I been catching up the last few hours , and. Holy Fuck.
Japan: It looks like a huge shitstorm has hit and the prospect is grim. The only way I see out of this is if Peter and Larry Flint team up. They could probably show figures in the ten thousand range ( of sales) . Also show them just how small Equality Now actually is. Also promote EN’s agenda as one of ethnocentric racism. Make caving seem like an issue of national pride. Bribery is also good.
America: ACLU.
You mean - in comparison to US?
Actually, I think we are outnumbered by them…
They’re not caving to EN, they’re caving to factions within their own country who are using EN as a sign of international support. Also, lying about EN’s foolish misguidedness to serve your own ends is uncool. Attempting to assert that it’s an issue of racism instead of what it’s actually about is just trying to drag emotion into it and blind people, making you no better than the anti-loli brigades who scream “THINK OF THE CHILDREN” to make people stop thinking.
I’m with Kahless as to how we should approach this. However, I don’t think we should completely throw out carefully using the emotions of people. Emotions are a power thing, and could turn someone who says, “Man, this is bad, but I don’t think I could really do anything.” to some who says, “This is horrible! I must do something!”
ACLU is fine if for fighting the obscenity laws here in the US (even as they seem to forget the 2nd Amendment most of the time, but that is for another topic), but the real question is if there is some sort of Japanese or international group that stands up for civil liberties that we could enlist help from.
@Papillion: The thing is I am thinking , and some might call me machivellian - I care about getting practical results . I just checked ENs website and they mention this debacle , but when confronted with statistics pulled a fallacy. Framing this as an issue of national pride may work. :o
Also I really do think EN is arrogant and ethnocentric . They try to ram one culture down everyone’s throats. It borders on Imperialism.
Look at it from their perspective. For a moment, pretend that they’re right and that rape games actually do cause rapes. How could they, in good conscience, say “Oh, that’s all right… Rape is just like saying hello in Japan! We shouldn’t interfere.” That would be racist. 
They’re not right, of course, but you can see where they’re coming from there.
Even if we come at it from that angle, I ask why do they target just Japan and just eroge? There is a whole mountain of media far more pervasive than eroge throughout the world.
That is an excellent question Jinnai. After all, wouldn’t it be better for their argument if they took on porn with real people that looks like an actual rape? My guess is that it is simply a case of them crushing who they feel they are able to crush. That, or the fact that eroge is semi-interactive.
They’re NOT targeting just Japan or just eroge, for heaven’s sake. Look at their website! Where on Earth do you invent these stories from?
And they don’t have the magical power to crush foreign governments, either. All they can do is send a few letters.
I think in the “Digital Age” people have forgotten how powerful a simple letter campaign can be for politicians. That’s what works for EN’s favor. They know how to use it, and the pro-eroge community are a combination of too late and too uncaring in response. According to one source, the EN activity had THOUSANDS of letters sent to Japan (although some people sent several letters; not just one). Basically the pro-eroge community got their asses handed to them for not being organized enough to make a counter campaign.
EN and the anti-eroge community are not totally to blame. Only 50% of the problem. The other 50% is pro-eroge, both native in Japan and foreign overseas, for not concerting an effective counterattack. Instead they blogged, posted on forums, bitched about who was to blame, or did nothing. Not a damn thing politicians saw or cared about.
You reap what you sow… and we sowed nothing to reap. That’s why we’re losing, and that’s why we’ll continue to lose until we pull our heads out our asses.
Oh sure, letter campaigns can be effective. I’m just saying that some of the terminology people use implies that they have like a trained brigade of doom soldiers who can march into any country and force change (and then, assuming that they have this doom brigade, that they’re criminally misusing it by ‘wasting’ it on eroge.)
A letter campaign depends on the people receiving the letters being swayed by them.
I know another activist group that organised a letter campaign to complain about the japanese’s new anti-‘metabo’ policies (long story) and to the best of my knowledge that accomplished absolutely nothing, because the people who received the letters believed strongly in the new policy and were offended and annoyed by the outsider interference.
Or sent death threats to EN, getting them to feel more upset and more like dedicated crusaders for justice.
In that sense I agree. I also say those on both sides, Japan and outside Japan are to blame for not working together, for various historical reasons. Sadly I don’t see this wakeup call making much of a dent either.
