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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."
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
Freudian slip? Never mind, I don't wanna know.
Table-ized A.I.
"Amusement parts"? I'm not sure where you're going with this one...
Rampant carbon sequestration destroyed the Dinosaurs' tropical paradise. I'm here to help repair the damage.
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.
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...
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?
Well, except for the 12 year old they used for "realistic motion capture". They didn't, but if they had (which is not really that far fetched for a Japanese game) would it still be "no big deal"?
No, of course not. It'd be a very big deal because someone was actually harmed. You don't prosecute the makers of horror movies on the chance that they may have tortured someone, especially not when you acknowledge that they didn't actually torture anyone.
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.
No, of course not. It'd be a very big deal because someone was actually harmed.
Prove it. I'm sure it's possible to find 12 year olds that are having sex. Offer them money to record motion capture info, and you're set.
But I still disagree with a game like this. I don't think it's safe to let people indulge in... certain fantasies. I couldn't give a crap about a game where you have sex - it's the age thing that worries me.
Do you even know what the term "false dichotomy" means? Because you sure as hell did not use it correctly here.
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!
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
Please show me a "soul-deadening" video game. Any one will do.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
"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?
Why would you need a 12-year-old? Find any consenting adult female who is willing to participate (hint: there are millions of them), and then remap the mocap onto whatever model you want. Just because they used mocap to create the visuals of Gollum in LotR, for instance, doesn't mean Andy Serkis had to be a several-hundred-year-old devolved halfling...
Rampant carbon sequestration destroyed the Dinosaurs' tropical paradise. I'm here to help repair the damage.
I wish I'd been there the day in debate class where they taught me how to make the argument that my opponent's position was "soul deadening," on the authority, no less, of "every mature, moral person." It seems like a pretty powerful argument, after all: anyone who would even attempt to dispute your position is then either immature or immoral, and in either case universally despised, which has to put a serious dent in his standing to argue his point with the likes of an ethical powerhouse of your eminence.
Indeed, your argument is so powerful that it shows us that Voltaire, previously thought to be one of the great ethical minds, is in fact a blubbering degenerate -- after all, his resolve to fight for free expression even for distasteful or outrageous opinions is by your argument tantamount to directly acting out the furthest slippery-slope consequences of those expressions.
Another thing I've learned from you just now is that abstract arguments do not apply to concrete situations. For instance, I may believe in freedom of religion in the abstract, but when a Muslim moves in next door all bets are off -- after all, there is now the concrete threat of my family being the victim of a "holy war," which trumps my ideals (and for that matter statistics) and tells me that I need to take action.
Truth be told, you're (perhaps unintentionally) basing your ethics around what makes you feel outraged or uncomfortable, rather than on ideals or on lucid consideration of how cause leads to effect. Forget the twentysomething videogame addicts -- even the core audience for Hannah Montana can tell you that right and wrong are universal and that you don't get to make exceptions based on your personal likes and dislikes.
I used to read Caltizzle. I was a lot cooler than you.
Which further proves my point that nobody would be harmed. :)
You are correct.
If people do have certain fantasies, ain't it better to give them way to realize them in virtual world? Just like people who cannot be achiever in real life drown in MMOs, have would-be rapists drown in these games?
Even better: Ownership of these games can be used to identify dangerous people. Sure, they can have them, they are not hurting anyone. But as long as police/whoever knows they own those games, well ... would-be rapist will know he is gonna be first one to be investigated should something happen.
It is about transparency. You can either have people to suppress their urges, building up pressure until they do something harmful or you can let em be more open about them and keep eye on then on side just in case.
-- Technology for the sake of technology is as pathetic as eschewing technology because it's technology.
Actually there is a correlation, the question is how strong it is.
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);
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?
Most of them do... the outrage starts whenever they're LABELED as such. Then the evil "Harr, harr, I'm gunna rape me some kiddiez"-pedos out there fall all over themselves to get their hands on the real thing... or so we've been told.
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
To have a "game" promote this as an achievement is disturbing.
[...]
Promoting such acts should be banned, and anyone who actually performs such an act should be castrated/killed.
Promote? You do realise that there is no evidence that sexual violence in games promotes sexually violent behaviour? I'm not aware of any scientific study into games, but studies into sexually violent pornography have generally found no correlation between exposure and instances of rape.
And as to castration or death being a reasonable punishment for rape, well I'm just kind of glad we don't live in that sort of society any more. Would you cut off peoples' hands for stealing, too?
Don't all Japanese female cartoon/video game characters look like 12 year olds?
Yeah, but the marketing material/manual will tell you they're 18.
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!
Prove it.
No. You prove otherwise. That is how the legal system works in civilized countries: we don't presume guilt.
A rape game is disturbing, but hey, maybe having a rape game available can help prevent a few rapes here or there. Besides, what about tentacle porn? Think of the tentacles!
