Slashdot Mirror
Japanese ESRB Bans Rape Depiction In Games
eldavojohn writes "The Ethics Organization of Computer Software (EOCS), now 233 companies strong, and met in Tokyo yesterday to ban a controversial title from Japan known as RapeLay, an eroge game (something much more adult than the more popular dating simulators). It's gotten a lot of press as reviewers have noted at one point the player must force sex on a 12-year-old. More importantly, the large ($353 million annually) adult game industry in Japan will now need to stay away from rape in their games if they wish to remain a member of EOCS. RapeLay seems to be available on Amazon's UK and JP sites, sparking outrage and causing a former US Ambassador to Japan to write an editorial criticizing Japan, saying, 'Only Japan allows people to possess these hideous images without penalty. Six of the G-7 countries have found ways to protect the innocent from being prosecuted for possession of child pornography. Is it not time for Japan to find a way to punish the guilty?' Singapore's Straits Times has more details, pointing out that it's still not illegal to possess these materials in Japan. We discussed this and other games last month in an editorial."
It's like saying hello in Japan!
How we know is more important than what we know.
... I thought you were COOL!
"Why did they cancel my favorite Sci-Fi show? I downloaded ALL the episodes!"
Damn, the torrenting of this game is gonna skyrocket after the article. Teh forbidden fruit in action.
Because oh no, those poor imaginary cartoon characters need judicial protection!
Won't someone think of the imaginary children?
It's gotten a lot of press as reviewers have noted at one point the player must force sex on a 12-year-old
Don't all Japanese female cartoon/video game characters look like 12 year olds?
Censorship is bad, but rape is bad.
I am a good consumer and can think of only one thing at once. Which is more bad?
Censorship, obviously, because it's against freedom.
Rape is only against freedom for one 12-year-old at a time.
Japanese porn, real or animation, has yet to define any boundaries of actions (sans the peculiar act of often blurring the privates) till now. Should we expect this to be a precedent for more censorship to come?
Penn Jillette speaks about Rape Lay:
http://www.crackle.com/c/Penn_Says#id=2473058&ml=o%3D12%26fpl%3D360812%26fx%3D
I think I agree with him, especially on the parts about fantasy game violence.
Why doesn't the headline use EOCS? There is no Japanese ESRB.
Actually, that fictional character only LOOK young. Her age is never explictly stated, and I know plenty of 18-year-old real life girls in my university who can get into amusement parts using children passes.
Since when has Slashdot trumpeted fascism? Now we're cheering outlawing things because they're offensive?
Raping a character in a video game is no more real than killing said character. At what point will we become liable for murder when playing a shooter? Put simply:
There's no crime here, asshole. The only thing anyone is guilty of here, is pandering.
Interesting how less slick he is when he isn't on stage, eh?
Such an accomplished performer could put together a good script for himself and present it effectively, but he thankfully chooses just to honestly present a talk-to-the-camera opinion.
How we know is more important than what we know.
You know, there are many routes one can go to ban violent sexual video games/porn like this, and I'm not sure if I agree with the rational involved here. More or less, everything I've heard politicians spew (appropriate verb) about this stuff is basically "It causes people to go out and rape." Much like the dodgy connection between violent video games and real life violence (anecdotal evidence non-withstanding), I don't really buy it. Especially since each individual culture seems to have entirely different responses to various social laws. As a good example, banning guns in the US causes violent crime rates to rise (see: Washington DC), but Japan has far less of an issue, where guns have more or less been illegal for civilians since WWII. (Side note: I have not checked these numbers recently. Don't bother picking them out, it's an illustration that could rapidly be replaced with another to make the same point. Forrest for the trees and all that).
On a different note though, one of my professors had a very good reason to ban violent pornography, without going for the correlation link (which he bought into anyways. Professors are human after all). We had just finished reading J.S. Mills' On LIberty, which more or less states that "The only reason to abridge a person's personal freedom is harm to others. Moral disgust is not an adequate reason to stop someone, unless if they are going to harm someone else directly or indirectly (Say, if by being an alcoholic they are incapable of parental duties, etc)." His point was, if this pornographic material spreads the ideology that women are sexual objects existing only for men's pleasure, which causes women to self-censor themselves and their ideas due to peer pressure, fear, or general brain washing, then it must be banned.
But, politicians aren't arguing this, because they don't actually care about freedom, they care about making it look like they're doing something in order to ensure re-election. Because 90% of "concerned" parents in the suburbs are going to say "Rape is bad, rape games depict rape, so it must enforce rape, and this politician banning rape games must be fighting rape! Vote for him!" And we just helped him too, by the way.
They must make up, like, 74% percent of the Japanese economy!
"It's gotten a lot of press as reviewers have noted at one point the player must force sex on a 12-year-old."
I almost vomited when I read this...
I always feel sickened to my stomach when you read news of some sick bastard who rapes someone, especially a child.
To have a "game" promote this as an achievement is disturbing.
There are plenty of strange sex acts that consenting adults can engage in, including fantasy rape scenes, that can border on the illegal but don't .....wow... I am so disgusted I cannot even finish my thoughts.
Promoting such acts should be banned, and anyone who actually performs such an act should be castrated/killed.
it is not true!
http://www.sankakucomplex.com/2009/05/29/media-invents-eroge-ban/
Only thing worst than a prude America, is a prude Japan!
Where will I get my rape-themed H-games and H-Anime from?
If it is ok to murder in games it should be OK to rape. Nothing wrong with it, and I have no reason to be anonymous!
GENERATION 25: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
Let's go back to the old NES days. The only thing that ever made people do was eat mushrooms and beat the shit outta turtles. Those were the days, young prepubescent CGI girls could safely wander the streets.
90% of video games involve depictions of violent crime, murder, war. Most people (with obvious exceptions, Jack Thompson), accept that they are FICTION.
Argue that these are disgusting, encourage degradation of women: don't say that they are in themselves criminal.
"Punish the guilty". Nice turn of phrase. Just declare something you don't like is criminal, assume anyone charged with looking at it is "guilty", and proceed directly to punishment.
Now they need to get rid of the real rapists stationed at Okinawa.
I've read a lot of ridiculous contortions on Slashdot, trying to depict realistic video game violence as pedestrian free speech, having no effect on society, even salutory for society. And I do realize that the intellectual giants behind a lot of this stuff are 24-year-old kids for whom video games and Taco Bell are still Very Important elements of their lives.
But when you get faced with more and more concrete examples of marketed, play-acted extreme violence, which keep trying to outdo each other, and which any mature, moral person apprehends as soul-deadening, and these kids still choose to stay wrapped in their simple ideologies and keep defending it....you really have to write the lot of them off completely.
Next up: game where the player tries to capture, rape, and torture the children and families of tech blog editors with adolescent ethical development.
From the Kotaku article:
What kind of changes can we expect? Ero game maker Syrup Soft is delaying its upcoming game Gang raped by the entire village ~girls covered in milky liquid~ to re-moniker it The trap set by the entire village ~bodies covered in milky liquid~. So, yeah, expect more creative ways of masking rape and rape iconography as well as possibly more "amateur" or unlicensed games.
So "rape"-related content will still be released in video games but it will simply be masked as something else. This is just like having characters in anime that look like little kids, but claim they are actually adults.Additionally, this right's group might think they have one a victory, but there are still tons of magazines and independent comics (and games) released that are focused on the topic rape.
ban them both ... its a false dichotomy to say if you ban child porn simulations, child rape will rise.
Its fair to expect at least this much from people.
Perhaps this US ambassador should consider the comparitive figures for actual rape of real people who really exist in America and Japan.
Surely this difference is far too big to be explained purely as a reporting bias. 34.20 compared to 1.48 per 100,000 people, first figures I found. It's pretty clear that giving potential rapists the ability to do so in a fictional environment where they do not hurt any real people is a good way of making them less likely to do it for real. "Don't hurt anyone, that would be bad" is a better way of getting people not to hurt anyone than "revealing your fantasies makes you damned whether you hurt anyone or not."
Excluded.
If we don't ban games with rape, then it will get worse. Eventually they might start coming out with games where people kill each other!!
Typical for weeaboos. EOCS is merely one group of (self)18-rated PC game producing companies - they've done things like ban having characters under 18 before, which lead to a huge number of companies leaving. I'm also trying to work out what the difference between "eroge" and "dating simulators" is - the submitter probablys means girl-games (garuge) i.e. games with a strong romantic component to them. Romance and pornography are in no way related in the Japanese markets - there are plenty of games that focus on sex and eroticism with no story component - as far as I know this includes all of Illusion's games. Wonder if this will lead me to being quoted in a (major?) US newspaper as an expert on Japanse video games again...
4chan immediately DDOSes the J-ESRB.
Did somebody along the way forget that most of the sex in hentai is rape? When's the last time that school girl consented to that tentacle monster to penetrate her every orifice?
see http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1260351&cid=28247813 :P
I hope I'm not the only one honestly disturbed that rape games have customers. Funny, as I'm a big fan of GTA4.
Two issues come to mind:
1. The harm of rape simulation
While there's evidence that violence and rape instincts live in ever man (and higher ape, for that matter), instinctively I believe there's difference between simulated rape and violent video games.
Violent video games are rather cathartic, and serve that need pretty well. Going around a fake city in a tank and blowing up every douchey car is just wholesome fun. But what does rape simulation appease? It's not sex, that's what porn is for.
2. Free speech
Normally I'm a blind attack-dog in favor of free speech. But here, no, I can't be. If free speech means anything more than "just let everyone talk," it has to have a purpose behind it -- such as letting different ideas being heard, or letting the truth be heard, then there has to be a some sorts of speech it encourages, and others it's agnostic to. I can't think of any case for free speech helped by defending a rape simulator.
Care about electronic freedom? Consider donating to the EFF!
--==* Sugarbabymeet.C'om *==-- It's where Sugarbaby (women who are mature, rich and experienced) and men who like them can meet.
"Let's go back to the old NES days. The only thing that ever made people do was eat mushrooms and beat the shit outta turtles. Those were the days, young prepubescent CGI girls could safely wander the streets."
You must've missed the game "Custer's Revenge", a game where you specifically went around raping native american women tied to a stake.
- Custer's Revenge game play clip
Disturbing stuff...
8==8 Bones 8==8
And all of you know it except for the pervs.
I am shocked. After reading the article and a little more about EOCS organization, it seems that Japan makes some games that do NOT involve rape. Who would have guessed?
I think sexual assault is terrible, and it disgusts me that people want to play games that simulate such things.
But I disagree with this law. I think freedom of expression is a valuable personal liberty. The legal system should be concerned with protecting the welfare and safety of the citizens it governs, not guiding what kind of intellectual content can be distributed among adults.
On a more personal level, I find it ridiculous that rape simulation should be outlawed, but murder simulation is not. We as a society accept that murder is a worse crime than sexual assault. This is why murder charges have more severe punishment than rape.
The only argument that would make this kind of legislation rational would be if someone could establish that sexual assault in video games encourages acts of real world sexual assault. I'd be surprised if it were true. Most studies conclude that violence in movies and video games does not encourage real-world violence. I can't imagine any reason why rape would be so different than any other violent crime in this aspect.
--
#include <malloc.h>
free(your.mind);
In order for something to be a crime, it must be demonstrated that it causes harm, suffering, or loss. There has to be a victim. Now, the victim could be argued to be society as a whole, but I've not seen any actual proof that rape games make people rape or violent games make people violent.
I have played the game mentioned in TFA out of curiosity. It was linked to on a forum I frequent. It wasn't disturbing to me at all because I took it for what it is: fiction. Fictional depictions of death don't disturb me either, and I think any reasonable person would consider death worse than rape.
Rape is terrible, so is murder. Those crimes are even more disturbing and tragic when they happen to children. But that's not these people are arguing against. Raping children (or anyone) is ALREADY illegal. The opponents of this game are not arguing against rape, they are arguing against free speech but are confusing the debate by painting the other side as being pro-rape. Stop confusing the issue and argue on the facts. You are talking about banning a form of expression. What is being expressed is a terrible thing, yes, but freedom of speech doesn't just protect things you find agreeable. Polite speech doesn't require protection.
Censorship is always worse than what is being censored.
If you build it, nerds will come. Soylentnews.org
They should ban rape games on 12 year old cartoon girls, why don't they try to stop us from showing genitals in porno?
People think their laws are way too lax... when they have laws against showing genitals in any media...
OMG it is illegal to import a game that depicts rape of a 12 years old in the US.... well it is also illegal to import 99% of the porn that can be obtained in US soil in Japan...
I'm sure their fictional parents care!
Agree 100%
tgewe grgfb gt.
Yes. Slashdot is technologically oriented.
OKay. That doesn't mean it is not a wide cross section.
I'd like to think that we can take the "tech" factor out of a population and still see a pool of people who represent a "wide cross section" of humanity.
In fact, I'd be willing to bet it so.
Technology is becoming mainstream. Get used to it. Find a new niche if it helps your ego.
If they ban all games/movies/comics/books where someone gets killed, a very small subset of all will remain. But still, if you are worried about rape you should be more about killing.
Sometimes I really hate human beings. Whether the game helps or not is not the question, rape is detestable.
It's far more accurate to say that most of the sex in Japanese erotic media released in the US is rape. That perhaps says more about America than Japan.
Why am I not surprised that only one post in the entire discussion (so far) mentions "reality"? This /. place has really declined over the years...
Our imagination, the mental images and models that we construct in our minds, these unreal things are not without import. Very often we use them to create reality.
Amusingly enough, reality persists in being evasive towards our simplifications. It is obviously true that for some people the horrible images are just escapism and those people never attempt to act out their fantasies. In other cases, the harms can be enormous. I think the greatest fantasy-based harm of the recent past is actually the big dick Cheney's faith-based war in Iraq. The economic cost of that fantasy is most optimistically estimated around $1 trillion--but the meter is still running. I suppose the cost in lives is much more important. We have a pretty solid number over 4,000 for American lives--but no one has a solid count for the trivial Iraqi lives. (Having studied a lot of math and a fair bit of sociology, I actually buy into the demographic approach that comes up with a statistical estimate of over 1 million prematurely deceased Iraqis.) All because of Cheney's fantasies? Or was it just for the sake of enriching Haliburton?
I think these computer games are quite bad because they are more personally involving and easier to follow. However, in recent years I've mostly been wondering about horror-suspense writers who create these super-vicious criminals in their minds--and then skillfully transfer their insane ideas to their readers. I suspect the success of Silence of the Lambs may explain a lot of the bad things that have happened to America and to the world...
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
I rape women everyday.....with my eyes!!! I imagine them with less and less clothes every moment until I penetrate them with my glare... PLEASE ARREST ME!!!
How many people that want to buy a game called RapeLay actually care about what the Ethics Organization of Computer Software has to say about it anyway? As deplorable as raping a 12 year old is, I commend japans ability to allow the freedom to produce such trash. So the ethics committee has a problem with it; who didn't see that coming... but its not against the law, and that's the important part.
I remember someone telling me once that we are going about this whole "space travel" thing all wrong.
Apparently all we need to do is tell the Japanese that we have discovered a planet on the other side of the galaxy populated only by tentacle monsters and schooolgirls and they will have the speed of light problem licked by the end of the month.
I'd like to start raping but I can't get a working torrent going :( Maybe I'll practice my l33t raping skillz on kittens in the meanwhile.
US-UK-Israel: The real Axis of Evil
> The exact argument you just made for a "serial killer simulator" was made by Jack Thompson for his "cop killer simulator", the only difference is the audience. According to your logic there's something wrong with the people who watch Dexter.
Even if Jack Thompson is a nut, is it so hard to believe that someone who would play a game in which you rape a 12-year-old is abnormal? You can make distinctions based on degree, not just kind.
That is, even if some blocky pixels "rape" a Native American woman in Custer's Last Stand, you really have to use a lot of imagination. It's about as stimulating as sex with a foocubus in Nethack. I mean, someone could just as easily claim that Mario was "raping" the goombas when stomping them, it's that pathetic. But realistically raping some 12-year-old, though, with modern graphics? I can feel a difference there. Or maybe it is just a cartoon and not photo-real. I don't know. I haven't seen the game and I don't plan to. But you could disbelieve one of them a lot more easily than the other, even if it was a cartoon.
I do worry about the government being able to ban whatever it wants. But a game about raping 12-year-olds? I have a hard time defending that. Maybe, as with that one quote, it means that I don't really believe in freedom of speech.
But you know what? I guess I'm okay with that.
NT
... because shooting people in the head is ok!
Penn Jillette speaks about Rape Lay
Who?
Forget thrust, drag, lift and weight. Airplanes fly because of money.
As much as I hate censorship, I must admit that Japan has an incredible amount of sexual deviants. Maybe there's a connection.
I mean when you want to see a girl shove a live lamprey up her arse, give a blowjob to a dog, and piss on a new born baby all in the same video you look in the Japanese porn section of your local library. You DO NOT look in the American section.
If you haven't read it already: http://www.somethingawful.com/d/hentai-game-reviews/rapelay.php
Maybe it's because Japan has one of the lowest rape per capita countries.
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_rap_percap-crime-rapes-per-capita
Hence the need to relief these urges virtually. That would be a good thing, no??
The only possible interpretation of any research whatever in the 'social sciences' is: some do, some don't
I'm looking at this page and seeing nothing but page after page of support for a game that depicts child rape and decrying of people who object to such games a fascists and nanny-state supporters.
Seriously, when did it get so in vogue to have the kind of knee-jerk reaction against the "think of the children!" mindset that Slashdot swung all the way into the NAMBLA camp? Are there honestly no limits in what society must condone?
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Nice job. This is what I always say as well. I love GTA, but am absolutely against real violence. I've never been in a fight, always preferring to find a peaceful way out. I certainly don't steal cars and use them to run over pedestrians, despite that being one of my giddy pleasures in GTA (GTA is satire, folks).
I'll go one up, though.
I've actually played the game in question, to see what the fuss was about.
It's the silliest, most pathetic thing I've ever seen. It's not even fun. It's not even funny. It's just dumb. It didn't make me want to feel 12-year-olds up on the train; it made me want to geek-slap whatever losers thought it up. I suspect that the only people who play it are the creepy shut-in otakus that populate the greasy periphery of Japanese culture. They hate women because they haven't figured out that being unwashed, boring, and lacking any interest in society doesn't really result in chicks flocking to your door.
There is no reason to ban much of anything. I'm all about coming down like the wrath of god on people who abuse children and/or take pictures of it, but I can't see how those pictures make the problem worse. I think that we all get pissed off at what is represented in those pictures and in games like this, and, lacking an appropriate outlet, we go after the easy target: the people who have the stuff. It's ridiculous, even when we're talking about actual images of actual people.
If we want child pornography to be illegal (we do!), then you go after the people who make it. If we want drugs to be illegal (we do--for some of them), then we need to go after the people who provide them. If we want to determine some entertainment to be obscene (I don't have a problem with that, actually), then, once again, we really only need to concern ourselves with those who produce it. All these arguments that people consuming or possessing these things we don't like is the problem because it leads to this, that, and the other are bunk, as far as I can tell. It's just a lot easier to find these people, because there are so many of them, so it looks like something is being done.
What's being done, however, is a bunch of probably-harmless losers getting their lives ruined and then forced to live on the public dime in jail. It's ridiculous. Even more so when we're talking about cartoon people.
As a 27y.o, I have been raised with violent games, that depict murder, drug using, torture and even proxenetism. There were some hentai games you would probably find well, disturbing.
I still have grown into a balanced person. Most would consider me an asshole, sure, but I wouldn't engage in criminal behaviour, I respect men and women alike and I pay my taxes.
Adding child abuse into the mix certainly adds to the challenge of sorting things out for teens growing up in that world. But every challenge makes them better actually. Far better to toy around raping a virtual 12y.o with your friends to put the whole thing in perspective than to hide and ban the game alltogether. It'd be security through obscurity, if you will.
Konnichiwa, gentlemen! We have called for this urgent meeting to discuss two important issues:
The first is the figures of sexual crimes in our country. As we can see from this graph, they're far lower than those of the United States of America(tm). That is just unacceptable! In order to properly follow the achievements of that great country (and to get better sales of our products there), we must do something to correct this! I propose banning rape games. We all know everyone is playing them (Kimura-san, turn off your handheld until this meeting is over!), so if we ban them, the people will have to become sexually frustrated and start to do things. I also propose a new vending machine with 'used schoolgirls' on every floor of our company HQ. Who's for?
[After a few hours of deciding the right wording for the ban, the color of the paper and the design of the nice egg-shaped case for the document]
Now that that's done, let's proceed to our second issue. The sales of Hello Kitty and Pokemon merchandise are not as satisfying as we hoped...
I'm not condoning actual rape in any form, but surely a simulation of such a thing running on someone's computer can't be worse than an equally detailed simulation of killing and then dismembering someone with a chainsaw?
Maybe because crime statistics show that rape is 5-7x more likely to occur than murder. And that's just reported rape, and I'm pretty sure those stats don't include molestation. It seems like the risks are higher in that people are more likely to commit that type of crime than violent murder.
In extreme cases, it may even be a way for sexual misfits to satisfy their urges without harming actual, living people, letting them be functional members of society.
People say that, but they never offer data to back it up, really. In my experience, the few friends I knew who got into the more deviant side of porn just kept getting deeper and deeper into it. Can't say that I know any loli fans (that I know of), but it seems that once you get a taste for the horrible, it plays a larger and larger part of your sexual fantasies.
Not that I'm saying I expected any of them to become rapists. It takes a special kind of mind to cross that line.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
jackass
MOD PARENT UP PLEASE
While this seems to be a common perception among English-speakers, it's also entirely false. The vast majority of porn in Japan, drawn or otherwise, is entirely consensual. While rape porn is certainly more common than in Western porn, it is nowhere near the majority or even a particularly significant minority.
EOCS is concerned only with adult/erotic games. The Japanese equivalent of the ESRB is CERO.
There're some things that Tux should just not be involved with... *shudder*
"RapeLay seems to be available on Amazon's UK and JP sites, sparking outrage and causing a former US Ambassador to Japan to write an editorial criticizing Japan, saying, 'Only Japan allows people to possess these hideous images without penalty. Six of the G-7 countries have found ways to protect the innocent from being prosecuted for possession of child pornography. Is it not time for Japan to find a way to punish the guilty?' "
Equalling such a game to "child pornography" is quite a leap, especially as the US child pornography laws clearly define:
"Â 2252A: Actual or simulated CP
- actual minors were used for production OR ...so whatever happens to virtual children, save if they appear to be real persons, cannot be considered "child pornography".
- the image appears to be of real person who was a minor as the image was created AND you fail to prove otherwise OR
- as defined in section 2256 (8)© ( http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/usc...â"-000-.html#8_C ), âoesuch visual depiction has been created, adapted, or modified to appear that an identifiable minor is engaging in sexually explicit conduct.â
NAMBLA is against the game unless the makers will make boy rape version.
Here's what I wonder about the whole issue of games letting us act out illegal/abhorrent/socially unacceptable actions: do they serve as 'first base' for those inclined to commit such crimes or actions? What I mean to say is, lets say I've got a desire to run people over on the streets and speed away. Playing GTA might help me break the ice for this action in an environment where there are no consequences. I can test out how it feels, practice the best speed/turns/whatever that is needed to make a clean getaway, all within the comfort of my living room. If you take this to a rape simulator, I'm sure the same applies. One can conduct their own tests as to methods or perverse pleasure feedback from the suffering of others, without the full weight of the crime itself, as well as breaking down the fear of committing a crime itself. And perhaps after playing for a while, they are one step closer to actually committing a crime. Don't get me wrong, I don't advocate censorship for all of us, just to protect the small percentage of the insane who live among us. But before someone says 'adults aren't that malleable', let me say "bullshit". Every single 'evil' leader in history had a full population of active adults behind them. Its all about power, or being close to it and feeling special as a result. And while 'these games' provide a mere drop in the bucket of the feeling of power that criminals claim exist in capital crimes, the existence of these games may be the drop that causes the whole thing to overflow.
Only Japan allows people to possess these hideous images without penalty.
Lie. There are countries that allow drawings, CG representations fictional stories and the like depicting sex with children. In canada, a decade or so back, somebody challenged the law and had manage to have it overturned at least partly because because it was rediculous to treat drawings of non-existant children, fictional stories, etc. the same as real child-porn, where children were actually harmed. Unless they've put another law back in it's place, it's still legal to possess drawings of naked children having sex - provided no real children were used in their production. There are apparently some regional laws prohibiting depictins of rape in porn though.
Six of the G-7 countries have found ways to protect the innocent from being prosecuted for possession of child pornography.
So, 6 out of 7 are nice enough to not prosecute you for child porn possession, if you happen to be innocent. Leaving asside "innocent until proven guilty" issues, that means that one of the G-7 countries quite happy to prosecute the innocent for child porn charges. Which one is that, and why is nobody making a bigger stink about it?
Is it not time for Japan to find a way to punish the guilty?
