policies and put it up online.

My main point is, since there are many people in Canada who also disapprove of the Canadian government's heavy-handed policies — note that the Canadian Comic Legends Legal Defense Fund raised over $10,000 for Matheson, and also some of the Canadians commenting in THIS VERY DISCUSSION THREAD — I think it's inappropriate and arguably jingoistic to accuse me of being some foreign agent provocateur trying to spread American domination over Canada in the guise of Democracy Promotion. -_- (Oh no! I revealed my secret plan! Curses!!)

I sincerely doubt the Canadian government would drop a case on the basis of "hearsay". I think the word you're looking for is EVIDENCE.

Last summer, civil liberties groups Comic Book Legal Defense Fund and Comic Legends Legal Defense Fund helped defend Ryan Matheson, an American citizen who faced a year in Canadian prison for possession of child pornography. Why? The charges against the 27-year-old software engineer had come via Canadian customs officers who found manga on Matheson's laptop. At last, Matheson's ordeal is over after the Canadian prosecutors withdrew all criminal charges as part of a plea bargain agreement.

Matheson, an anime and manga fan and "amateur artist focusing on Japanese anime characters" has written a personal statement about his experiences on the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund (CLBDF) blog. His planned five-day visit to a friend in Ottawa was his first trip outside the US, and when Customs officials asked for access to his computer, "I knew I didn't have anything to hide, so I willingly gave them my password."

A succession of Canadian Border Services Officers, beginning with one Officer Tremblay, looked through his files and found an image of a moe style parody of the shijûhatte, the "48 positions," a Kama Sutra-style Japanese sex diagram (originally itself a parody of a diagram of sumo wrestling techniques). The BSO agents called Detective Maureen Bryden of the High-Tech Crime Unit and presumably described the image over the phone, after which Bryden "advised that the images would constitute child pornography and directed that the subject be arrested."

Matheson was taken into custody and kept overnight in a cold cell without food, blankets or pillows and "a slab of concrete" as a bed. When he asked to contact the US Embassy, guards ignored him. He was later transferred to a long-term detention center, where he stayed for five days until his bail was posted, and where guards teased him with "Since you're going into protective custody, that must mean you've done something bad, right, something child related?" and "If you get raped in here, it doesn't count!" After he was released, his bail conditions forbid him from using computers or the internet outside of his work, as well as forbidding him from switching jobs.

The prosecution's case for child pornography would apparently have been built on the "48 positions" page, as well as scans of Mahô Shôjo Ririnana, a Mahô Shôjo Lyrical Nanoha StrikerS dojinshi anthology also found on Matheson's computer, among other anime and manga files. According to Charles Brownstein executive director of the CBLDF, "I am still working to locate the exact page in question (not all the evidence has been returned yet, and who knows what condition Ryan's computer will be in when it is), but we believe it depicts the fictional characters Reinforce, a 900-year-old computer program that is about a foot tall, and Vivio, a non-human shapeshifting magic creature who takes on a variety of female forms in a story that ends in a sexually explicit fashion." (The Nanoha art in this article is generic artwork, not from that specific dojinshi.)

Shortly before the February 2012 trial date, the charges were dropped. Charles Brownstein, executive director of the CBLDF, said in an interview with The Comics Reporter that the breakthrough in the case was a change in prosecutors, as well as a strong defense from the legal team — Michael Edelson and Solomon Friedman of Edelson Clifford D'Angelo LLP — that the new prosecutor may have thought hard to beat. The defense begins with the argument that the Canadian customs officers overstepped their roles and acted as agents for the local police force, never telling Matheson when his routine customs search became a criminal investigation. Edelson also invoked free speech and cruel and unusual punishment, to quote from the Charter Notice:

"He had his liberty restrained (and still does because of his bail conditions). He had his private property taken. He had his hard drive, which contained intimate details of his life, searched relentlessly. He was made to feel physically uncomfortable and then psychologically threatened in a foreign country with no access to his embassy…

"The images in question do not depict real people. They do not depict real children. They are fictional comic characters. Society's interest in seeing Mr. Matheson stand trial for the possession of these images, after the way he has been treated, is minimal at best. The images in question do not offend moral sensibilities the way real depictions would, nor is there danger or risk posed to children.

"Given the way that the Applicant has been treated, the conclusion necessarily follows that the admission of any evidence obtained after his referral to secondary inspection would tend to bring the administration of justice into disrepute."

The defense also compared the search of Matheson's hard drive to an unlawful strip search:

"There is little doubt that the search of one's personal computer falls within the same level of intrusiveness as a strip search of one's physical person, because in contemporary times a person's computer will envelop their 'digital life.'"

As a result of the plea bargain agreement, Matheson pled to a non-criminal regulatory offense under the Canadian Customs Act; that offense was also discharged by the judge, and the case will not stand trial. The CBLDF's full press release is here, including legal documents submitted by Edelson's defense.

Since the case did not go to trial, no legal precedent was set. Brownstein defended Matheson's decision not to go to trial, pointing out that although the defense's case was strong, all trials are inherently risky, and in a trial Matheson would have risked a mandatory one year in prison plus registering as a sex offender. In his personal statement, Matheson himself argues for free speech:

"This case was important to me. Japanese animation and manga are something I hold precious. I first got into anime when I was about eight years old by watching Sailor Moon and Dragon Ball Z that aired on TV at the time.…To have this healthy and fulfilling hobby of mine deemed "unfavorable," "deviant" or "criminal" by ignorant government officials is insulting and degrading not only to me, but also to the millions of fellow fans who take part in enjoying this art. After going through such a challenging and difficult period of my life, my own convictions about what anime and manga mean to me have become stronger than ever before.

"Others like me that are interested in comics, manga and anime should become informed about this important issue and stick together. Some people may be tempted to say things like, "Well, I don't like that type of manga" or "That doesn't bother me-I've never read that title," but you should step back and take a look at the big picture. The law shouldn't be based on what you like or don't like. The people should have their own choice to pursue what they like and avoid what they don't like. When overzealous governments try to unjustly attack comics and manga, they are attacking all of literature and art as a whole. Free speech should be absolute, not a pick-and-choose sort of thing. This is a very important right that we enjoy every day and we need to stand up for ourselves and protect it!"

In short: thanks to a strong legal defense and sticking to his guns, Matheson is cleared of charges, but Canadian customs is still infamously intrusive, prudish and unaccountable to the public, recently condemning and confiscating not only extraterrestrial shapeshifting ageplay dojinshi but also The Snuff Taker's Ephemeris, a magazine about snuff tobacco (it had a nude painting in it); Black Eye, a black humor comics anthology; and Miki Aihara's ages-13-and-up Tokyo Boys and Girls (customs officer: "That's the stuff from Japan; there's some really obscene and filthy stuff!").

Matheson's ordeal is over, well, mostly: he's still $45,000 in the hole for legal charges related to his defense, despite the CBLDF and CLLLF raising over $30,000 for his case. Make a contribution at cbldf.org. Considering Matheson's passionate statement in his defense, I can't help but think he'd also make a good speaker on censorship issues, if any anime convention this summer is looking for a guest.

As for the slow releases of manga, the basic idea is that bookstores don't have enough money to buy so much manga so fast. Bookstores and comic stores would get cranky and buy less manga if they're offered a new volume every month, and especially if you dump all 20+ volumes of manga on the market at once. They've only got so much $$ per month to spend on manga. Besides, even taking the example that some publisher decided to translate Harry Potter into, say, Lithuanian, it would be stupidly reckless for that publisher to release all 7 books all at once. The obvious smart (and cautious) thing to do, which is what manga localization publishers do, is to release just the first book and then wait and see IF IT SELLS ENOUGH TO JUSTIFY RELEASING THE OTHER SIX. -_- If it doesn't sell enough... well, then sadly, the rest of the translated edition doesn't see print, and the fans get furious. But from a publisher's standpoint, it's way smarter, because they only have to pay 1/7th as much money up front, rather than risk losing a TON of money if it doesn't sell enough. What's good for fans isn't necessarily good for publishers. In a perfect world, of course, all good manga would sell well and they would all make enough money for the publishers to print the whole series but.... sigh.

As for manga publishers licensing too many bad titles, though, I can't disagree with you there. ;)

There's certainly a lot of publisher interference and corporate meddling in manga as-is.... although it's a self-selecting, which-came-first-the-chicken-or-the-egg situation, since the kind of artists who can accept such meddling and who want to make popular series (as opposed to having some kind of artsy goal) are the ones who tend to be picked up by the corporate publishers and who end up becoming the makers of the megahits like Naruto and Bleach. But still, there's a kind of respect for creator-ownership in manga that doesn't exist in Marvel and DC comics; Dragon Ball is Akira Toriyama's thing and there's no one else who can make it. If Rumiko Takahashi died, her daughter wouldn't immediately pick up and continue drawing Rin-ne like the creator of Hagar the Horrible's son taking over the comic strip. (Not that Takahashi has a daughter, but for the sake of argument...)

I'd really like to see more dojinshi and digitally-distributed self-published style manga in the US. The problem is basically that self-publishers don't have the resources & time to try to get their work translated and published in other languages. But it'll happen when it happens.

And yeah, I know that scanlators don't make any money. Aggregator sites that sell bootleg merchandise, or sites that sell scammy 'subscriptions' like narutofan — those make money, sadly. The best career outcome of all the long hours of unpaid work scanlating, I think, is that a few of the lucky scanlators who wanted to go in that direction ended up with jobs in the industry (like Alexis Kirsch who went from Toriyamaworld to Viz) and more power to 'em.

While I think there's too much inbred high-octane nerdage in a lot of manga nowadays (maid outfits, etc.) I have to take these comments with a grain of salt. As someone else said, the Golden Age of Comics for everyone is when that person is 12 years old. -_- Everyone above a certain age is nostalgic for the pop culture they liked when they were younger. I think there's still plenty of good manga out there, it's just not getting the audience and visibility that it deserves.

One thing I didn't mention in the article (because it happened after I already posted it in the io9 printing press) is DMP's experimentation with Kickstarter to fund their manga releases. They recently crowdfunded an edition of Osamu Tezuka's "Barbara", a never before translated Tezuka manga. Apparently some Japanese publishers thought it was inappropriate for a "real" publisher to use Kickstarter, but... hey. It worked. Kudos to DMP and to Tezuka's people for approving it.

Actually, apparently there's considered to be a generation gap between older 80s-90s fans (who like science fiction and robots and whatnot) and newer fans (who like maids and moe) in Japan as well. Older fans of everything always talk about how much better it was in their youth: first edition D&D, '80s anime, pre-Eccleston Doctor Who.... And the stereotype that manga and anime is just for pervs is nothing new: even in the '80s I knew tons of people who thought anime was for "perverts" and who then went on to eagerly quote dubious "statistics" about how Japanese people were sexually unfulfilled. I don't really care how kinky manga and anime is, AS LONG AS IT'S STILL SUCCESSFULLY DRAWING IN NEW READERS. -_-