Possible Japanese Censorship Law
Things like this piss me off. Japanese National Police Agency’s New Law against “Manga, Anime, Game Expression”
Today, I got an email from a Japanese creator, letting us know about the new law currently being discussed to be applied by Japanese National Police Agency. This is a law to restrict expression of Manga, Anime, Game, that are:
# Image that show sexual expression of characters that appears to be under 18.
(Ex: The character does not have under hair, or character appears to be an under 18 school age child.)
# Image that show characters appears or seems to be under age, that are engaging in sexual act weather or not if genital part is censored.
My thoughts after the jump.
First of all, I hate lolicon art. I absolutely hate them. But I am firmly against this form of censorship.
Child porn is bad because it harms children, but what harm can drawings do? It is absolutely true to say that many pedophiles probably like to view lolicon material, but that’s not what turned them into pedophiles in the first place. They are pedophiles because they are mentally fucked-up, not because of some pornographic drawings.
Correlation does NOT equal causation.
Millions of people play video games. Some of them are serial killers.
Millions of people watch television. Some of them are serial killers.
Millions of people eat ice-cream. Some of them are serial killers.
Just because serial killers play violent video games, watch television and enjoy ice-cream doesn’t make any of those things the cause of their violent nature.
Similarly, just because pedophiles read loli manga doesn’t mean that loli manga turns normal well-adjusted people into child molesters. It may seem very logical to conclude that a person who enjoys loli material will naturally turn into a pedophile, but there is simply nothing to support that hypothesis.
As such, those who advocate censorship have no justication for censorship other than the fact that they hate lolicon art.
Well, I hate lolicon art too. But then again, I also hate a lot of other things that people like to do. I hate idiots who want to censor everything that is different from themselves, for example. There are people who hate homosexuality. There are people who hate Christianity. But as long as they do no harm to anyone, who are we to enforce our preference upon others?
The rights of the minority must be protected, unless harm is done to the rest of society. When the majority seeks to enforce its views on the minority without justification beyond a matter of preference, then those people are no better than Adolf Hitler.
In conclusion, let the stupid lolicons fap to their loli-pr0n and shut the fuck up.
That said, if anyone can produce any convincing evidence that lolicon art is responsible for causing people (who are not already pedophiles) to molest children, then go ahead and ban the thing. Good luck though, the fundamentalist nutcases in America are still having a tough time doing the exact same thing for violent video games.
Either way it doesn’t concern me. Lolicon is crap.
May 22nd, 2006 at 11:24 pm
Ah the many things that inspires the vices of men. Are people naturally pedos or has society made them that way? Or is it a vicious cycle that reinforces each other, heightening the maddness?
All these things we enjoy in society can be maligned and misused at the expense of innocents. The suggestion alcohol should be banned is commendable, but a significant majority benefits from it.
If lolicon goes, it would be because the otaku / pedophile / ephebophile. Their cause does not have enough traction within mainstream society to offset the percieved harm. Tobacco in America is a similiar target.
As many people have pointed out, the slippery slope of what “appears to be” under 18 will have interesting impacts. A curiousity considering the age of consent there is far under 18.
May 23rd, 2006 at 12:31 am
jo Says:
I’m all for not giving pedophiles more material to feed their fantasies with.
Good, feed less fantasies, watch more real life molestations!
BTW, there are a lot of people who see lots of moeable naked children everyday… why don’t these people molest such plentiful victims? Or is it that they actually can control their urges?
May 23rd, 2006 at 1:00 am
A.N.O.N. ymous Says,
>BTW, there are a lot of people who see lots of moeable naked children
>everyday… why don’t these people molest such plentiful victims?
>Or is it that they actually can control their urges?
Nope, it’s genetics. Adults must not be sexually attracted to those under birth-giving age. So they aren’t.
That’s why lolicon hentai is much less harmful than real porn with adults in it: unlike the second, the first one won’t rise any unhealthy intentions in the overwhealming majority of people.
Cock-sucking 12-year cartoon schoolgirls is fun, nothing more. A hot D-cup babe on the TV screen makes one want to repeat the same experience in reality, with all possible outcomes.
May 23rd, 2006 at 1:46 am
There are some seriously deluded people here.
Good thing our future law makers don’t come from the pool of otaku!
Darkmirage said, “No, I am saying people have the right to do whatever they want as long as it does not infringe on your rights.
Censoring things you find to be unpleasant is the same as trying to control what people think. Thoughts should NEVER be made criminal, no matter how tempting doing so may seem sometimes. “.
I see so education should be scrapped. After all, the teachers are controlling our thoughts. If little Johnny thinks its ok to not do his homework and play computer games all day, the teacher would be the criminal if she made Johnny think otherwise.
