Japan Seeking to Govern Top News Web Sites

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."

In Minitrue we trust

[Anonymous Coward]

Is there not a Japanese translation of this book? [wikipedia.org]

Precedent already set: Japan powerless to rule web

[etymxris]

See 2ch.net:

There are numerous civil actions against Hiroyuki by individuals and corporations for slander and defamation. Hiroyuki so far ignored every court order and has never shown up for any trial and he has lost every civil case brought against him by default. Hiroyuki does not hold any sizable asset in Japan and any financial gain by Hiroyuki (bar what the court rule as necessary living expense) is subject to foreclosure. 2channel's assets are all held overseas; the servers are located in California and the domains are owned by a United States registrar. Moreover, technically, Hiroyuki does not own 2channel. None of the winners of civil action collected any money from Hiroyuki.

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]

Basically, any website that doesn't want government regulation will just relocate its servers to the U.S. Due to the differing laws, they will not be able to subpoena IP logs or have any way of getting at the people that post to the site. The owner of the site may have some trouble if he continues living in Japan, but there will probably be ex patriots in the U.S. willing to "own" the site to avoid such trouble.

Re:strange...

[STrinity]

"The conservative government, led by the Liberal Democratic Party"

There's something a little odd about that name, don't you think?

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".

Re:strange...

[J0nne]

"Liberal" means something completely different outside of the US.

Re:Can't resist...

[SL Baur]

The LDP are on their way out. They got their butts kicked in the last election and lost the upper house. They haven't been able to sustain a majority of their own in 10 years and have enlisted the help of the Soka Gakkai[1], pardon me I mean the New Komeito Party.

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".

Re:strange...

[flyneye]

Truthfully here Democrats and Republicans are cut from the same powerhungry, force-your-dictatorial-philosophy cloth in spite of the differences in the lies they extrude through your enemy and mine,the Press.
Makes you wonder: A.if Japan has the equivalent of a Libertarian party.
                                                              B. why we haven't had another revolution yet.
Makes ya think,donut?

Re:strange...

[DrLang21]

Don't forget that Evangelical Christians labored since the 70s to redefine the term "conservative" for their own benefit. They achieved success rather quickly with Jerry Falwell uniting the evangelical christians to hi-jack the Republican party. Now the term "conservative" more closely defines a set of social control principles that force everyone to act like the Calvinists. It has little to nothing to do with conservation of traditional governmental practice.

No, the US is not avoiding censorship.

[gnutoo]

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 constitution also forbids phone taps, email reading and web snooping without a warrent. It's debasement is a travesty.

Re:Can't resist...

[joggle]

Citizens in Japan don't have nearly as much political power as they do in America. They can not vote for the prime minister but only lower-level members. They can not vote on whether large projects should occur like they can in America. I remember when a proposal to build a high-speed rail test track was on the ballot in Colorado my Japanese friends were astonished that we could vote on such a thing.

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.

Sorry to interrupt your Japan-bashing but...

[coresnake]

The only difference between this and what's going on in America is that Japan are doing it in the open . You think the main news corps in America aren't censored? You've got to be kidding me. I'd bet you'd all be spitting and writhing if Japan announced any law even a tenth of how ridiculous the Patriot Act is, you bunch of hypocrites.

Re:Oh Liberal Democratic Party...

[Anonymous Coward]

One article you link to is by Debito, the other being a 404 link to Debito's website. Just so you know, Debito is a bit of an extremist, so you might want to take some salt with what he says. Also, usually there's heavy filtering done by the author for subjects the author is not very familiar with.

Quote: "from the hey-slashdot-jp-what-does-this-mean dept." So, does Slashdot have a Slashdot.jp story on this? And if so, can I have a link?