It was one of those strange coincidences that makes one think that, if there were a god, he must have a strange sense of humour. Salman Rushdie, who was the target of a 1989 fatwa issued by Ayatollah Khomeini that called for his death due to his novel The Satanic Verses and who lost sight in one of his eyes after being stabbed on stage in the US last year, warned that never in his lifetime had freedom of expression been under such a threat in the West. Less than a week later, Fur Affinity announced a new rule banning adult artwork of characters with childlike proportions, later calling out specific pokémon and digimon. I have already written about the importance of free speech for the furry fandom, so here I would like to discuss how increasing authoritarianism is restricting free expression and a simple way to help safeguard it.

On May 19th Fur Affinity had announced that it will expand the rules toward banning portrayals of youthful appearing characters, even if the character is addressed as being older in universe, engaging in sexual situations to include digimon and pokemon characters. While situations that portrayed actual young anthro characters in sex (known colloquially as cub porn) had been banned 13 years ago, there were elements of gray area on characters that are determined as mature in age, but younger in appearance that were later expanded upon. This update is a furthering of that expansion.

In the announcement Fur Affinity had noted that there is a method for artists who have posted works that may be in this gray area to discover how they would be handled by submitting trouble tickets against it.

If you have questions as to whether this may apply to your content, please feel free to open a ticket under “NSFW Underage Content” with links to the content in question, and we can verify if the content is in violation or not.

Artists have been informed that the amendment will start to be enforced on July 1st.

Sometimes you really just gotta love the titles of Japanese media creations. Reincarnated As A Dragon Hatchling. You’re going to remember that one, yes? And it perfectly describes this new black & white manga written by Nekoko and Naji and illustrated by Rio. “If you woke up as a sentient egg in some random forest, I bet you’d be confused, too. That’s exactly what happened to me in the oddest turn of events…Being reborn as a little egg has its challenges, but luckily, with all these monsters out to eat me, I’m gaining experience quick. Once I bust out of this shell, a cool new form better await me–that is, if I survive long enough!” And that’s just the first volume. You’ll find even more from Seven Seas.

image c. 2021 Seven Seas Entertainment

Cub-focused furry art and story archive Cub Central is closing its doors, after almost fifteen years of uptime.

The site, dedicated to "works containing furry or cartoon characters under the ages of puberty for their species", was founded in April 2000 by Nicol Firefox. His death in November led to the site's demise, announced by Nipper:

Sadly Nicol is no longer with us to run this site. I believe that most activity has since moved to other sites, and CC was no longer under active development.

I will leave the site up for a couple of weeks in case artists want to retreive their art, after that it will be decomissioned.

Cub Central once hosted over 5500 pictures and almost 900 stories in its public and private galleries, but activity tailed off with the rise of Fur Affinity. When FA banned cub porn in 2010, most fans of it chose to move to sites such as Inkbunny and SoFurry instead of Cub Central.

Furry artist Mizzyam, also known as MisterNivens and Amarimasi, has been arrested after a month-long Internet child-pornography investigation.

Known in the real world as Michael Shalapata, the 24-year-old resident of Hamilton, Ontario was taken into custody on November 1 by members of the Ontario Provincial Police Child Sexual Exploitation Unit and the Hamilton Police Service Internet Child Exploitation Unit.

Shalapata was charged with "making child pornography available and two counts of possession of child pornography". Four computers and "other items" were seized.

[adjective][species] has an interesting article on cub porn and its impact on the furry community. Controversial topic but worth a read.

On sites where it is allowed (and even sometimes when it is not), it’s ubiquitous. A full 3% (out of 200,000) of posts on e621.net are tagged “cub”. Yet attraction to underage characters is discussed as if it existed in the extreme margins of furry.

The prevalence of cub porn suggests that a significant minority of furries are paedophiles. Or, to use a less inflammatory phrase, many furries are sexually attracted to underage characters.

Fur Affinity has banned adult artwork of underage characters, after payment processor AlertPay cited it as a reason to cancel the site's account.

Right now we have to make a choice. Do we continue on with cub artwork and protect the artwork in the name of freedom of speech? Or do we remove the one Achilles heel that has proven itself to be a liability and a frustration?

If we want to keep Fur Affinity alive we have no choice but to remove cub art.

Artists have 21 days before administrators begin removing such content from their accounts. Non-adult artwork will not be affected, nor will "chibi", "cutsey", or "stylized" characters.

Site administrator Dragoneer noted that no artist will be punished for the presence of existing artwork, and warned that harassment of artists will result in a three-month ban. Both Dragoneer and Pinkuh recommended SoFurry and Inkbunny as alternative hosts.

Mature furry imageboard e621 has apparently closed its doors:

Thanks to numerous threats to our host, false claims of illegal content, harassment and a few things that are much worse, e621 is being closed down permanently. It's been fun running it.

The closure is likely the result of allegations made earlier today that e621 hosted cartoon child pornography.

