My knowledge of US law is very limited, but I think it has to do with the Miller Test.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miller_test
Whether "the average person, applying contemporary community standards", would find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest,
Whether the work depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct or excretory functions[4] specifically defined by applicable state law,
Whether the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.[not
If the virtual work depicting minors fulfills all three criteria, it's classified as obscene and in violation of the law. This does allow for quite a bit of semantics and wiggle room in theory. Especially with regards to the last point.
Yeah, and point two is just shifting the problem of definition to "patently offensive".
I think the last point (while absolutely not what I would use to construct such a definition) would be the basic defense for most manga that aren't smut, since even if it has smutty elements (or just engages with the concept of sexuality), it is usually a minority of what is going on in the work, so you just need to defend the rest of the work as literary and legally it's done. I guess this is pretty precision-targeted at dedicated porn distribution and that sort of thing rather than really resolving the question of "what kind of sexuality is okay to depict?"
My knowledge of US law is very limited, but I think it has to do with the Miller Test.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miller_test
If the virtual work depicting minors fulfills all three criteria, it's classified as obscene and in violation of the law. This does allow for quite a bit of semantics and wiggle room in theory. Especially with regards to the last point.
I could be wrong though.
Yeah, and point two is just shifting the problem of definition to "patently offensive".
I think the last point (while absolutely not what I would use to construct such a definition) would be the basic defense for most manga that aren't smut, since even if it has smutty elements (or just engages with the concept of sexuality), it is usually a minority of what is going on in the work, so you just need to defend the rest of the work as literary and legally it's done. I guess this is pretty precision-targeted at dedicated porn distribution and that sort of thing rather than really resolving the question of "what kind of sexuality is okay to depict?"
Kinophiles who have the Criterion edition of Salo: 120 Days of Sodom on their wishlist: