Response Regarding Family Project Changes

[Kanodin]

@Gauis: You and quite a few others completely misread my statement. Now, I’ll clarify for the reading comprehension impaired on what that statement means. It’s troubling that people would bitch over something as small as that. Hopefully, this avoids any further confusion as I’d seriously hate to continue this little text war. (I know I should have specified it a little better, I apologize if anyone thinks I’m singling them out for liking loli)

I have never been dismissive of anyones fetish up here, as I stated in the above thread it would be incredibly hypocritical on my part since all of us have fetishes, hell we all play these games. That in itself could be considered a fetish.

Also, the whole P.S. part of the statement was a mere joke and if you look at the post below where the guy says something about that’s some people preferences, I clearly reply with a “I could have gone all day without seeing that” and then put a lol face. Anyone that couldn’t see that as being a joke statement takes this shit too seriously.

[Kanodin]

@jdcakes

I’m a long time lurker and was somewhat suprised to see how quickly much of the positive feeling towards this game turned around.

Anyway, I’ve done similar things in the past so I figured I’d look at making a patch to switch the images back to the original pixelated ones, while doing so (btw I’ll probably post on /jp/ if noone beats me to it) it dawned on me that, perhaps, much of this upset could have been avoided had this functionality been shipped with the product without the pictures themselves.

Partly spurred by this controversy and partly because everything is on the internet somewhere(especially HCG) the pictures in question are all over the place, it would be trivial to pick them up for almost anyone with internet access (if you’re super moral you could even extract them from a purchased copy of the original game, if you like paying for things twice that is). The only thing barring legitimate “Family Project” owners from viewing the product in the manner many of them seem to desire (with the exception of the original pixelation) is technical expertise. Technical expertise of which those who worked on the game are the most capable of providing.

So ultimately my question is, would Jast be putting themselves at any significant legal risk if they had included the functionality to merge in pictures of the players own choice and acquisition over the top of the recensored images in contention? It seems to me the player would be the sole liable party, but I am far from a lawyer. Also, would the inclusion of such functionality done anything to stem the criticism received over this matter?

Ugh, I already posted this once and it didn’t go through… I believe that like the Nocturnal Illusions CG’s that were removed some hacker will add the uncensored CG’s to this game. The only reason Jast did censor the pics in the first place was probably being cautious and to avoid up to a six figure fine, possibly more.

Welcome to the forums btw.

[B173_M3]

@jdcakes

So ultimately my question is, would Jast be putting themselves at any significant legal risk if they had included the functionality to merge in pictures of the players own choice and acquisition over the top of the recensored images in contention? It seems to me the player would be the sole liable party, but I am far from a lawyer. Also, would the inclusion of such functionality done anything to stem the criticism received over this matter?

It’d help. Technically speaking, it’s essentially the equivalent of PC game developers distributing mod kits to players.

[Kanodin]

@B173 M3

@jdcakes

So ultimately my question is, would Jast be putting themselves at any significant legal risk if they had included the functionality to merge in pictures of the players own choice and acquisition over the top of the recensored images in contention? It seems to me the player would be the sole liable party, but I am far from a lawyer. Also, would the inclusion of such functionality done anything to stem the criticism received over this matter?

It’d help. Technically speaking, it’s essentially the equivalent of PC game developers distributing mod kits to players.

Honestly, I don’t think they could do this simply because they license from the original maker, PC game devs already own the IP so they have nothing to worry about in releasing a mod kit. Jast however, could probably be sued by the original makers.

It would be quite nice to have a mod kit for these games though… would make things interesting.

[GaiusMax]

@Kanodin

@Gauis: You and quite a few others completely misread my statement. Now, I’ll clarify for the reading comprehension impaired on what that statement means. It’s troubling that people would bitch over something as small as that. Hopefully, this avoids any further confusion as I’d seriously hate to continue this little text war. (I know I should have specified it a little better, I apologize if anyone thinks I’m singling them out for liking loli)

I have never been dismissive of anyones fetish up here, as I stated in the above thread it would be incredibly hypocritical on my part since all of us have fetishes, hell we all play these games. That in itself could be considered a fetish.

Also, the whole P.S. part of the statement was a mere joke and if you look at the post below where the guy says something about that’s some people preferences, I clearly reply with a “I could have gone all day without seeing that” and then put a lol face. Anyone that couldn’t see that as being a joke statement takes this shit too seriously.

All right, I apologize for misinterpreting you, although I think your initial statement lent itself a bit too easily to misinterpretation. Still, it seems like we’re in basic agreement here, and that’s what counts.

[sanahtlig]

@jdcakes

Anyway, I’ve done similar things in the past so I figured I’d look at making a patch to switch the images back to the original pixelated ones, while doing so (btw I’ll probably post on /jp/ if noone beats me to it) it dawned on me that, perhaps, much of this upset could have been avoided had this functionality been shipped with the product without the pictures themselves.

Kanodin is right, JAST would likely have to secure permission from the developer to distribute the utility for each game they include it with. That would probably be the biggest impediment. The Japanese seem really paranoid of pirates; I’m not sure how well the idea would be received. The recent Rapelay demosaicing arrest would likely give them pause as well. Really, keeping it unofficial seems to be the simplest route, although it’s less than satisfying for many.

Good to see an enterprising fan working to right this wrong.

[B173_M3]

@Dark_Shiki

@jdcakes

Anyway, I’ve done similar things in the past so I figured I’d look at making a patch to switch the images back to the original pixelated ones, while doing so (btw I’ll probably post on /jp/ if noone beats me to it) it dawned on me that, perhaps, much of this upset could have been avoided had this functionality been shipped with the product without the pictures themselves.

Kanodin is right, JAST would likely have to secure permission from the developer to distribute the utility for each game they include it with. That would probably be the biggest impediment. The Japanese seem really paranoid of pirates; I’m not sure how well the idea would be received. The recent Rapelay demosaicing arrest would likely give them pause as well. Really, keeping it unofficial seems to be the simplest route, although it’s less than satisfying for many.

Good to see an enterprising fan working to right this wrong.

I wonder–If it happens, would it hurt if he posted it here, or at least post an archive link to the thread on /jp/? That’d be awesome, given that it can be easy to miss specific threads on 4chan.

[Dalburnan]

@B173 M3

@jdcakes

So ultimately my question is, would Jast be putting themselves at any significant legal risk if they had included the functionality to merge in pictures of the players own choice and acquisition over the top of the recensored images in contention? It seems to me the player would be the sole liable party, but I am far from a lawyer. Also, would the inclusion of such functionality done anything to stem the criticism received over this matter?

It’d help. Technically speaking, it’s essentially the equivalent of PC game developers distributing mod kits to players.

Wait wait wait… You’ve been ranting and raving non-stop about how evil and wrong ANY kind of censorship is, yet you think this kind of censorship would ‘help’? Censorship is censorship in any form, which you’ve made abundantly clear on the forums now.
So much for your strong stand against censorship, as you’re settling for compromises and ‘brushing it off’ as you repeatedly put it.

@B173 M3

@Dark_Shiki

Good to see an enterprising fan working to right this wrong.

I wonder–If it happens, would it hurt if he posted it here, or at least post an archive link to the thread on /jp/? That’d be awesome, given that it can be easy to miss specific threads on 4chan.

Well let’s stop and think about this. Company censored product to protect themselves from a potential liability that was going to ship out 100 or so(random number for example) copies of a game, which would then create 100 or so possible chances of one of those people being caught up in some lawsuit or other, which would then direct attention back to their company when a copy of their game was found with a clearly stated minor nude. This would of course be the end of the company at that point, because all their other games would go under the microscope as well, which would be pretty damning to say the least in some cases. Now… A user creates a patch to reinsert that liability, and you want it posted on the company that censored it’s own forum?

It can be any law that person breaks after all, hell they don’t even have to BREAK a law, just warrant a search… It certainly doesn’t take much to get the media to fly off the handle and start pointing spotlights on games, more so if they have questionable content that would get them a lot of readers/viewers. It only takes one person getting caught, which means it’s a liability that’s worth protecting yourself over.

But anyways… All that aside, I imagine it’s a violation of the TOS and forum rules, as it’s altering game client data that wasn’t approved, but that’s a job for the staff here to decide, not me.

[B173_M3]

@Dalburnan

@B173 M3

@jdcakes

So ultimately my question is, would Jast be putting themselves at any significant legal risk if they had included the functionality to merge in pictures of the players own choice and acquisition over the top of the recensored images in contention? It seems to me the player would be the sole liable party, but I am far from a lawyer. Also, would the inclusion of such functionality done anything to stem the criticism received over this matter?

It’d help. Technically speaking, it’s essentially the equivalent of PC game developers distributing mod kits to players.

Wait wait wait… You’ve been ranting and raving non-stop about how evil and wrong ANY kind of censorship is, yet you think this kind of censorship would ‘help’? Censorship is censorship in any form, which you’ve made abundantly clear on the forums now.
So much for your strong stand against censorship, as you’re settling for compromises and ‘brushing it off’ as you repeatedly put it.