A.N.O.N. ymous: These people do not see moeable children being FUCKED by tentacles and big dicks. They see them as children. By constantly exposing people to loliporn, it is possible that they develop tendencies too. A good government will not want its citizens to THINK paedophile,much less act paedophile so it’s only natural for them to pass such laws.
Some of you guys here just seem to be harping on the fact that censorship is satan incarnate. And your example of the bus driver rape is totally out of point.
May 23rd, 2006 at 3:26 am
Not that I really disagree with you much TJ han. But Darkmirage’s point is that NO thoughts shouldn’t be criminalized. He wouldn’t be for criminalizing the teacher’s “school” of thought any more than Johnny delinquent’s school of thought.
But you are right, the bus driver example isn’t valid. Censorship of lolicon doesn’t contend that it will erase all pedos. Just as we “control” hate speech not because it automatically erases hate crime, but the advocacy itself can be seen as dangerous. Even then, few countries have laws against private education of hate when it doesn’t involve anti-semitism.
On one hand, there is a lot of material equally suitable for censorship. Glorification of rape for example. What public good can it serve? The same can be said of violence… a good society should not want its people to celebrate acting in such baseless manner. But the law SHOULD be specific to context. After all a literay work such as Lolita should not qualify for such censorship since it demonstrates the destructive effects of pedophilia. Perhaps it is only the glorification of these acts that should be controlled. Advocacy indeed…
If only people could seperate fantasy from reality.
May 23rd, 2006 at 5:12 am
I could leave an educated response like others if I wasn’t so lazy but… I’ll just say I agree with you on some points and not on others. But I will never forget this:
“Millions of people eat ice-cream. Some of them are serial killers.”
Because that was beautiful.
May 23rd, 2006 at 4:10 pm
Ah, one classic example of the power of suggestion or stimuli… it’s even recorded in the Bible where Adam and Eve made the cardinal sin after they were tempted by the serpent.
Back to the topic, how many things in this world that we do everyday are not linked to some sort of stimuli? They could be everything from the tangible to the intangible. If we are to see crimes or in this case, child crimes or even more specifically drawn pornography involving children, as a cause and effect situation… what’s the actual cause that leads to it? Lest I digress into criminal profiling which I am not that knowledgable about to start with, is external stimuli or suggestive scenarios the important or the sole reason?
I am refraining from listing actual scenarios, situations that leads to horrible crimes from committed because they will never be objective to everyone. If we are to remove every possible stimuli or isolate them away from others like some countries are doing.. such as the Middle East countries that requires women to dress up so as not to tempt or suggest men from committing crimes of a sexual nature, what would this world be? Nothing. Anything can suggest, money, people on the street , literature and so many more. Borne out of the need to handle this pressing need is censorship, of course people are more aware of the political facet of it where it stirs up and suggest to the common people about ideas that the ruling government might not want them to have.
And yet, is suggestion and stimuli the only factors that leads to crimes being committed or rape and harming of young children in this situation? I can barely agree with that, there are so much more to this such as backgrounds of the felon(s) and their mental health…
In a nutshell, censorship in my opinion is futile in this case because it is merely the extraction of one silver of string from a huge ball of yarn. It serves close to nothing… if it ever did.
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Ramblings of DarkMirage - Anime, Games, J-Pop and Whatever Else » Blog Archive » Re: Possible Japanese Censorship LawMay 23rd, 2006 at 7:49 pm
[...] I wrote too much while replying to tj han’s comments on my previous post about this, so I decided to make another one. [...]
May 23rd, 2006 at 7:49 pm
Tess: *bow* ranting is an art.
As for the rest of my reply… please refer to my new post above.
May 24th, 2006 at 3:42 am
i’m not a furry, but if you like furry pr0n does it mean you’ll go out there a fcuk a dog? i just don’t see that happening. loli pr0n is quite different from real underage girls. you might be attracted to these idealized pictures of little girls, but realize that real girls don’t really fit the abstract images that artists draw. these pictures aren’t realistic at all - it’s pure fantasy. huge eyes, perfect bodies, huge tits for a 13 year old,m etc. It’s like cosplay. remember how hot tifa is in FF7, but how NOT hot that fat chick playing tifa at that anime con. anime doesn’t translate well into reality.if you read loli manga and are convinced to fuck a little girl then you’re the problem - NOT the manga. if you see a little girl in a swimming suit in real life and are convinced to fuck a little girl then you’re the problem - NOT the girl in the swimming suit. we should ban everything like swimming suits, provactive clothing, pr0n ( you know cause pr0n causes rape), freedom of speech/expression - heck that’s the ONLY way to save the children. LOLZ.
