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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.
Because oh no, those poor imaginary cartoon characters need judicial protection!
Won't someone think of the imaginary children?
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.
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.
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.
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."
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.
"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
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?
I'm normally not a fan of government getting their tentacles into everything but I suppose in this instance turnabout is fair play.
There are no karma whores, only moderation johns
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.
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.
Simply to arrest the people who want to view it as a preventative to keep them from acting out those fantasies.
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
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.
There're some things that Tux should just not be involved with... *shudder*
"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
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.
Hypocrisy isn't really all that funny.
A rape simulation is pornography, obviously.
Apart from that, your post seems to boil down to murder simulators being wholesome fun while rape simulators not being wholesome fun. You don't offer any evidence or reasoning to back this up, you simply assert it. Then you go on to make a mockery of free speech.
I find it funny, in a darkly cynical way, when people state how they're all for free speech, as long as said speech happens to be to their liking.
"I'll defend to the death your right to say whatever I happen to agree with."
The purpose of free speech is to let everyone have their say. Encouraging the speech you happen to agree with and censoring the rest is pretty much the antithesis of free speech; claiming to do this in the name of promoting free speech would make any politician proud.
It helps set a precedence where something can't be banned just because someone finds it disturbing. This, then, is something you can appeal to when Muslims want to ban criticizing Islam, Jews want to ban criticizing Israel, or your government wants to ban criticizing itself.
Basically, you either have free speech for everyone, including people who you find disturbing, or you don't have it for anyone. Choose one or the other; but don't delude yourself about what you've chosen and pretend to be an "attack dog" for free speech when you're trying to censor others. Either have balls to tolerate speech you find disgusting, or the spine to admit you're against free speech; but having neither makes you just plain pitiful.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
"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
Are you sure? Going after dealers only increases the risk, which increases the price , which increases the reward, which increases the violence.
The drug issue, as with child porn (and violent porn, and to some extent porn in general) is more complicated than anyone seems willing to admit.
You are welcome on my lawn.
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.
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.