Rapelay is legal in Japan, so the people who play it aren't guilty of anything other than being pervs. I assure you, if one of them goes out and rapes somebody in real life, the Japanese police will be all over it... and you do NOT want to go through japanese police questioning. They apparently learn how to do it by watching those old american cop movies where the cops could get away with anything... and then amp it up a few notches. The confession rate in japan is apparently very high.
Interesting side note: The article mentions that Illusion.jp has removed RapeLay from it's website... but a quick check shows that another game called "Battle Raper" is still up.
"Those who have those urges towards children may feel prodded seeing the depicted acts to try them in the real world."
Research suggests otherwise. People need a harmless and legal outlet for their urges; for teleiophilic adults, options include sex with another consenting adult or adult pornography for those who can't find a partner. For paedophiles, the already short list of harmless and legal outlets is becoming ever shorter due to the moral crusaders who seek to ban everything which they find offensive. Shotacon/lolicon are one of the few outlets which are still legally available in some countries (although cartoons are quickly being criminalised). If you ban everything which may arouse paedophiles, you'll be left with people who simply ignore the law or people who are dangerously bitter, angry and hostile towards society.
Policy advisors would benefit from actually doing research with responsible paedophiles rather than making assumptions about the effects of certain stimuli. Listening to childrens' charities is a huge mistake, as charities have a motivation to make things worse in order to encourage further donations from naive, shallow citizens.
"To the future or to the past, to a time when thought is free" ~ Nineteen Eighty-Four
Do you have any evidence that less rape is committed as a result of the availability of rape simulation? Until such evidence is provided, this argument is on a par with the idea that rape games cause people to rape.
It does not work like that.
One claim has inherently negative connotations, while the other has neutral or positive connotations. Let me demonstrate.
A: There is no evidence that Coca-Cola causes absence of cancer.
B: There is no evidence that Coca-Cola doesn't cause absence of cancer.
Now, one of these two claims would correctly be labeled as FUD (B), while the other might be labeled as an excuse at worst and being cautious with serious accusations at best (A).
Also...
A =/= -C and B =/= D {while D == -(-C)} doesn't mean that A==B, nor are -C and -(-C) equal.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
It's the millennia of civilization which says that "it's a Bad Thing to sexually assault the weak and under-age" which is my moral compass on this issue.
Define "under-age".
These things tend to change overtime and as cultures change.
But think of the children!
Oh, wait, you are.
I want a list of atrocities done in your name - Recoil
Very well Japan. Now please stop slaughtering whales to fulfill your stupid shamanistic beliefs in natural cures and we will love you again (and while you are at it, stop using rhinoceros horn powder as well).
Accusing the game makers is simple, however, we should note that the intended audience of eroge is only a part of the population. The otaku/eroge players form only a small part of the society, and in fact, we could say they are barely social. I'd really be interested in some numbers as to how many otaku have been involved in child rape, and my guess, is barely 1% of the total number of rapes.
Corresponding to the data in the link above:
http://www.sankakucomplex.com/2008/12/16/japan-lags-in-loli-ban-unicef-lies-exposed/
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
The little slut likes it. You can tell by her cries of passion as she is fucked.
"The right to fantasize, daydream, and drool over violating people and committing crimes? I'm pretty sure I missed that right when reading the constitution."
The right to breathe isn't in the US Constitution either, but people have the right to do it. Lawmakers decide what people can't legally do, however they don't list everything that a person can legally do. The probable reason for the right to fantasise about crime being absent from the Constitution is that its authors couldn't comprehend the existence of a society where people tried to dictate what others could fantasise about.
"Things that depict abuse."
Violence and other abuses are frequently depicted in video games, on TV, etc. The UK media recently showed images of a baby who had been beaten to death by his parents.
Millions of African children die each year from a lack of food and water, however you seem to be more concerned about people who play video games where depictions of non-existent people are harmed. Please stop trying to dress prudism as a genuine concern for childrens' welfare.
"To the future or to the past, to a time when thought is free" ~ Nineteen Eighty-Four
On the one hand, I find rape scenarios in eroge to be distasteful... But this is a slippery slope. Sooner or later, it's going to get to where anyone who doesn't like any given aspect of Japanese visual culture will be able to whip up a frenzy and browbeat Japan into submission over whatever it is. Like Korea's shit-fit over the NON-EXISTENT portrayal of Korea in Hetalia. Way to not even know what's going on, fuckers. Too bad the Japanese gave in and pulled the show... Oh wait, that wasn't good enough! They also tried to get the webcasts pulled. And crazy Koreans were sending death threats to the station, the studio, the mangaka, and really just about anyone they could get an address for.
Then there's UNICEF's war against 'sexual situations involving underaged characters'... Again, I find the more extreme end of the lolicon spectrum to be incredibly distasteful... But if they really wanted to pursue their fight to the smallest detail, that's pretty much all of anime. Since we all know 'anime 18' = 14-16.
I'm so glad we have all this free time to spend worrying about the well-being of cartoon characters and drawings, ever since we managed to completely abolish rape and child abuse. Oh, wait. We didn't.
Dear UNICEF and other nosey fuckers with too much time on their hands: Get your priorities straight, or someone even smarter than me is going to string your asses up and use you as a constitutional and judicial pinata.
Friend: "The NIC is misconfigured..." Me: "No prob, I'll just telnet in and fix it." *Silence*
Thank you for the first rationale post I've read. I was just getting enraged by the justifications of the game in these comments. The ONLY justification you sick fucks have is that it would induce censorship. That's it, that's all you have in your defense. I agree with the parent poster: I uphold libertarian values, but the idea we can allow our moral compass to fall off the pin is heartbreaking. Have you people never spoken with a woman raped as a child? Have you never seen REAL abuse in your life? I would argue that the people defending this game were either abused as a child and formed the opinion it is a normal function of life, or never knew abuse and can distance themselves from it. Either way, this game has a dramatic negative impact on society. And don't kid yourself, kids will get the game. I have no problems with kids playing violent games, but if an impressionable kid sees an "adult rape game," they might just form the opinion that it is somewhat acceptable in society even if taboo. Make sex games, sure. But forgo the RAPE. Every human knows how much a violation rape is, it is inherent in us.
Side note 1: I know only 1 person who would like this game, and he indeed has some very twisted and meniacle views about sex from being raped as a child.
Side note 2: We could use some autoerotic asphyxiation games. LOL.