May 26th, 2006 at 2:36 pm
># Image that show sexual expression of characters that appears to be under 18.
>(Ex: The character does not have under hair, or character appears to be an under 18 school age child.)
>
I tried to think, think and think, but couldn’t figure out that thing - how they are going to decide which age the person on drawing is. For example, what great visible differencies there are when you draw person at age 15..17 or person at age 19… How they define “appears to be under 18″… “does not have under hair” don’t quite fit or are they going to put out requirement that all artist must draw pubic hair. And if you think about real world then there are womens out there, who are over 20 but they seem like they are under 18. Can I get it to be my model for manga and claim afterward that I drawed her and she is over 20…? I hope that this censorship attempt doesn’t go through
June 8th, 2006 at 5:20 pm
2.tj han had an interesting analogy
however it seemed to play up to the impact of reading lolicon magazines on the human psychology. Like what i said earlier, the effect on a single event on a human’s psychology is inseparable from his entire psychy, but the impact of it can be minimalized.
premises:
1.Lolicon content causes pedophilic behaviour(this is an asumption not mentioned by tj han)
2.pedophilic behaviour causes violation of human rights.
Therefore Lolicon content causes violation of human rights
3.Violations of human rights should be put aside inspite of human enjoyment gained
therefore lolicon content should be put aside inspite of human enjoyment gained
this argument is invalidated/undermined by the exact same reason as why darkmirage’s argument is valid. i.e. we MUST assume that unrelated events have no impact on human psychy. Therefore premise 1(the assumption made) is invalid and incorrect, and the argument melts.
June 8th, 2006 at 5:51 pm
tj han then put forths another anology called Mr Saitou
This argument is definitely a fallacy. This very (non)logic is called a “slippery slope” in formal logic. The argument is conpletely illogical and merely speculative. anyone with a brain larger than a bird’s should realize that this kind of speculation is unreliable.
Lets look at the so called logicalprocess.
1.Saitou consumes anime/manga.
2.Japan’s laws does not block him from consuming lolicon material
3.(Assumption: He can’t get/stumble upon the lolicon material outside of the law)
4.He likes what he sees, hence begins to look for more lolicon material
5.He come to the point where lolicon becomes sexually attractive to him
6(Assumption he prefers real life action to drawn lolicon content)
7.He starts watching “life action” child porn
7.When he looks at young girls he relates it the lolicon content.
8.He feels sexually attracted to them and starts fondling them
July 10th, 2006 at 5:45 am
You overlooked the strong positive value of restricting things related to child porn (such as imagery, anime, manga, etc). If you look at it from someone else’s shoes, such as law enforcement, the benefits of restricting access to items related to child porn makes feeding child porn urges much more difficult. So many people have instant objections to law enforcement that I had to try to defend having laws a little bit.
Fewer sources means it is easier to spot those people who purchase such material. Also, fewer vendors need to be observed. Many things are already inspected in the us postal service, for example (items from certain addresses are diverted for imaging (this is not xray)). Suspicious people can thus be entered into the computer and all their international credit card transactions can be tracked for true child porn violations.
As for US laws on anime, back in 2001, the Bush cabinet was working on making animation hentai regulated the same as live-action hentai back in 2001. However, someone distracted them in September from their passing of this through Congress. So, all of you anime fans blogging away here owe an IRONIC debt of thanks to Bin Laden.
It’s only a matter of time before the Bush cabinet finishes what it started. As of the past month, some small re-introductions of some of the provisions back in 2001 are being resubmitted. I guess they are taking a nibbling approach this time. It’s not like how the DMCA was passed all at once after multiple rewordings each time the Supreme Court rejected it. DMCA finally passed, as you know, after a lot of tries. They’ll do the same with the next “anime porn regulated the same as live-action porn” law. All the conservatives need to do is somehow neutralize the bleeding heart Kennedy on the Supreme Court who writes dissents to regulating anime as live-action.
July 10th, 2006 at 1:15 pm
That’s the whole point of my argument isn’t it?
You can’t prove that animated loli porn give people the urge to watch real child porn or molest real children. That would be the same as saying porn causes people to rape women. And if that was true, there should be a complete ban on all porn… but America isn’t going to do that is it?
Real child porn should be banned because it harms the children involved directly. Loli porn and live-action porn fall in the same category because they cause no direct harm.
To ban something deviant when it causes no harm is basically to exercise the tyranny of the majority.
If you want to ban things just to stop people from “feeding their urges”, then why stop here? Why not ban violence in movies, sex on TV, rap “music”, gun sales and alcohol? They can all stimulate people’s urges to commit various acts that bring harm to others. Heck, why don’t we just go to 1984 right now?