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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."
Damn, the torrenting of this game is gonna skyrocket after the article. Teh forbidden fruit in action.
Since when has Slashdot trumpeted fascism? Now we're cheering outlawing things because they're offensive?
wellbeing of fictional 12-year-old? who cares!
rape game is disturbing, but hardly hurting anyone.
-- Technology for the sake of technology is as pathetic as eschewing technology because it's technology.
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.
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.
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.
Uh? Its legal by default, until we make it illegal. If you want to make it illegal, you're going to show evidence that it needs to be. As sick as it is, there's no evidence that its hurting anyone.
Depressing as this may sound, I'm inclined to suspect that such a game would succeed on this side of the pacific. Ditto just about any country. The only real reason you don't see such things is that the public outcry they would raise and the mob behaviour that would in turn be incited would burn them clean out of existence in no time flat.
"Demand for perverse behaviour" isn't a Japanese thing, it's a human one.
You might be wiser to ask why there is no such backlash in Japan, but then I could point out TFA as an example of backlash in action. Perhaps it simply took longer, or perhaps the threshold for such an outcry was set higher. Cultures vary, but the basic response when enough people are sufficiently outraged is universal.
Erotic is when you use a feather. Exotic is when you use the whole chicken.
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!
This is something I've never understood. Why is it OK for a PG-13 type game to have the player mowing down hundreds of realistic-looking human enemies with an automatic rifle, but the moment there's any sexual content whatsoever the game is banned and there's a moral panic? Take the Hot Coffee GTA mod for example, the game is all about killing people and blowing shit up, and then there's an outcry over a scene where adults have consensual relations?
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? 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.
Rampant carbon sequestration destroyed the Dinosaurs' tropical paradise. I'm here to help repair the damage.
Length or magnitude of UID# does not correlate with either age, intelligence or maturity, only length of time since the registration on /.
...the future crusty old bastards are already drinking the Kool-Aid.
Why is there such huge demand for this perverse behavior in Japan?
Hmmm. Japan doesn't have a monopoly on perversity. American Idol, Australian Idol, Britain's Got Talent come to mind. Capitalising on humiliation and misery is arguably a form of rape, and I've only scratched the surface with what I know of those shows...
Which would you pick, Slashdot - a (creepy) guy getting his rocks off to a simulation, or the real thing? Ban the simulation out of existence, then tell me what's left.
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.
I'd go a step further and say both arguments are utter BS. They're both grounded in the same untested premise - that people are largely unable to tell fantasy from reality.
If a person is going to commit rape, offering them the alternative of a game that simulates it isn't going to stop them. This argument seems to boil down to the idea that the culprit can get what he wants from pixels, which is a bit like assuming that your average serial killer will be content with GTA.
Conversely, assuming that the game will make a creepy, but otherwise harmless man into a rapist, is equal crap. It assumes a level of mental malleability that adults generally don't have. People don't undergo radical changes in personality and ethics simply because of some piece of media they've taken to.
Humans are generally given far less credit than is due when it comes to their capacity to make their own decisions. If people were changed so drastically by what they consumed for entertainment, the world would be a far, far bleaker place.
That being said, I'd say "rape simulator" rates right up there with "torture for dummies" as something that really doesn't need to exist. On the other hand, I'm loath to suggest censorship in even such an extreme case - I'm of the opinion that the act of censorship is generally worse than the thing being censored. So in this case I'm torn...
Erotic is when you use a feather. Exotic is when you use the whole chicken.
Wouldn't that argument also apply to banning Grand Theft Auto and other violent video games (and movies for that matter)?
And what's the reason behind this, now? The ban on child porn is, rightfully so, assumed to protect the kids that are used in the material.
If we disconnect rape from the consumption of media, which is a good idea IMO, and there is no victim in drawn childporn... what reason remains to ban it?
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
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.