Did the former US ambassador to Japan really say: "Six of the G-7 countries have found ways to protect the innocent from being prosecuted for possession of child pornography. " Or is this a typo / misquote? I ask because this because it seems to me that the US as one of the G-7 has found many ways to prosecute the innocent, 'Sexting' prosecution of minors for one. They also made the law so strict in the US that even law enforcement cannot possess this material for use as enforcement samplers, having to rely on the dubious merits of File Hash comparisons (which are not provably unique).
If you ever followed normal Porn (in 2000 to 2005) there was a company called InS#x which did extreme Bondage in the USA, it was shutdown due to the nature of the content (US Government convinced all credit card processing companies to stop doing business with it and banks to stop accepting new accounts), so what happened, it was bought by a third party, off shored to Eastern Europe and then reappeared as 5+ different sites, what changed? The difference is that the bondage was more extreme (new sites include: Sex and Submission, Device Bondage ...), and that the girls had smiles on their faces instead of tears (that was all that changed), that was the change (oh if you are wondering It was(is?) illegal to show sex while bond in the US, but the new sites do that as well). My Point that if moving and changing tears to smiles worked for a set of sites doing things to REAL people. Then the game producers can and will find a way to show rape in games without calling it rape.
Another Japanese example would be the off shoring of Anime's with pubic hair in the 90's that was illegal and showing rape is not illegal, it will only cause you not to get a EOCS rating. What makes people think this would have changed today?
Also I the same companies that specialize in this (there are only a few which is likely why there was so little internal discussion) can move to digital distribution via there own or another website as, unless I'm wrong EOCS's power comes from the ratings required for stores selling Shrink-wrapped packages.
Second to last point there is still another Ratings company CSA which has not such restrictions (currently).
Lastly there are companies that produce live action Japanese porn which depicts simulated rape, among other things, I have heard no complaint about those yet, I do not see why some of those same companies may get into the Rape Gaming side now as well as they would have a nitch market which ECOS just said they will no longer support.
Where there is money they will find a way,
anonymous Coward
Experienced tentacle monster. Will rape for food.
Rule of Slashdot #0: You and people like you are not representative of the larger population. - A.C.
on trains that they've taken to running female only trains
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women-only_passenger_car
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
With the position of some posters here, defending that this game is "OK" and shouldn't be censured because "it isn't hurting anyone".
First, this game will not be played by grown ups only. I don't know the drill on Japan, but here this game will be played by teenagers and even younger people. Face it: do you know anyone that hasn't played Mortal Kombat beucase of the ESRB rating ? Yes, in the perfect world, kids aren't allowed to play Mature games. But this is the real world.
On the real world, what's the consequence of a 12 yr old boy playing a game where he rapes women and gets rewarded? Remember: to copycat Tony Vercetti you need guns, jetpacks, cars and so on. To rape or brutalize women, you just need the attitude.
Those are *reported* rapes. I think the list is not all that great, actually. You will notice that most of the countries at the bottom of the list are countries where women are 2nd class citizens, the police are corrupt, speaking out against men is shameful, or some combination of this. Rape is an underreported crime everywhere, but if the police were going to rape me if I yelled "rape", then I would probably not report it.
Yes, I said rape twice. I like rape.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
ERSB ratings isn't a safe lock for younger people. They still be able to (and will, for sure) play this sick game.
With that in mind, put your daughter on elementary school with this game being the FOTM game within the boys. "Yeah! raping young girls on the bathroom is teh shit!!" Then you tell me how's that working out for you and your daughter.
More on topic though, it should be noted in Japan, 'rape' is considered a popular fetish (in fact I'd argue *most* hentai/doujinshi depict rape scenes), underaged school girls feature in the majority of them too, and lolicon (pre-pubescant girls) are fairly prevelant in hentai/doujinshi as well.
In my experience almost all Japanese pornography, live action or animated, has some rape element to it. At the very least the woman is unwilling, at least at first. It ranges from that right up to plain old rape or even violent rape, by tentacle or otherwise. Totally consentual (sp?) sex is rarely depicted.
I can't get off on that stuff, women screaming "no, stop, you sick fuck!" is not my idea of erotic...but outlawing it is pointless.
They're banning Japanese rape simulators? Well, there goes Japan's economy...
I have written over 900 book reviews
Hear Hear. I too am disgusted everytime I see all the support on Slashdot for war mongering games such as the murder-simulator "World of Warcraft". I hear that millions of people are trained to carry out acts of unspeakable evil, and Slashdot seems to love it. Are there honestly no limits in what society must condone?
Damnit, I was just working out how long a RapeRacer skin of TuxRacer would take.
Incidentally the odd thing about this is that controversy works. You could build the skin, knock a website and make a profit on the ads alone. Then again, bad taste stuff like this would probably get pulled from the Google index and the ad providers would probably blacklist you once someone complained.
Hmm maybe controversy doesn't work. Or maybe you need to be more subtle about how you troll people. There are loads of tech columns that get traffic because they are trolling. In a sense it reminds me of the Malcolm McLaren line about 'cash from chaos'.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
A lot of games are essentially telling stories. Rape can play a role in stories (not even necessarily as an action by the main character) and I think that prohibiting the depiction of rape in all circumstances would be a stifling thing. Suppose you would want to base a game on say early Roman history? You couldn't do that anymore, for no good reason, and that is a shame. Just look at literature in general, it's full of rape and other bad stuff, and it is often exactly the bad stuff that makes the story interesting, either because you're forced to imagine what it would be like if people are put into extraordinary circumstances, or because it's the quest for justice or retribution that gets the story going, or because it raises interesting questions about human nature, and so on and so forth.
It was a good game. Challenging, but that's how I like it. I look forward to the sequel, I hope it doesn't get "dumbed down" like what happened to the original Ghost Recon series. I think people were having trouble when using gamepads. I used the mouse + keyboard, my only complaint is that maximum mouse sensitivity still wasn't quite as sensitive as I would have liked it.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Digital Rights Management is a form of economic rape.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Wait. Uh, wait, hold on. If they are so worried about CHILD PORN, why are they banning RAPE IN VIDEO GAMES and not that?!
Metal Gear series - Entirely about sneaking and killing.
Also any game where a sniper rifle is used, including:
Ghost Recon (especially the original) - Most missions require lots of sneaking and killing.
