Japan Seeking to Govern Top News Web Sites 146
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."
Putin-like (Score:3, Interesting)
It sounds like a Putin-style media. Free-press is getting harder to find in the world.
What this means (Score:3, Interesting)
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: universal health care, effective mass transit, a constitutional ban against the use of the military except to defend the nation, unparalleled Internet connectivity and infrastructure, all within the framework of a liberal democracy. (And for many environmentalists, Japan has achieved the ideal of negative population growth.) As part of the system that rules Japan, college entrance exams are used as a filter to establish that those who ascend to rule Japan are part of a meritocracy. This and not terrorism is the context of Japanese concerns to save the children. As has been discussed by the Christian Science Monitor, the Japanese are probably far more willing to accept Internet filtering to protect the children out of fear of web sites that discuss topics such as group suicides [csmonitor.com].
And given that the Japanese system works better than almost any other in the world (only a few Western European nations even have an argument), a response of apathetic indifference by the majority ruled by that system is indeed perfectly rational and defensible. The bloggers who fear being censored represent the malcontents, the rejects, the people who were not quite good enough, the people who have not demonstrated their ability to responsibly maintain what the Japanese system has built to the envy of the rest of the world.
Re:Yes, we need to maintain the fictions and story (Score:3, Interesting)
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 very convenient. I almost never hear the terms "collective" or "greater good" or "for the benefit of the nation" etc used for any purpose other than justifying the subservience of the individual to the state.
Corporations don't have intelligence, or emotions, or souls, or any sort of life. Nor do governments. Such hierarchies are just inanimate objects, tools utilized by people to achieve their goals. The idea that a sentient, sapient human being should submit to an inanimate object to preserve someone's political power is a direct insult against what it means to be human. You wonder why the world is in such turmoil right now? I say it's because a way of life built on such a fatally flawed idea is destined to crumble, sooner or later.
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.
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.
Oh Liberal Democratic Party... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Can't resist... (Score:2, Interesting)
Your second paragraph is "Dear God, they have a different culture!"
Re:Knee-jerk didn't read article, dismiss Japan (Score:3, Interesting)
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 being the most general party of any country ever, choose successors (which will by default become president) by the old cliche of smoke-filled back rooms, and historically have promoted both stupid banks and pork projects to prop up uncompetitive businesses with loans that will never be paid off and spending that dramatically overvalued those projects. This both led to and resulted from a massive economic crisis in the 1990s which still has effects. How did they attempt to fix it? They elected a crazy populist Koizumi ten years later who managed to clean most of the economic messes up. It's still a nightmare if you look at it from a Western perspective: corruption and scandal is essentially everywhere. It works, but we shouldn't be too quick to hold the LDP up as a bastion of reform and liberalism because it's basically a party that stands for nothing.