Could someone summarize what has happened so far? I really wouldn’t like to read through walls of text to get the most important bits.
All I know is an organization of sorts dedicated to women’s rights discovered Rapelay was on Amazon, they looked it up and realized Illusion made it and they spammed the Japanese government and Illusionsoft respectively with C&D letters on making games which promote rape. This led to Illusion banning foreign IPs and denying responsibility over a foreign problem as they were following their own laws just fine.
So what are all the companies that have banned foreign IPs? I heard Akabe soft is one of them which totally BLOWS my mind, how the hell am I supposed to know about their latest games now?
What has happened in terms of eroge legislation in Japan and North America as well? Has it become completely illegal yet? Could someone sum it up for me please? Honestly it’s bad enough Japan has a problem with xenophobia, these organizations are just making it even worse for people like me.
So far EOCS’s plan to ban hardcore games are leaked. So any games that has to be with these keywords will no longer be allowed to be made after 9/30/2009, older games that have these words will also be banned, but not necessarily at 9/30/2009.
CSA and DHR is expected to adopt similar restrictions. But these are not laws, so if someone is ballsy enough I guess they can still set up a site to sell games that are not rated by either of these three self-regulation bodies.
The Child Porn law is still in discussion in the Japanese congress, I’m not sure how it will impact other hentai and eroge though.
Lolicon. To be honest that’s the only major thing the political parties are arguing about child porn law. They all universally agree that “real” child porn should be illegal. It’s the fictional depicition of child porn that’s not being agreed upon. Since sexually gratuitous lolicon is not seen as irredeemably obscene in Japanese erotica - at least not like the US or UK- hardliners want fictional child porn erradicated, since it’s difficult for them to universally prosecute with the way things are.
The lolicon impasse has been like this for the last decade or so.
Well according to what I’ve read on some other forums, the Child Porn situation is that there’s debate over what bill to pass:
Wasn’t there some legal debate going on about, in the case of real child pornography, prosecuting mere possession (as in the US) vs. prosecuting only sales and distribution?
That’s basically the impasse. There’s elections coming up, but the current PM is expected to dismiss the Diet before he goes out. When that happens, the Diet can’t pass any bills. So the conservatives are trying hard as hell to pass a bill, but to my knowledge they don’t have the numbers to get it passed before the PM does his thing (the LDP is not unified… they have a lot of seats, but are as fractured as the Democratic Party in the US). This has basically been on going for lolicon during the last political cycles - just not as intense as the one now.
Up until 1999 it was legal to own actual child porn in Japan (and I’m glad they made it illegal). Possession and distribution are both prosecuted, although mere possession carries a lesser sentence than distribution and production. In most Western countries, ownership carries the same level punishment as distribution. Production typically includes additional rape charges.
The deal is that conservatives in Japan want to make fictional child porn carry the same legal punishment as actual child porn, which even in the US has been deemed as Unconstitutional and a violation of free speech… of course that does not mean it’s not obscene.
Your summary sort of distorts the situation. For one, Illusion has not banned foreign IPs. Second, you paint everything in this nice simple picture of cause and effect. It’s not.
Revised summary: Rapelay shows up on English Amazon. Radical feminist groups start a media frenzy in the Western world about this afront to decency. Media frenzy spreads to Japan. Threatened with new legal measures against eroge, as well as backlash from distributors, EOCS (the main eroge industry group) is imposing restrictions on content for its member companies. A handful of companies also respond by banning foreign IPs, believing that banning foreign access will help contain the current crisis / prevent future crisises. Liquid asks Mangagamer to pull their translated Liquid titles, which have heavy rape themes, from MG’s site. It is not currently known if this move is temporary or permanent.
In the US, it is currently illegal to distribute obscene material (including importing by mail or sending / receiving files over the Internet). Obscene material includes sexually explicit items that offend common decency and have no artistic, literary, or scientific value. Extreme lolicon, according to the recent court case of Handley vs. Iowa, can be considered obscene.
Oh man… we’re done… if eroge aren’t banned entirely in Japan along with manga etc, the various companies will just lockdown and boycott the western world. It’ll be like a digital version of Sakoku.