Crysis - A major part of the game strategy is using the suit's Cloak mode to sneak around like The Predator, picking people off with silenced rifles and then watching the enemies around them freak out as people standing near them mysteriously die. You can also get close and quickly switch to strength mode and kill them with your nanosuited hands. You could even try throwing them at another enemy for a twofer!
Mirror's Edge - occasionally you'll get the opportunity to sneak up on an enemy (usually a police officer) and kill them (or at least knock them out, the depiction is ambiguous) with your bare hands.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
That's a bit of a ridiculous comparison...
NAMBLA rapes kids.
No kids are raped by this video game.
And yes, there are no limits to SPEECH--with the exception of speech acts that can somehow seemingly cause imminent harm, the classic example being yelling "FIRE!" in a crowded movie theater. No one is being harmed by this game. You don't have to agree with it, but then again, you don't have to listen to/watch/play it either.
Maxim: People cannot follow directions.
Increases in truth directly with the length of time spent explaining them
That's South Koreans, idiot.
Apparently not a lot of people here know Jap culture. Besides what should be obvious by now, that most of East Asia sees sex in a different way than us western people, Japan in particular likes to do what it wants. And it aint going to change because some US legislator said that it has to. They will probably do some arm waving, pretend to be horrified at their fellow citizens' antics , wait about 5 minutes, and then go back to normal.
They have been doing things this way for thousands of years. Good luck trying to change that.
... scenes involving tentacles?
You can censor all you like, but you can't change human nature.
I'll try to keep it short, and to the point. Just like you have a weird sexual fetish (admit it, everyone has at least one fetish that they wouldn't feel comfortable telling someone about), the weirdos that get off to the idea of raping a 12 year old and forcing her to have an abortion do too, and neither one of you would have ended up NOT having that fetish had some obscure piece of porn never crossed your impressionable young minds. It just doesn't work that way. BUT, just like most people can quite successfully manage to suppress acting out on a fetish in an inappropriate moment, so can most weirdos. Because, they're one and the same.
Banning anime porn is like newspeak. Just because you remove a word from the language doesn't mean you can remove the human feeling that created the word in the first place. If anything, banning freaky anime porn of a violent nature seems to take away from the number of things a weirdo could use to let off some steam. It's a necessary evil.
Mind you, I think the game in question is sick. Not only could I never get off to such a thing, but I would probably feel rather ill over the whole concept. But I will still defend the game as a necessary evil that probably does more good than evil. Don't send the weirdo underground, where his best chance at getting off to something would be real kiddy porn of a seriously heinous nature, rather than a really sick cartoon that someone drew with a tablet and PC. I'd prefer to have my children live in a world where there's some weird stuff for sale, rather than a world where everyone acts like they're all normal, but just wait until the doors close and no one's watching.
The game is 3 years old and near the end of it's shelf life. It was under radar and unknown until US new media or politician got the wind of it. They sure made the game a lot more popular than the publisher could have ever done.
1) Stop imposing your culture onto others. What is sick for you is not so sick to others. "Think of the children" bullshit is used to screw the public nearly ALL THE TIME. Lets completely ban any use of this tactic; the losses from banning it are acceptable. (hey, the stuff happens regardless. )
2) Puberty is when nature indicates is the starting age. Sure, nature isn't perfect; for some reason some defective males don't get the indicators but have managed to spread their genes because they don't exclusively prey on children. The foolish females who can't wait and start immediately deserve the medical complications; instead western society shields and saves them and the fools don't get removed from the gene pool... Nature is nature and we are still having a losing war with it.
3) Possession is not a crime most of the time and shouldn't be. If anything, monitoring this stuff provides a indicator of who to watch for real-world criminal activity--- forcing it underground only makes it hard to find the ones who act out instead of just fantasize. Privacy is fine too-- but if you are charged with something then it should be admissible.
4) My theory is that the underage thing is a power trip just like rape fantasy is. Make men more secure and I bet the numbers go down. Plus you have a society where women were like servants and as they transition to have more liberated women there will likely be an increase in this stuff to fill a transitional void.
5) MOST the sick fucks are friends and family-- those ARE truly unnatural (well at least genetically unhealthy.) People worry about this stuff as if it causes the problem; its been a problem FOREVER and its largely incestuous sickos. If we finally could handle the TRUTH that the world is over populated by about 2/3 and did something like sterilize all males at birth and required a LICENSE to have kids (being sterile means a doctor will have to get the sperm.) Then we simply don't give out licenses for incest-- that will go down eventually (not stop because there are other motivations involved.) You could also set age limits for your society, which would also eventually impact the gene pool. Might not be positive in some ways-- but hey, the stupid people are breeding like mad and we didn't evolve to where we are with the trend we have today.
6) Is this a THOUGHT crime? What about the principles of Free Speech? Even just Motive is not enough-- one has to commit the crime and have some sort of motive. If somebody draws their own images is that a thought crime? or is just sharing it a crime?
7) Rating Groups: no better than government rating systems if not worse in that they will bend rules for marketing purposes etc. How about rating the stuff that is banned? Do we want things out there that are UNRATED and sick as legally possible?? I'd personally like a warning label because even at my age there is stuff I just don't want to see; I can't wipe my own memory. Can't the UN help come up with some rating system so we can import stuff and understand the rating? (or at least translate the rating to a local one instead of just making all imports "unrated"?)
8) I'm honestly confused why cartoon (including 3D graphics) sex interests anybody at all. Seems like these people must have good enough imaginations they shouldn't need anything to look at.
I'm posting anonymously because people are too skeptical.
Truthfully, a parent has not "failed" because they let a kid play a game like GTA. Rather, they only failed if they didn't accompany it with some explanation....
I've actually let my 7 year old play GTA on my PS3, but I made it clear it's a game where you play a "very bad person" and it's a story about people doing things you're not supposed to do in real life. She played a little bit, had fun driving the cars around and so forth, and basically got bored with it after a few minutes. So now? It's not some big "taboo" thing anymore to her. It's just another one of those games for "older people", and she's not that interested in playing some bad guy doing bad stuff.....
Sure, I believe there are things best kept away from kids until they're old enough to really understand and deal with the topics they present. But it's the job of a parent to make those judgment calls for themselves. Sometimes, maybe they're wrong ... but overall, who else knows a kid better than their own mom or dad? I'd argue that trying to simply lock up some video game like GTA to prevent a kid from ever playing it is parental laziness. You can't prevent your kid from ever seeing or playing the game at somebody else's house, some day..... You may as well confront the thing head on.
