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Japanese Government to Regulate Online Communication
Posted by
Soulskill
on Fri Dec 28, 2007 03:42 AM
from the best-of-luck-with-that dept.
from the best-of-luck-with-that dept.
Chris Salzberg writes "The Japanese government made major moves this month toward legislating extensive regulation over online communication. In a series of little-publicized meetings, two distinct government ministries pushed ahead with regulation in three major areas of online communication: web content, mobile phone access, and file sharing. Content regulation will cover anything on the web, including personal blogs and web pages. Upcoming mandatory filtering of mobile phone access is targeted at users under age 18, and will cover chat rooms, forums, bulletin boards and social networking services. File sharing legislation will initially target illegal downloads, but, according to critics, may ultimately broaden to include streaming media from sites such as YouTube."
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Submission: Japanese gov't to regulate cyberspace by Anonymous Coward
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sony (Score:2)
Before anyone cries censorship (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Before anyone cries censorship (Score:5, Insightful)
Anonymous accusations have no credibility, it would show some maturity in society to just ignore them instead of suing their anonymous authors.
Anonymous deth threats have no more credibility.
Racist rethoric is, as far as I know, free speech.
Posting of financial and medical records are possible only if someone has made a criminal incompetence in a bank or at a medical database. You should sue them instead.
Parent
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[1] Just in case you're American, she was a former prime minister of Pakistan[2]
[2] It's near India.
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If you're a controversial (or at least targeted) political figure then I guess it doesn't make a difference whether or not you get anonymous online threat of assasination, because you are in danger literally every day. 1984-type environments don't solve that, and it is rather naive to think otherwise. If you're not a targeted political figure/notable person and you are getting anonymous death threats online, you should probably ignore them. Or I will kill you.
Also, the OP defeat
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Whichever organization killed her probably announced their intention to do so beforehand.
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Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Tell that to Benazir Bhutto[1].
[1] Just in case you're American, she was a former prime minister of Pakistan[2]
[2] It's near India.[3]
[3] That's in Asia. [4][8]
[4] East of Europe[5], North of Africa[6]
[5] You know, England, France[7], etc
[6] Where Florida hurricanes[11] and black people come from.
[7] Ballet, Dijon mustard, and
[8] Still not getting it? The Eastern hemisphere[9]
[9] The other side of the world[11
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Afraid to say anything for fear someone will (purposely) misconstrue it and we go to jail.
Nice try, and thanks for the fear mongering, you condescending bitch.
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Anonymous deth threats have no more credibility.
Tell that to Benazir Bhutto[1].
You make a compelling argument there. Death (not deth) threats should always be taken seriously regardless if it's anonymous or not. This should have been investigated and the poster taken to the looney house.
[1] Just in case you're American, she was a former prime minister of Pakistan[2]
[2] It's near India.
Thanks for the Geography lesson. Believe it or not, some of us have moved past Geography 101
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You want to own the internet? first let a bunch of loonies roam it spewing falsehoods and bothering people. I guess many of them could be reported to their ISP and blocked before they learn about anonimity. Then, make some media fuss to augment the perceived scope of their actions, and then, legislate for generic censorship to "save the internet".
A real life bad example (Score:3, Informative)
Just recently in Melbourne a newspaper journalist lifted comments posted on a forum and reported them as fact in a sensationalised article, without confirming or verifying with the authenticity of the comments, when in fact some of the comments on the forum had been made as satire.
This was then published in Australia's highest selling newspaper.
People may write unsubstantiated rubbish, but as soon as some lazy journalist finds it and treats it is fact in mainstream media, it can be very damaging for an indi
Re:A real life bad example (Score:4, Interesting)
My guess is it's Andrew Bolt in the Herald-Sun, that guy has perfected willfull ignorance as a political tool.
In Melbourne there are three commercial TV channels, every night of the week two of them run current affairs style programs that are full of advertorials, miracle cures, and other sensationalist bullshit. They are often the prime targets in "Chaser's war on everything" (also from Melbourne).
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
The reporter who wrote the article was actually Annalise Walliker about a dance party. http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,22903261-2862,00.html [news.com.au]
Which included great "quotes" such as this gem
Ralph Wiggum reported slabs of Smirnoff spirit-based drinks were selling for $240, and cans of spirits for $10.
Which I find kind of Ironic when in university she conducted a survey about a problem with the community and journalistic credibility http://fifth.estate.rmit.edu.au/a-credibility-crisis.php [rmit.edu.au]
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"Anonymous accusations have no credibility, it would show some maturity in society to just ignore them instead of suing their anonymous authors."
Come on. The whole problem is that society isn't mature. Would you really trust any future employer or potential girlfriend to look up your name and not even think "what if"? If someone did that to me, you bet I'd want to sue them.
While I don't necessarily support this particular legislation, I wouldn't have any problem with the government tracking down user
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The society is indeed not mature at all, but going the easy way just leads to Idiocracy. I guess you will have to explain to your employer or girlfriend what kind of merit these accusations have. And if that fails, nothing
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I will illustrate with an example.
