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Japan Seeking to Govern Top News Web Sites
Posted by
CmdrTaco
on Sat Mar 01, 2008 12:38 PM
from the hey-slashdot-jp-what-does-this-mean dept.
from the hey-slashdot-jp-what-does-this-mean dept.
RemyBR writes "A Japanese government panel is proposing to govern "influential, widely read news-related sites as newspapers and broadcasting are now regulated."
The panel, set up by the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, said Internet service providers (ISPs) should be answerable for breaches of vaguer "minimum regulations" to guard against "illegal and harmful content."
The conservative government, led by the Liberal Democratic Party, or LDP, is seeking to have the new laws passed by Parliament in 2010."
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Never fails (Score:5, Insightful)
The most discouraging part is a majority of people seem to agree ("...well, as long as it's to fight the terrorist...").
The most predictable part is someone will say "...this isn't about free speech".
A truism: "When somebody says 'this isn't about free speech', it almost certainly is".
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Yes, usually what they really mean is "don't let those pesky human rights concerns get in the way of what I want to accomplish." For some reason, we put up with people like that. It's rather pathetic really.
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Knee-jerk didn't read article, dismiss Japan (Score:3, Interesting)
The article doesn't mention anything resembling terrorism as the reason. What the article discusses in some detail is that the Japanese ruling political party, the LDP, has ruled the country virtually unchallenged for decades. The slightest bit of thought shows that the LDP has achieved almost every single goal of what the most progressive Democrats are advocating in the United States:
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The LDP has ended up creating a "capitalist development state" that thrives on neo-fascistic cooperation between government and corporate entities, dominate the government largely through
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"Well, what sort of chance does that give me??? Alright then! It IS about free speech."
"!!!SEE!!! It *IS* about free spech!!!"
(with apologies to Monty Python)
Putin-like (Score:3, Interesting)
It sounds like a Putin-style media. Free-press is getting harder to find in the world.
Re:Putin-like (Score:5, Insightful)
No its much easier. With the Internet its very very easy to find free press.
Parent
strange... (Score:5, Insightful)
There's something a little odd about that name, don't you think?
Re:strange... (Score:5, Insightful)
Sounds like the USA to me. "Liberal" and "Conservative", yet no matter which is elected the government expands in size and power. Clever, isn't it? That there might be no real difference between them is a fact about which we are more honest when it comes to other countries, apparently.
Parent
Re:strange... (Score:5, Funny)
Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos!
Parent
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Re:strange... (Score:5, Informative)
Only if you assume that American political terminology is standard for the rest of the world.
In most places "liberal" is equivalent to what Americans call "libertarian," and the parties Americans call "liberal' are known as "labor" or "left".
Parent
Re:strange... (Score:4, Insightful)
Just want to second that. Here in the U.S., conservatives have labored since the 60's at least to redefine the term "liberal" for their own benefit. They achieved success in late 70's/early 80's. At this point, few people know any meaning for the term other than what the political class uses. Still, everyone is pretty far away from Latin liberalis at this point. I wonder whether the concept behind that term will ever be strong enough again to merit a word that unambiguously denotes it.
"Liberal" in U.S. political discourse is the result of an extremely successful and masterful propaganda/marketing campaign. I despise the result, but damn, you have to admire such conceptual and linguistic control of the masses.
Parent
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Re:strange... (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually, what Americans call 'liberal' we call 'moderate Conservative'. What we call left-wing, Americans call pinko Commie traitors.
Parent
Re:strange... (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
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Makes you wonder: A.if Japan has the equivalent of a Libertarian party.
B. why we haven
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Re:strange... (Score:4, Interesting)
Suffice it to say that the word 'liberal' is not a clearly defined word. John Locke, for example, did not support democracy. Liberalism in its most original form was essentially a philosophy supporting freedom and equality for the people in all forms. Eventually this morphed into liberal socialism; which supported the state providing for individuals so that they had equality of opportunity as well as freedom of opportunity. Modern liberalism, as a rule, continues along this trend, integrating more elements of socialism into it.
Parent
In Minitrue we trust (Score:2, Informative)
What this means (Score:3, Interesting)
it will only force the free press underground (Score:2)
Precedent already set: Japan powerless to rule web (Score:5, Informative)
In January 2007, a small court in Japan, making a judgement on yet another slander case, announced that 2channel's holding company was bankrupt and it would be repossessed. This claim was openly mocked by Hiroyuki on 2channel's splash page, and nothing of the sort happened, although 2channel's Japanese ISP ended its operations.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2ch#Free_speech [wikipedia.org]
Re:Precedent already set: Japan powerless to rule (Score:5, Funny)
Sure, just post it to wikileaks.
Parent
Re:Precedent already set: Japan powerless to rule (Score:2, Troll)
If I were worried about my site being shut down due to offending people with money/power, I sure wouldn't host it in the U.S. Find a country without DMCA takedowns, secret courts, and "terror" lawsuits that come with automatic gag orders, in other words, some place with more freedom than the U.S.
great here come the nipzis! (Score:2, Troll)
"Censorship" again (Score:2)
Now, if some website is circulating news with similar audience, would not it be fair to traditional media to apply the same rules to non-traditional competitors of the traditional media? Internet has matured, dudes and dudettes, and became a
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Oh Liberal Democratic Party... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Can't resist... (Score:5, Informative)
The LDP have had a total monopoly on Japanese politics since WWII. It would be most amusing for this to pass, the to-be-regulated web sites "move" out of Japanese jurisdiction and life goes on as before. Japanese always ignore warning signs[2] when noone is looking, so I wouldn't expect this to amount to much no matter what.
