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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."
Governments, no matter how benign, really hate unfettered access to information.
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".
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
"The conservative government, led by the Liberal Democratic Party"
There's something a little odd about that name, don't you think?
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 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.
See US Liable Laws 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 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".
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".
Well don't leave us hanging here! Were you married to L. Ron Hubbard, or Ikeda Daisuke?
They scream bloody murder about how implementing a human rights treaty they signed over a decade ago will stiffle free speech, but it's fine if they do it. Bigotry is okay, but we can't have any "illegal and harmful content."
Sendou Wave Kick!!