Update: All is impermanent. Varka (CEO of Bad Dragon) intends to take over the site.

Dream Field Comics, creators of Softpaw Magazine, spin-off Finding Avalon, and Ulster, have closed. The publisher was notorious for their popular pornographic magazines depicting young furry characters.

Softpaw's US$20-$25 issues consisted of 64-96 full-colour glossy pages containing a mixture of comics, pin-ups and stories.

Their work was barred from sale at Eurofurence and Further Confusion, but subsequently nominated for the 2008 Ursa Majors – only to be banned the next year.

At press time, most Dream Field titles were in stock at Rabbit Valley.

Update (19 Jun): Dream Field co-founder Jery Softpaw provided an explanation for closing:

The recent article made by FurteanTimes' Editor-In-Chief Alexgrey is out-of-turn for professional journalistic writing. It is full of faults. The story's title is presumptuous, and the story presents opinion as fact, makes wild claims, and it threatens to cause hysteria and fear as it ripples through the fandoms. A full retraction and apology should be written in its place lest the FurteamTimes lose any credibility as a quality news source.

The recent United Kingdom "Cartoon Law" is untested. Like any obscenity law, it resides in a huge gray area of legal interpretation. Moreover, no single piece of anthropomorphic art has been examined during common-law legal proceedings since the Friendly Frank's obscenity case in the United States back in 1986, as far as this author is aware.

Until the fateful day when a legal complaint is made against an artist, publisher, or consumer and a trained law enforcement officer determines the validity of a complaint, a warrant is issued by a judge, an arrest is made, and the defendant is tried and convicted for the possession of a piece of "furry" erotic art or literature, no single editor for any news source (unless they are psychic) can proclaim anything further than mere speculation.

This is basic "Law & Order" material, guys. Not even a lawyer experienced in obscenity law can give more than expert opinion in this matter. So save that extra two thousand in your bank account until you really need it.

Today FurteanTimes.com reported that a new law just pasted by the British government will make paedophilic depictions of furry pornographic illegal. But does it really do this?

The law in question is the Coroners and Justice Act 2009 and the bit covering this new law is Sections 62 to 68. Now, it has been reported by some sources, such as The Register and FurteanTimes.com that this law will ban depictions of under-age children and people, which will be a worry to some anime/manga fans.

However, what is actually meant be "people" and "children"?

As the days count down until the general election on May 6th, Parliament is now starting to push through the final pieces of legislation for the current government. While many people have been focusing on the Digital Economy Bill, Parliament yesterday quietly passed legislation that may effect furries more than any other.

The Cartoon Law has made it illegal to create or possess imagery of minors (characters under-18 years of age), without discretion to species or the manner in which that imagery has been created. In furry terms, artwork of characters under-18 - be them engaging in a sexual act or having exposed genitalia - are henceforth illegal. This also includes imagery of sexual acts occurring in the presence of a minor.

It doesn't just affect furries however, lolicon (a form of hentai depicting children) is also made illegal under the new law.

BC tabloid The Province has caught on to the fact that Polish newspaper Gazeta Olsztynska used an image including 4chan meme Pedobear in a story on the Winter Olympics.

The modified image's author, Michael Barrick, says it was also used by a Spanish sports blog.

Pedobear made an appearance at Anthrocon last year, handing out free candy.

Best Magazine nominee Softpaw #4 would be excluded today [Papaya Kitty]

Nominations have begun for the 2009 Ursa Major Awards, furry fandom's popular award for excellence in published works. But new rules intended to safeguard the reputation of the Awards and its sponsoring events will exclude works which won nomination in previous years.

While nominees and winners will still be chosen by popular vote, the Anthropomorphic Literature and Arts Association intends to block material they deem "obscene, libelous, or otherwise detrimental to the integrity and good standing of the Ursa Major Awards and the anthropomorphics fandom."

Their definition includes "works of a predominantly sexual nature, or which include explicit sexual situations involving characters which may be underage or non-anthropomorphic animals."

Softpaw #2, the previous edition of Softpaw Magazine, was banned from Eurofurence over similar concerns.

Further Confusion's governing organization Anthropomorphic Arts and Education (AAE) has banned the sale of erotic cub fanzine Softpaw Magazine at this year's event, making it the second major convention to ban the work.^[1]

The decision was based on a rule banning "[depictions of] minor[s] engaging in sexually explicit conduct", which AAE added due to the prosecution of Dwight Whorley for receiving lolicon over the Internet.^[2] Softpaw and its supporters maintain that, as furries are not humans but anthropomorphic animals, laws covering the sexual relation of humans do not apply.^[3][4][5]

Some assumed AAE's decision was made partly on moral grounds, while others thought they were making a definitive statement about the legality of Softpaw and similar works.^[5] The board later posted a statement denying both of these, emphasizing that the risk and consequences of legal action - regardless of its success - were the sole reason for their ban.^[6]