Japanese Government to Regulate Online Communication

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."

sony

Sony must be tickled pink.

Before anyone cries censorship

This is a way to make up for the deficiencies of Japan's legal system. Under the present system, people can post anonymously online , often through the "2ch" bulletin board, 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. Japanese courts have shown no interest in enforcing the egregious violations of other people's rights. At present, there is a whole subculture of professional losers, the "NEETs" in their 20s and 30s who live at home with their parents and don't work, who spend their lives posting this stuff on the web.

Re:Before anyone cries censorship

And this is bad how ?

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.

Re:A real life bad example

"Just recently in Melbourne a newspaper journalist lifted comments posted on a forum and reported them as fact."

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).

Re:Before anyone cries censorship

I can post anonymously on Slashdot and say 'Lindsay Lohan has an IQ of 74'

Personally, I'm getting tired of these astroturfers, always spinning the truth to be more favorable for their customer.

Re:Before anyone cries censorship

Why don't you try generalizing 100 million people a little more; I don't think you were quite bigoted enough. "Lolicon" is a subset of manga and anime; in no way is your incredibly broad generalization accurate when it comes to the majority of drawn material of any kind. From my experiences in Akihabara, there is no shortage of street performers and costume play cafe advertisers, but certainly no 12-14 year old girls selling photobooks of themselves that I saw in 3 months of near daily visits.

I'd stop taking everything you hear reported in sensationalist or biased media at face value before you go off Japan-bashing.

I am going to join

MIAU [miau.jp] just cause of it's name.
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.

Green grass and fences.

"The Japanese government made major moves this month toward legislating extensive regulation over online communication. "

Hmmm. Is this the point were everyone brags at how much better broadband is overseas?

Interesting

How can this possibly happen, by blocking piracy, blogs, and youtube i would have no reason to go online
Just a question, can this ban or monitor IRC?

Turning Japanese

I swear I was listening to this song as this article came up in the newsreader.

Advice for all governments

Use the AskSlashdot section of this site to find out if your hair brained IT scheme is feasible before suggesting it or spending any money on it.

However

The Japanese government will NOT be regulating Gundam content.

Several different issues, no laws yet

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 this. One would also note (as did the article) that this doesn't apply to private personal communications (which I take to mean email, chat, voip, etc). And don't forget Japan has a court system too, if this does become law it will see challenges to it. Also this seems to be just a report or recommendation at this point and is not a bill or a law and (according to the article) has not yet been proposed as a bill.

2) Mobile phone filtering for persons under 18.
If you read through this it is clear this was enacted because of parents concerns. Though filtering was available before it was not well advertised and very rarely used. This order (the article doesn't say its a law) just requires the filtering to be on by default and the owner of the phone (usually the parents) can request it (the filtering) to be disabled. So if the parent has a problem with there child's mobile web access being filtered they can just request it be turned off.

3) File Sharing.
This is at the behest of the RIAJ (Recording Industry Association of Japan). They are just doing the same thing as the RIAA. From my take on the article it looks like they are using the same reasoning and justifications as the RIAA have done, and I doubt they will be anymore successful.

So from what I can tell there are no laws or proposed bills yet (other then possibly the mobile phone web filtering, anyone know if this is a law or just a decree?) and there are groups out there speaking against them. They are using the public comments system and voicing their opinion. If you are a Japanese citizen or permanent resident and you have a problem with it voice your opinion about it too. But don't claim it to be more then it is. This same stuff has come up in the US before too, remember the war on porn anyone? Just don't forget that there will be plenty of opposition, after all we know what the internet is for [youtube.com]. ;)

Godzilla & UFOs

This makes perfect sense to me now. You have to control communications when the UFOs and Godzilla invade Japan.

Why 18?

Why would Japan target this stuff at those under the age of 18, when official Japanese adult-hood starts at age 20?

What is the criteria

File sharing legislation will initially target illegal downloads

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.

Internet filtering doesn't work

I don't support this decision by the Japanese government. We've yet to see even one functional Internet content filter.

-A portion of the material they filter is safe, ie. not supposed to be filtered
-A portion of the material they should filter goes by unfiltered
-The filters can be bypassed with the same services a lot of Japanese (and Chinese) Internet users have used for Internet anonymity for a while now

The first point makes for angry customers who one day can't visit their favorite (safe) pages anymore.
The second point raises questions about the "think of the children" argument used to support the mobile Internet filtering.
The third point makes a lot of otherwise normal citizen into law-breaking criminals.

This has all the chances to backfire and very little chance for profit. Hopefully Japan gets a real political revolution sometime very soon.

"anything on the web"

Thank god the Gopher underground will still be able to prevail against this censorship.

communicate with numbers, not words

A personal webpage is something you purposefully visit, not something that is being broadcast to you. You have to explicitly request a file from my webserver to get to my personal webpage, which means that you agree to an implied agreement that you do so out of a desire to learn more about me as a person. Therefore, if something I say makes you feel offended, you should simply stop visiting my page. It is as if you ask a person "what do you think about Bush?" and he says "he is a *beep*". If you are a Bush supporter you may feel offended, but you have no right to sue or do anything because it was you that asked and you got exactly the information you asked for. When you asked and I replied, I had no intention to offend you, but only to document the contents of my brain and be truthful to you by telling you exactly what my brain was thinking about Bush. I don't think one should feel offended for received a truthful exact answer to their question. That's exactly what happens on a personal webpage (or blog): You ask me for my personal opinions by downloading my files from my webserver. Since it is you that asks me, and not me broadcasting this information to you (for example, by sending this via email without you asking for it first, or by broadcasting it on radio and holding a megaphone to your ears, etc), you have no right to create problems to me for documenting my life and my opinions online. People of the Internet era want to be open humans and want the world to be able to know their opinions on every topic (if you haven't understood it yet, we have entered the voluntary openness era and privacy is not the same as it was before, while in the past people were reluctant to talk about their opinions a lot, now people actually want to do exactly that).

The problem with various laws and especially laws like libel etc is that it is very easy to have an innocent face charges for anything they said even if it wasn't really offensive or libelous. I have come up with a solution that can enable me or anyone else to say anything I want without having people feel uncomfortable or offended: I express my opinions with numbers instead of words. So if I want to say that I dislike Bush I will say "Bush gets -1" and if I want to say that I like Ron Paul I'll say "Ron Paul gets +1". If I want to explain why I feel such about a politician, I just list all their policies or actions and give numbers next to each other indicating my approval or disapproval (for example, Preemptive War: -1, or Pro-life: +1). This way, nobody can claim that what I say is libel or offensive or anything. It's just numbers, and numbers cannot offend anyone (well, expect for some fundamentalists who get mad over 666 and other superstitions). The advantage of communicating with numbers is that since numbers aren't regulated by laws, you can say anything you want (within reason) and document your exact opinions (if you use many numbers), without allowing anyone feel offended. So for example, if you want to comment on a news story on your blog and the story is politically sensitive and could somehow lead to legal problems, just say "my opinion is -1" instead of "my opinion is that this politician is a thief or whatever".

Of course I should also draw attention to another issue, that if you stop using a right given to you (free speech), then you lose that right at some point in time, so rights are supposed to be used every day. However, the idea of communication with semantics different to those in mainstream (and therefore legally liable) use, such as numbers instead of words, can be useful in various situations where you either cannor or don't want to attract many critics.

Beware those .....

"Beware those who would deny you Knowledge,
For in their heart's they dream themselves you Master"