[1] Soka Gakkai and IKEDA Daisuke are to Japan what the Church of Scientology and L. Ron Hubbard are to the US. My source? I was unhappily married to one.
[2] I have a really cool digital photo of the highway bus terminal in Tsukuba. There
s a sea of bicycles completely burying a sign in back which reads "no bicycle parking here".
Parent
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Re:Can't resist... (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:Can't resist... (Score:5, Insightful)
So when a news agency reports about irregularities in the next election, and the government forces the story to be clearly marked as speculation and inaccurate, you see no problem with that?
Censorship regimes take many forms. You still have things to learn.
Parent
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Xenophobia takes many forms too. And you also have things to learn.
Things in Japan work differently than they do here. In some ways, they have more freedoms than we do. In other ways, they may have fewer. On balance, their system works. It is different than ours, but it works. They have a low crime rate, one of the world's largest economies, very low poverty, and nobody who lives there ever complains about government oppression that I'
Re:Can't resist... (Score:5, Informative)
People in Japan are very much self-censored through societal pressure. It's really a totally different working environment from what I've seen and rather freedom-reducing since people are strongly encouraged to not stand out but to fit in with the rest as best as you can. This is true at least in Tokyo, but from what a friend of mine who lived for two years in the countryside tells me it's the same there. Youths can stand out but once you reach adulthood it's a totally different story.
Parent
Re:Can't resist... (Score:4, Insightful)
Election campaigns only lasting a few weeks means that the people have less time to hear about what's going on, have less time to discuss, and are usually less informed when they finally vote on somebody. Also, candidates are legally limited by how much of the population they can attempt to reach at any one time outside of certain channels - hand-outs, for example, can only be distributed to 8% of the voting population.
How are restrictions on how the press reports on a candidate beneficial? When they're discouraged from revealing things that might cast a candidate in a negative light, even though everybody might be a lot better off knowing? Also, while the Japanese press never writes negative articles about all things Japanese, they feel no such restriction when it comes to writing libelous articles about foreign governments, companies or individuals.
Japan manages to function pretty much exactly the way it always has for the last couple of centuries despite the imposition of the American-written constitution because just like any country, their politicians know how to interpret the law in ways that benefit their own agendas. Those that are in power tend to stay in power; Diet seats still manage to be passed down through powerful families, regardless of the "democratic" process, and the government is currently trying to instill fear into their citizens to serve their own ends.
I recently had my conversation class at the high school where I teach writing about critical issues, and some of the students chose "internet regulation" as a topic. I let them write about it, even though I wasn't sure just how it counted as a critical issue, but now I see by this article that they were responding to the tripe that the media has been feeding people as the government ramps up to passing these stricter regulations.
Remember, in Japan, "the nail that sticks up gets hammered down." The Japanese don't appreciate dissent, and those that are above you are supposed to be all-knowing and infallible, come hell or high water.
Parent
There are better ways to stop libel. (Score:5, Insightful)
See US Liable Laws [wikipedia.org] for a good, civil way to take care of malicious harm. Barriers are high to prevent abuse, it's done after the fact and has nothing to do with the government except for the government providing a neutral judge and documentation of the case. Free speech is so important that prior restraint is reserved only for extreme danger like nuclear weapon design [wikipedia.org] and even then it's debatable. Other restraints like the DMCA are laughable and will be struck down sooner than later.
Setting up a powerful board with a vague mandate is a very different kettle of fish. Analogies to broadcast don't hold internet water. The public interest in pull media demands freedom and neutrality where the public interest in once scarce spectrum demanded accountability. We have all seen how abused that power over broadcast was ... because we now have free internet news for fact checking. That free media has proved more consistent, informative and reliable than broadcast ever was. "Regulation" of the internet will make it look more like broadcast than reliable or truthful. Without care, it will be pure censorship and can also be used to smear and cause harm without redress.
It is hard to believe that this basic issue has escaped the attention of those planning "accountability".
Parent
No, the US is not avoiding censorship. (Score:2, Informative)
The US has a legal and philosophical framework that expressly forbids censorship but has ignored it in crucial ways. Broadcast monopolies have been a universal dissaster for free press and democracy but were technically required until about twenty years ago. The unanimous clamoring for "traffic shaping" by ISPs and telcos, if granted will propagate broadcast monopolies onto the internet. It's hard to tell if that or a government panel would be worse but both are unacceptable. Our high minded constitutio
Re:Can't resist... (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
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Re:Can't resist... (Score:4, Interesting)
Yes...because all the other administrations have been so much better. Please.
I'll be glad when Bush is out of office. Because then you'll have to blame the lies, cover-ups, and simple fuckups of the government on someone else.
Hell no, I wouldn't want the Bush admin having control over these 'standards'. I wouldn't want any other administration having that power either.
Parent
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I have no problem with holding the media to account, but the goverment should not be doing so when it has a vested interest in the output it would be monitoring. Further, the legislation wouldn't limit government control to matters of fa
agreed (Score:2)
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Having said that, I don't really believe in a "collective" in the political sense (although I am without doubt that there is such a thing in the natural and spiritual sense). You can speak of it as though it were a real thing, but it's not. It's more of a construct, an illusion; it's something that politicians find v
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What I was saying is that a group (be it a nation, etc) of free, empowered individuals who are subjects of no one, with the right to do an