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."

Comments

Re:Before anyone cries censorship

[Anonymous Coward]

I live on Okinawa, home to the shortest High School school uniform skirts in Japan (and damn proud of it).

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:A real life bad example

[TapeCutter]

"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).