I don’t think they were. I think it was a matter they didn’t care for, much like in the US politicians say they are against pornography. They are more open market oriented and their stance on anime/manga would seem to confirm that. It may be a case of saying one thing and doing another.
I dunno, I’m with zalas here - they might get their ban on games that promote violence to women. If so, good for them. Ban every eroge that they can prove promotes violence to women.
Eh? I never said there weren’t more important matters out there. Of course there are. Not to mention that I’m completely opposed to this whole censorship nonsense.
However, this censorship thing is right or wrong on its own merits, not because of what other things there may be out there in the world. It’s not fair to shoot down someone’s causes by saying “Why are you worrying about [color=#0000FF]X[/color] when you could be worrying about [color=#BF0080]Y[/color]?”
For one thing, the person MAY also be worrying about [color=#BF0080]Y[/color]and campaigning about [color=#BF0080]Y[/color]. The sort of person who goes “Why are you wasting your time protesting about [color=#0000FF]the lack of women in football[/color] when you could be [color=#BF0080]feeding starving children in Africa[/color]?” almost nevertakes the time to find out if the person they’re smirking at ACTUALLY IS donating to starving children in Africa. Most people who get all worked up over righting the wrongs in the world have more than one thing they’re worried about. Even EN, for all their stupidity, has other causes that they’re working on besides this censorship thing.
For another, there is ALWAYS something else wrong in the world. If you’re trying to save the rainforest, you could be nursing injured pets instead. If you’re nursing injured pets, you could be feeding starving orphans. If you’re feeding starving orphans, you could be trying to work on world peace. It’s not possible to do everything at once.
It’s therefore blatantly unfair to attack people just because they could be doing something else with their time. Everyone could always be doing something else with their time. Heck, you’re sitting here arguing about the freedom to look at rape porn. Aren’t there more important things YOU could be doing? So clearly, you’re in the wrong! 
… See, it just doesn’t work.
People who complain that the censors want to give more rights to virtual girls than to real ones are either failing to engage their brains before opening their mouths, or just flat-out lying. Nobody wants to give more rights to virtual girls than to real ones.
If you’re downloading games without buying them, you’re not helping the industry either!
I interpreted that as buying from DL sales sites because he’s probably too paranoid to buy packaged titles. I know a lot of people like that, and to be honest, it’s somewhat understandable. More questionable titles I’ll either avoid or get from dlsite if possible, and remember that he’s talking specifically about VNs likely to be banned (in other words, the worst of the rape titles) so I’d say the fear is very justified.
They don’t have to necessarily make a false statistic, just misuse a real one. Most likely they would use the usual correlation/causation mix up approach. To use an extremely obvious example, you could say that 100% of rapists have an epidermis (otherwise known as skin), and in saying that imply that one causes the other. However, you obviously couldn’t flip it around and say that people having skin is a cause of rape. Actually, they are sort of doing this kind of mix up already from what I understand, implying that because of these games, there is a culture that results in many unreported rapes.
I certainly hope these games you are downloading are obtained legally (e.g. from dlsite). However since you didn’t say, I have no idea.
Oh, good point. Yeah, if I were into the harder stuff I’d probably want to get it via download as well. Customs (in any country) doesn’t always have the best track record when it comes to porn, even things that clearly ARE legal.
I loved reading EN’s statement on this. It reminded me of the ‘Crime’ episode of ‘Brass Eye’:
“So much for recorded crimes, but crimes we know nothing about are going up as well.”
And I thought I was paranoid. Sure, there’s a potential for a customs hold-up for any eroge. But you’re not going to get into legal trouble for most games. If you really want a box…get it. There’s a difference between being cautious and living in fear.
Unless you import them on a regular basis, you’ll probably strike it rich on the lottery before having problems with customs other than delays.
I do import regularly, and I’ve never had any trouble.
I’ve had delays on some non-h content before and one denial for some unknown reason. It was a non-h artbook.
Naval may now be banning foreign IPs. Whenever I try to access their site, it now blocks me.
http://www.project-navel.com/navel/
Anyone with a Japanese IP have this problem? It wouldn’t really make sense for them to ban foreign IPs when they allow Shuffle! to be translated…
Correct, Navel is blocking foreign IPs.
Whatever, good riddance.
“Rape games will be banned in Japan”, but if I’m not mistaken only producers and doujin groups exclusively selling non-rape games have blocked foreign IP’s so far. Why? :?
can access the Lime website though for some reason
and can always use a proxy server 
I’m hoping this is just an error they are having at the moment. It really makes no sense to block foreign IPs. Maybe the many pre-orders erogeshop is getting for Essence+ somehow made Naval nervous about imports? :?
or can hope they will change ther mind like how Moonstone did after they blocked there website and then changed there mind after about a month .
Because it’s a political move / backlash response, not an actual attempt to objectively solve a perceived problem. If you actually listen to the radical feminist arguments, they’re claiming the mere existence of games that promote misogyny is unethical. Whether they can visit the website or not is irrelevant. In that light, the game developers have to decide that yes, the games are perfectly ethical, or no, they’re not. If the latter, then they should cease selling such games immediately and go make all ages games. Blocking access to their site only suggests they have something to hide, implicitly acknowledging that they’re in the wrong. That’ll only embolden the radical feminists further–though right now, the foreign nutjobs mailing Equality Now death threats are probably the ones causing the most harm.
No, blocking foreign IPs means casual investigation won’t reveal the contents. This makes something far lower profile than it was before.
Put it this way - would mailing a copy of every game to Equality Now for their “blessing” be a good idea? No. Would not doing that be “having something to hide”? No, it’s just good sense.
If they’re getting flak from foreigners who have a problem with something they didn’t intend to be available to foreigners anyway, why isn’t blocking a reasonable step? Sure, it’s not very nice, and us foreigners who like their products are being shafted. That doesn’t mean it’s not a good response. Your logic relies on something being either “ethically acceptable” or “not”, and it just isn’t that simple. Never has been. Some things are clearly unacceptable, some things clearly acceptable, but most everything else falls somewhere into a shade of grey, where someone somewhere has a problem with it - but others do not.
I think making Equality Now play every eroge to determine if the content is acceptable is a good idea. Their disapproval wouldn’t actually mean anything, but if they want to do the EOCS’ work for free (since they clearly don’t feel the EOCS is doing its job) I see no reason why we shouldn’t take them up on it =P