Proudly posting without RTFA.
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.
You might be able to get away with using a male intern for motion capture as well.
Proudly posting without RTFA.
Prove it. I'm sure it's possible to find 12 year olds that are having sex. Offer them money to record motion capture info, and you're set.
If it isn't harmful, there's no reason to ban it. However, I think most people would disagree with you and say that recording 12-year-olds having sex almost always involves harming them in some way.
I don't think it's safe to let people indulge in... certain fantasies. I couldn't give a crap about a game where you have sex - it's the age thing that worries me.
I don't think it's safe to put any person or group of people in charge of deciding which fantasies are permissible. Your worries are not a sufficient reason to constrain the rights of others. Focus on actual abuse instead, not just things that remind you of abuse.
http://www.amazon.com/Daikatana-Pc/dp/B00001ZT47
I don't think it's safe to let people indulge in... certain fantasies.
Thoughtcrime.
If we could monitor the thoughts of every citizen and punish anyone who thinks bad things (like harming others), would it be a good thing for society?
Is the act of playing a video game in the privacy of your home sufficiently far removed from the act of fantasizing within one's own mind to warrant being treated differently?
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!!!
This sounds too much like presumption of guilt to me. In a perfect world perhaps it would be reasonable, but this isn't a perfect world and if the police decide to pin a crime on someone because they know they play these types of games, that person is going to suffer unreasonable harassment.
Also, the very existence of this information and its ability to be used for these purposes means that your arguments are conflicting with each other: those who do have these types of fantasies and think there's even a remote chance they may act on them one day will avoid ever having any association with these types of products. Therefore, if playing these games does actually have any kind of effect on people's real life behaviour, those "on the border" who would benefit from having a safe, non-harmful outlet will deliberately avoid utilising that outlet.
In addition, the negative stigma that is obviously being attached to it ("you can have the game, but we're putting you on our watch list, you disgusting pervert") means people will avoid them. I think these things are only useful if they can de-stigmatise particular desires, to effect a shift in perception to one of understanding: "yes you can play these games, it's fine to have these fantasies, just be aware that doing it for real will make us all very upset".
Making people feel ashamed of themselves for their thoughts and primal urges seems counter-productive, to me.
Well, it might hurt your reputation if you go around telling everyone you got a high score...
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 term for the fallacy you describe is not false dichotomy, but assuming facts not in evidence, namely that child porn simulations decrease child rape.
A false dichotomy is when two choices are presented, and others are ignored. In this scenarios, there really are only two choice: ban or not ban. Those are both mutually exclusive and exhaustive.
Simply to arrest the people who want to view it as a preventative to keep them from acting out those fantasies.
NT
Penn Jillette speaks about Rape Lay
Who?
Forget thrust, drag, lift and weight. Airplanes fly because of money.
You forgot the [sarcasm] tag.
Mada mada dane.
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").
I'll just assume that you meant this ironically. If so, very funny, if not, consider "thoughtcrime" and "precrime" for some obvious drawbacks.
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.
Err, yes? And this differs from what I've said how exactly?
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").
If people do have certain fantasies, ain't it better to give them way to realize them in virtual world? Just like people who cannot be achiever in real life drown in MMOs, have would-be rapists drown in these games?
I'm going to bet it's more like smoking, or drugs. Once you get your first hit, and all those endorphins or other hormones go off, you want more!
Even better: Ownership of these games can be used to identify dangerous people. Sure, they can have them, they are not hurting anyone. But as long as police/whoever knows they own those games, well ... would-be rapist will know he is gonna be first one to be investigated should something happen.
If that isn't a privacy violation, strike me down right now please.
There're some things that Tux should just not be involved with... *shudder*
Prove it.
No. You prove otherwise. That is how the legal system works in civilized countries: we don't presume guilt.
You got confused by the double negative. I asked him for proof that someone might be hurt by the act of motion capturing sex.
You're saying that no proof is required. (not your intent)
I don't think it's safe to put any person or group of people in charge of deciding which fantasies are permissible.
Me neither. But we already have laws against the real act.
Your worries are not a sufficient reason to constrain the rights of others.
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.
Focus on actual abuse instead, not just things that remind you of abuse.
Things that depict abuse.
If we could monitor the thoughts of every citizen and punish anyone who thinks bad things (like harming others), would it be a good thing for society?
No. Too much power spread to too few. It would only work if the people or AI monitoring our thoughts could be programmed to not take advantage of it, which at the current time is 100% impossible.
Is the act of playing a video game in the privacy of your home sufficiently far removed from the act of fantasizing within one's own mind to warrant being treated differently?
You raise an interesting question, and one that I have not thought about previously, but I shall once I've slept on it. :)
I suppose since I play many online games, I view it as a more social thing by default.