I went to the doctor for a cold. Since I am a foreigner, I have to show my Foreigner Registration Card to see the doctor. This card has my work contact information on it. After my visit was over, the doctor contacted my work and told them I had visited and what I was diagno
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So if I were to submit a post accusing you of being a pedophile, siting names, dates, times and places of various misdeeds and degenerate behavior; but did so anonymously, then my accusations would have no credibility? It wouldn't matter that I was making it all up. If I sounded convincing enough for people to believe it then I'd be willing to bet you'd soon chang
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(its a pita ass... I did exactly that the other week there
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When a government decides what communication is allowed and what communication isn't and then actively prevents disallowed communication, that is censorship. It doesn't matter what the communication is or what excuses are used to justify the policy - government controlled filters are censorship, and censorship is evil.
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to make up false accusations about others, post their financial and medical records online, their bank account numbers, spew racist rhetoric, make death threats, etc.
One of these things isn't like the others! ;)
How in the bloody hell can you compare spewing racist rhetoric and posting medical records? If someone from the KKK or Kill Whitey wants to blather on and on about the evil black/white race, let him - it's cheap entertainment. No one with a double digit IQ will take them seriously.
Hell. The Creationist nutjobs are a helluva lot more dangerous than any racist I've come across - but I still would protect their right to make an ass of themselves.
Nonsense. Censorship to close the society. (Score:2, Informative)
Nonsense. Dangerous nonsense.
You don't attack subcultures with censorship. This is about ethnic cleansing before the old guard leaves the Diet. Anyone trying to close a society does the same things, censorship is just one of the steps taken.
It's part of the Lock Down of Japan that is underway. If you don't believe that, you 1. don't live here and 2. don't understand the xenophobia the government is in the process of stoking up.
- Fin
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But that bit about the xenophobia is true. I've noticed it. You'd think that they'd want to encourage immigration with their population declining and all that...
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But that bit about the xenophobia is true. I've noticed it. You'd think that they'd want to encourage immigration with their population declining and all that...
That's why robots are so big over there. Once a large segment of the population is made of robots, it becomes easy to check whether the robot is Japanese by checking its serial number.
And the apparent slow return to the 1920s mentality over there is indeed a bit disturbing. Especially when you see how that turned out (not really taught in western schools for some reason despite it being a large part of WWII)...
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If somebody posts your financial and medical records online, do you think they can "go ahead and do that"? Should you be prepared for the consequences and just accept your fate that others can do whatever they want to you?
uh, that's called "freedom" in some places (Score:2)
hint: the new Samizdot is likely to be podcasts, not flimsy typewritten pages passed from hand to hand in a corner of the subway station. to find that, you'll have to also allow no-knock searches at 2 am, jackbooted police thugs, and firing squads.
now, are you ready for the whole bill of goods?
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But then another country, usually some European nation, Japan or China comes along and proposes to do the same exact thing and suddenly people are quick to defend them.
To be honest, I don't think this is going to be noticed the way it might be in the US. Many countries in Asia are already nanny states
Re:Before anyone cries censorship (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Not a day goes by when I don't see some high school girl's underwear (or more when they don't wear them) just by driving to work.
The problem lies with the girls themselves, competing to see who has the shortest skirt, loosest *ahem* socks, etc...
All in all, Japan is not a bad place to live...
Re:Before anyone cries censorship (Score:5, Informative)
I'd stop taking everything you hear reported in sensationalist or biased media at face value before you go off Japan-bashing.
Parent
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Maybe the only difference to European/American society is, that they're doing it out in the open? There have been a few arrests for child porn in my area lately, and from the things that are said about those, they just replaced public places like train stations with more private ones. You can't "cure" pedophiles by telling them that it's forbidden.
Besides, I couldn't care less about children seeing other (drawn) children their age naked.
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I guess that means that the true enterpreneur spirit is still alive and well in Japan ;).
Seriously, doesn't US have the child beauty contests as well ? Doesn't really seem that different to me...
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Sadly, creditability is a moot point for much of the world. Critical Thinking is not taught to school children, only the rote memorization of (often trivial) facts. Carry those learning habits into adulthood and it is no wonder that the gossip culture is booming in most industrialized cultures? A rumor doesn't have to be true it just has to be repeated.
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No, I think that rumors also require a certain negative content to grow legs.
Credibility? (Score:2)
(And there is a lot more 'wildly inaccurate' out there.)
I am going to join (Score:2, Insightful)
From what I read, I kind of skimmed over the article, this is more of internet regulation law, then internet censorship law. I think some from of such law should exist.
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Green grass and fences. (Score:2, Insightful)
Hmmm. Is this the point were everyone brags at how much better broadband is overseas?
Advice for all governments (Score:4, Funny)
However (Score:3, Insightful)
Several different issues, no laws yet (Score:2, Interesting)
I read the article and after you get passed the first part and down to the "steps" listed you will see that there are several different issues here, but no laws (that I can tell).
1) The web.
For the web content it looks like they want to be able to filter at will anything the independent body deems "harmful" but don't forget that they will have to prove its harmful and be able to justify their decisions. I am sure that they will see a lot of input from the educational institutions and rights groups on t
Why 18? (Score:2)
What is the criteria (Score:2)
How do they figure out if a transfer is illegal? Surely people transfer copyrighted materials for many legal reasons. This is always the big problem with these schemes.
"anything on the web" (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)