I dunno about most hentai, but *I* wouldn't stop that tentacle monster if it came for me. But i guess most japanese schoolgirls arent like this. I'm also not japanese.
I've never EVER understood this about the Japanese. Could someone explain how their culture allows such things?
...PT Barnum is proved right: there IS no such thing as bad publicity.
Anyone want to guess what became the most downloaded/torrented game this morning?
Deviant fringe sex behavior (whacking to images of CGI girls being raped) -even though it actually directly harms nobody- is abhorrent, sure. But I'm uncomfortable with the idea of banning it because then you have the difficult question about consensus and control: at what point does societal consensus kick in, and if enough of us agree, we can force our behavior preferences on someone? Is 99% cultural agreement required, or only 90%? 80%? 52%?
There are some communities where I bet I could find 95%+ agreement that homosexuality in general should be banned in PRECISELY the same context. Do those 95% get to tell the other 5% what to do?
Of course the alternative is equally problematic: does this mean that anything that doesn't ACTUALLY hurt someone is ALLOWED....? Are we really asserting that a given cultural group is not morally allowed to assert any sort sort of cogent preferences? Are we saying that "culture" as a concept is indefensible in the enlightened postmodern era? To restate in reverse the last question from the previous paragraph, how small a minority is ethically entitled to their own 'way'? Can a single family or couple insist that they be allowed to do what they want contrary to the will of the ENTIRE rest of the community?
-Styopa
If you look at current gaming scene you can easily see that murder simulators are commonly accepted but rape simulators are shunned. If one would combine murder simulator with rape simulator you would get something much more acceptable than a pure rape simulator, right?
http://www.somethingawful.com/d/hentai-game-reviews/rapelay.php
we shouldn't allow portrayal of it in any form of entertainment.
No books
No movies
No comics
No video games
No television shows
It's much worse than murder.
Or perhaps we shouldn't have them either.
Or if we portray it, the bad guy must never get away with it, always suffer the consequences.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
The US is way ahead here. In Japan, it's just CGI. In the US, we have the real thing:
Rent House Slave Cherry Torn by the minute on June 9th
For just 2.98 kinks* per minute you can rent our lovely little appetizer as your online slave, and make her obey your every command. Cherry will be chained to Peter's bed for your use and has been instructed by Lead Trainer James Mogul to follow your orders -- explicitly. A veritable cornucopia of pleasure devices and implements of torment will be at your disposal so you can make her fuck, humiliate and please herself however you desire. Be sure to take full advantage of this rare chance to direct and dominate a willing sub!
Even for San Francisco, this is pushing it. "Kink.com" has gone way beyond BDSM to become the "Fear Factor" of porno. Their stuff makes RapeLay, etc. look tame. They've become more and more extreme over the last few years, and even the SF kinky community is getting worried.
okay, what does this say about my top-secret endeavor of the production of rap(e)able robots? am i sent to destroy society and the ultimate thread to decent part of the mankind?
Of course, many hentai companies don't *want* to sell games to Westerners (some have been very anti-export precisely because they were trying to prevent this sort of mess.)
Still, publicity that boosts piracy - or worse, boosts SALES of pirated copies, since there are places selling the download burned to a cheap disc with a broken fan-made patch applied - is not exactly helping them. And since many companies are having to alter or cancel products in development because of this mess? This was definitely bad publicity.
I've gotcher 'Women In Gaming' RIGHT HERE!
The important thing is that things like this generate good discussions even though a real agreement can never be drawn. Human societies and behavior is constantly in contradiction because we are not logical. Without logical basis that everyone agrees on, the game's effects on adults, children, society in general and comparisons with other games currently in place doesn't matter. The best thing to do is choose for yourself to stay away from it or not and suggest to those you care about to do the same.
Obviously this will protect familys the world around. Remember, the further into the closet you can push such issues, the less likely it will be that someone will do behave that way! I mean if we can just hide the fact that rape is possible, people won't realise it. And we make it a taboo thing, that will help. Remember, in America we focus on our familys, and ensure delicate children aren't shown this filth, or depicted in it! And remember, pretending there isn't a problem and hating ourself for it has a great track record! Ted Haggard told me so. (2) Oh crap... well.. reality is here to crap on my parade again. I hate when that happens. The United States has the world's highest rape rate of the countries that publish such statistics. And before you shout the population difference, I'm saying per person, not total rapes. The US is about 18 times higher than Japan. In 100,000 women, 33 will be raped in America, with that same 100,000 less then 2 would be raped in Japan. (1) Tagging "Save the Children" on to your reasons to want to ban something which offends you makes you a horrible person. Grow up and realise everyones got some odd fetish, desire, or drive. Dealing with it responsibly, rather then letting it fester, is a sign of a mature person. I'd rather someone masterbate to drawings and games, regardless if it's a rape fetish or child fetish, then try to act out such desires. show your work: (1) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_statistics#UN_Statistics (statistics can't prove anything of course, however, they do cast doubt on banning crap helping) (2) google: "anti-gay preacher male prostitute" for several results, Ted Haggard was just the most well known case, there are many more
Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart, he dreams himself your master.
Who besides you is talking about condoning? There is a not so fine line between "not condoning" and "making impossible to obtain legally".
You can object all you want but you can't forbid everything you object to. The line is drawn where people are actually, tangibly, physically hurt, not offended. If you don't like it, don't use it, and tell people who do that you want nothing to do with them.
Basically, there's three levels.
Seriously, when did it get so in vogue to prohibit everything you find offensive?
In other news, child prostitution continues to flourish in many Asian and 3rd world countries.
-- Boycott Shell
The title says it all. Actually didn't some woman disappear a guys online account after they broke up, then he sued her? So in fact virtual crime has precedence.
whether this is a symptom or a cause or both
If you want to make it illegal, you're going to show evidence that it needs to be
No you don't.
You can simply say that this is something we don't need or want to become anchored in our culture
That makes it a value judgment, a political decision.
The limits of permissible speech - "free speech" - in the U.S. - and every other jurisdiction - has changed over the years - and will change again.
So in this case I'm torn...
That's what she said.
seriously, you don't really understand that many women, do you?
Being raped is the undisputed number one female fantasy in the world.
Get a clue.
but you gotta wonder too at how all J-porn involves submissive women and has strong 'rape' overtones.
There's something definitely going on with the male dominance - female submission theme.