I disagree. What is considered "rape" can vary greatly by culture and legal definition. A report that came out not too long ago concluded that Sweden was the rape capital of Europe and had 4 times as many rapes as neighboring Denmark and Finland. As the article I linked pointed out, "In Swedish rape law, the word [rape] can be used for acts called assault or bodily harm in other countries." For example, the German word Vergewaltigung basically only means physical force being used to achieve intercourse, much different from the American definition which can include alcohol, etc. Therefore I think it is advised that you take these numbers with a large grain of salt, especially given that the Japanese definitely have their own problems with unwanted sexual advances, like having women-only railcars to cut down on groping. The statistics on Nation Master also show that Canada has more than twice as many rapes per capital than the US, which causes me to be suspicious of the whole thing in the first place.
In reference to people being horrified by rape more than murder/killing, as I pointed out last time there is NOTHING a women could do to justify someone raping her. Killing is generally sugar-coated in video games to include some kind of necessity for the killing. Even in Manhunt you're basically being forced to kill to win your freedom and you're already desensitized to killing in video games in the first place since you're used to war games, where you have to take out the enemy before they take you out, so the idea of killing someone in a game doesn't seem all too foreign. There's no such thing as "justifiable rape", thus it's important not to confuse societal hang-ups about sex (which are often silly and misguided) with disgust at rape (which is there for a good reason).
I think pretending we don't have these fantasies is unhealthy, and someone repressing their sexual feelings probably contributes to an inability to channel their more violent desires into harmless channels. If the thought of raping a schoolgirl turns you on - buy your wife a uniform and play together. More likely than not (55% chance) she's into the same thing.
IMHO: Fantasizing about rape is no more likely to make you a rapist, than reading SF novels will make you an astronaut.
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.
Indeed. I can't count how often I've thought of strangling my boss. If it becomes a crime to even imagine having sex with a kid, then, logically, it would have to become a crime to have fantasies about killing your boss, too.
Then we'd have to get death penalty instated around the globe for we just cannot build all the prisons we'd need then.
An even more interresting question is: why is consensuel sex in a movie rated 18, while a murder is rated 13 or so. The "we don't want the kids to imitate" argument doesn't work here.
Opus: the Swiss army knife of audio codec
Who said anything about kids? What the hell are you talking about? Video games, except the educational ones, are not supposed to be teaching ANYTHING to the kids. If you, as a parent, allow your kid to play this, or even play GTA, you FAILED!
And about your hyperbole about dad's porn stash, yeah I found it, by the age 8, so what? Asked that what the heck was that, after all he TAUGHT me to ask those things to him, and just said: "This are dad's toy, and they shall be yours when you are 14.". And since he, again, TAUGHT me that that would be the truth, I waited, and it was enough.
And come on, haven't you heard about locks, keys? Unless you are raising your kid playing GTA, and teaching everything he needs to know about break into your drawer, you just lock this thing way.
If your whole argument is that, your children will find it and play. I can only conclude two things:
--- "When you gotta do something wrong. You gotta do it right. (Fighter)"
If you want to make it illegal, you're going to show evidence that it needs to be.
Evidence? We live in a democracy good sir, we have to think of the children! ;)
"Why are some crimes forbidden to simulate, but violence, shooting people, and murder are fine?"
Because violence against the right sort of people is delicious to Abrahamic religions. OTOH, strict control and rationing of sex via marriage is part of how they maintain social control.
The most useful subject of such religions is one whose sexual stress is expressed as violence towards the infidel.
Before modding this down, have some Taliban or Church of the Creator.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
So, we have impressionable kids playing games that teach that you MUST rape little girls to succeed.
There's a lot of stuff I wouldn't like impressionable kids to watch, but the solution for this is a good rating system, not censorship.
The idea of censorship is to protect "public moral standards" and the innocent souls of adults, at the expense of the freedom of speech. That's why it's wrong.
Those games are already clearly labeled as hardcore rape simulators. If you allow your kids to play those, then fuck you.
Your drugs/booze/guns example is bullshit. If your kids actually use any of those, the result is much worse than playing a rape simulator.
P.S.
Rape is a horrible thing, but murder is still worse. I have no idea why you think that simulating and glamorizing murder (among other felonies) is somehow better than simulating rape. In the end, it's all about the bizarre American obsession with sex.