NAMBLA is against the game unless the makers will make boy rape version.
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.
I'm not sure what you mean by "local library" but I'll concede to the lamprey example.
But you underestimate the porn industry as well as the random amateurs in the US.
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
A false dichotomy is when two choices are presented, and others are ignored. In this scenarios, there really are only two choice: ban or not ban. Those are both mutually exclusive and exhaustive.
jbacon gave the choice "Which would you pick, Slashdot - a (creepy) guy getting his rocks off to a simulation, or the real thing?". Unless we accept that some people must engage in rape, either by action or in simulation, that is indeed a false dichotomy. While you are looking at our possible actions, limited to ban or not ban, jbacon was considering the possibilities of a hypothetical (creepy) guy who does have more options than the two offered of "simulated rape" and rape.
http://marriedmansexlife.com/
Making people feel ashamed of themselves for their thoughts and primal urges seems counter-productive, to me.
It's useful for making people feel helpless and unable to cope with real life.
Cults and sects use it to brainwash people.
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).
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 right to fantasize, daydream, and drool over violating people and committing crimes? I'm pretty sure I missed that right when reading the constitution.
Wait, did you just admit wanting to ban thinking certain things? Not that I am surprised, but it is nice to see it in writing.
"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*
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).
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
The term for the fallacy you describe is not false dichotomy, but assuming facts not in evidence, namely that child porn simulations decrease child rape.
A false dichotomy is when two choices are presented, and others are ignored. In this scenarios, there really are only two choice: ban or not ban. Those are both mutually exclusive and exhaustive.
I think he got his wires crossed a little, but I think that the dichotomy he was talking about was that we must choose between virtual crimes, or real ones, with "neither" being the ignored option. Of course I disagree with him, but I see a False diochotomy in there.
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.
Don't give the politicians ideas! ;)
(Seriously: it is of course a valid argument to show the slippery slope. Though it's worrying, the number of times I've thought or argued "Well that's mad - if we're going to apply that logic, we should also apply it to that too, which would be stupid", only to see the stupid thing being done too - often on the argument of "The previous law set a precedent, so it's fine to do this too"...)
Citing one stupid law, justifies another?
Please come back when you have a justification for that law.
Also your statement depends on the country - in many countries it isn't, in the US it seems to keep bouncing status, and in many countries such as the UK where it is, the law only specifies realistic images. Firstly that wouldn't therefore set any precedent for non-realistic images in a computer game. Secondly, the only plausible valid argument is that child abuse is a widespread problem, so criminalising fake images is necessary to avoid telling real from fake - which doesn't apply to anything involving adults since they are consensual (claims of them not being consensual have never been supported by a single piece of evidence, and seem to be, much like "snuff films", an urban legend).
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;
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.
I suppose since I play many online games, I view it as a more social thing by default.
Interesting, I wonder if any of these rape games are multiplayer, and how that works out.
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
... scenes involving tentacles?
Duhhhhhhh. What?
Probably the same consequence of letting 12 year old boy play a first person shooter that involves killing people in bloody violence.
In other words, nothing for the vast majority.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
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.
...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
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.
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!
Oh I'm certainly NOT in favor of such a strategy (exactly because of the obvious problems you point out), but I wasn't being ironic. I think that really is the logic (faux-logic rather) behind the moral panic.
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.
In other news, child prostitution continues to flourish in many Asian and 3rd world countries.
-- Boycott Shell
Hmmm...maybe I was wrong...negative correlation?
Just kidding!
I made a (small, non-random) sample of age and UID a while back when this topic came up, and saw no correlation with age. I can't imagine a mechanism whereby UID would correlate with intelligence and if it doesn't correlate with age, why would it correlate with maturity?
See my chart here.
...the future crusty old bastards are already drinking the Kool-Aid.
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.
Your example of wanting to murder your boss doesn't get you off the hook. Normal people don't fantasize about murder OR rape.
Like you know. You may not have those fantasies, and only I know if I do, but neither of us knows what anybody else fantasizes about, unless they tell us. Only the Shadow knows.
That said, the murder-your-boss fantasy shows up in enough fiction and movies that I think "normal" people do have them, if you include those one standard deviation away as "normal."
i'd hit it so hard, if you pulled me out you'd be the king of britain [bash.org]
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.
You don't have to defend it. Just take live-and-let-live attitude. Different strokes for different folks, kind of thing.
i'd hit it so hard, if you pulled me out you'd be the king of britain [bash.org]
Me neither. But we already have laws against the real act.
So it's not safe, but let's do it anyway? No. The laws against the real act are all we need.
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 part you missed would be the 10th amendment. The Constitution is not an exhaustive list of rights.
Anyways, the point you're missing is that regardless of how insignificant and easily trumped you think the right to fantasize is, your "worries" are even more insignificant such that the very least of all rights ought to trump them.
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.