Yes, I’d probably still be very angry, but it would be a step in the right direction, because if they aren’t willing to do ANYTHING about their own censorship (especially considering that they never completely uncensored XC3), then at least a mod kit release would allow us to easily undo it ourselves and show them that we prefer our stuff to be uncensored. You know very well that by saying “brushing it off”, it means you couldn’t give a crap whether that was censored because it’s “irrelevant” or “small”–You think I’d be brushing it off if I was demanding a mod kit and an opportunity to post that mod here? I wouldn’t even be talking here if that was the case.

You honestly think I wouldn’t take an opportunity to uncesor something if I was given the chance? You think anime companies would have gotten the idea that most fans prefer their DVDs to remain unedited if they didn’t notice that they happened to be watching all those unedited fansubs floating around? Get real.

[B173_M3]

You might want to consider PM’ing Umarekawari. He’s been interested in devising an uncensor patch too.

[Dalburnan]

@jdcakes

I don’t think I should post anything here (unless someone relevant wants to give me some kind of sign that’s ok) but I honestly find the suggestion that I can’t play around with the 1s and 0s on my computer, or that someone else will be liable for my endeavour, pretty silly.

I agree 100% at how absolutely silly it is. It was silly when it happened with GTA, and it was even more silly when it happened with Oblivion.

[Kanodin]

@GaiusMax

@Kanodin

@Gauis: You and quite a few others completely misread my statement. Now, I’ll clarify for the reading comprehension impaired on what that statement means. It’s troubling that people would bitch over something as small as that. Hopefully, this avoids any further confusion as I’d seriously hate to continue this little text war. (I know I should have specified it a little better, I apologize if anyone thinks I’m singling them out for liking loli)

I have never been dismissive of anyones fetish up here, as I stated in the above thread it would be incredibly hypocritical on my part since all of us have fetishes, hell we all play these games. That in itself could be considered a fetish.

Also, the whole P.S. part of the statement was a mere joke and if you look at the post below where the guy says something about that’s some people preferences, I clearly reply with a “I could have gone all day without seeing that” and then put a lol face. Anyone that couldn’t see that as being a joke statement takes this shit too seriously.

All right, I apologize for misinterpreting you, although I think your initial statement lent itself a bit too easily to misinterpretation. Still, it seems like we’re in basic agreement here, and that’s what counts.

Not a problem, it was bad wording on my part.

[sanahtlig]

@jdcakes

“line in G-collections release with exact text” → “line which better reflects the original text / line which consumers would prefer to see if the game was uncensored”

I think it might be helpful framing if someone who has played through could do this…

cough

I haven’t heard about any text being altered for censoring purposes (the over 9000 line was apparently an in-house joke that accidentally made it through editing). I believe the only censoring involved the 3 images.

[RocK_M]

AFAIK the only “altering” required w/ the text was a small 4ch related joke line that was supposed to have been removed from the final copy =3 It’s being patched out as we speak…

On the general topic… disappointed but i do understand the change somewhat. I’m guessing my more lenient stance would be because i wasn’t around for the Xchange 3 stuff. End of the day though… it pretty much boiled down to compromising the story premise to allow the very minute naked scenes of matsuri or censor matusuri and keep the story as much as possible. Its obvious they chose the later… and i somewhat respect them seeing as Family Project IS a story driven VN… not a sex romp.

That being said I’m still disappointed they had to resort to that =(

[umarekawari]

@Dark_Shiki

@jdcakes

“line in G-collections release with exact text” → “line which better reflects the original text / line which consumers would prefer to see if the game was uncensored”

I think it might be helpful framing if someone who has played through could do this…

cough

I haven’t heard about any text being altered for censoring purposes (the over 9000 line was apparently an in-house joke that accidentally made it through editing). I believe the only censoring involved the 3 images.

There are a few lines changed. One says “Why is she in her underwear?”. This could be changed to “Why is she naked?”, but until I get to examine the hardware coding more, I can’t even start to figure out how to change the text. Still working on the images.

Few things that are interesting:

"Simulated child pornography was made illegal with the Child Pornography Prevention Act of 1996. The CPPA was short-lived. In 2002, the Supreme Court of the United States decided Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition, holding that the relevant portions of the CPPA were unconstitutional because they prevented lawful speech. Referring to Ferber, the court stated that “the CPPA prohibits speech that records no crime and creates no victims by its production. Virtual child pornography is not ‘intrinsically related’ to the sexual abuse of children.”

In 2008 in United States v. Williams, the Supreme Court upheld a challenge to the constitutionality of section 2252A(a)(3). While the court dealt primarily with the issue of offering images of real children, the court nevertheless stated that “an offer to provide or request to receive virtual child pornography is not prohibited by the statute. A crime is committed only when the speaker believes or intends the listener to believe that the subject of the proposed transaction depicts real children… Simulated child pornography will be as available as ever, so long as it is offered and sought as such, and not as real child pornography.”

[sanahtlig]

@umarekawari

In 2008 in United States v. Williams, the Supreme Court upheld a challenge to the constitutionality of section 2252A(a)(3). While the court dealt primarily with the issue of offering images of real children, the court nevertheless stated that “an offer to provide or request to receive virtual child pornography is not prohibited by the statute. A crime is committed only when the speaker believes or intends the listener to believe that the subject of the proposed transaction depicts real children… Simulated child pornography will be as available as ever, so long as it is offered and sought as such, and not as real child pornography.”

Unless the virtual pornogrpahy is obscene. All they’re saying here is that virtual child pornography is different from real child pornography, and can’t be broadly prohibited based on the same justification as real child pornography. Obscenity law is strongly rooted in legal precedent. Unless the court decides to make a distinction between private use and public display with regards to obscenity, I don’t see this law getting struck down. An alternative possibility is that a case like Handley’s will reach one of the intermediate courts, and they’ll decide that obscenity is being too broadly defined (emphasizing for example that almost any pornography has some artistic or literary merit)–making it much harder to prove in future cases.

[vick1000]

@umarekawari

@Dark_Shiki

@jdcakes

“line in G-collections release with exact text” → “line which better reflects the original text / line which consumers would prefer to see if the game was uncensored”

I think it might be helpful framing if someone who has played through could do this…

cough

I haven’t heard about any text being altered for censoring purposes (the over 9000 line was apparently an in-house joke that accidentally made it through editing). I believe the only censoring involved the 3 images.

There are a few lines changed. One says “Why is she in her underwear?”. This could be changed to “Why is she naked?”, but until I get to examine the hardware coding more, I can’t even start to figure out how to change the text. Still working on the images.

Few things that are interesting:

"Simulated child pornography was made illegal with the Child Pornography Prevention Act of 1996. The CPPA was short-lived. In 2002, the Supreme Court of the United States decided Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition, holding that the relevant portions of the CPPA were unconstitutional because they prevented lawful speech. Referring to Ferber, the court stated that “the CPPA prohibits speech that records no crime and creates no victims by its production. Virtual child pornography is not ‘intrinsically related’ to the sexual abuse of children.”

In 2008 in United States v. Williams, the Supreme Court upheld a challenge to the constitutionality of section 2252A(a)(3). While the court dealt primarily with the issue of offering images of real children, the court nevertheless stated that “an offer to provide or request to receive virtual child pornography is not prohibited by the statute. A crime is committed only when the speaker believes or intends the listener to believe that the subject of the proposed transaction depicts real children… Simulated child pornography will be as available as ever, so long as it is offered and sought as such, and not as real child pornography.”

Court decisions and rulings are meaningless in todays judicial system. Judges at all levels constantly legislate from the bench, and regularly ignore precidence to try and inact their own personal political and social views. Do you know how many tax evasion cases and unlawful taxation cases were won in the past against the IRS? Yet it depends on the judge you get whether or not the precidence is adhered to, or whether or not they manipulate the jury in the favor of the IRS.

[umarekawari]

@jdcakes

@umarekawari

There are a few lines changed. One says “Why is she in her underwear?”. This could be changed to “Why is she naked?”, but until I get to examine the hardware coding more, I can’t even start to figure out how to change the text. Still working on the images.

Yep there are approx 4 lines I noticed which reference panties/lingerie/underwear most are obvious changes like the one you mentioned. Others sound a little awkward when changed and probably should have been properly rewritten by someone who had slept at some point in hte last couple days.

Oh and you might be wasting your time working on the images ^^. On an entirely unrelated note now would be a good time to look at /jp/ … at least it would be if it wasn’t down.

PM me if you want some help continuing, a version 2 would probably be a good idea anyway.

If you’re saying what I THINK you’re saying, PM me details. NOW.

[Kanodin]

@umarekawari

@jdcakes

@umarekawari

There are a few lines changed. One says “Why is she in her underwear?”. This could be changed to “Why is she naked?”, but until I get to examine the hardware coding more, I can’t even start to figure out how to change the text. Still working on the images.

Yep there are approx 4 lines I noticed which reference panties/lingerie/underwear most are obvious changes like the one you mentioned. Others sound a little awkward when changed and probably should have been properly rewritten by someone who had slept at some point in hte last couple days.

Oh and you might be wasting your time working on the images ^^. On an entirely unrelated note now would be a good time to look at /jp/ … at least it would be if it wasn’t down.

PM me if you want some help continuing, a version 2 would probably be a good idea anyway.

If you’re saying what I THINK you’re saying, PM me details. NOW.

He’s saying exactly that.

[Shingo]

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