Nintendo Pulls Dead Or Alive Over Porn Fears In EU

cpu6502 writes "The new Nintendo 3DS game Dead or Alive: Dimensions is being pulled from EU member states Sweden, Denmark, and Norway. The distributor said an in-game photography mode allows players to look-up the dresses of 17-year-old Ayane, Koroke, and Kasumi — which could be considered 'child porn' by local police."

Comments

Norway isn't a member of the EU.

[Anonymous Coward]

Norway isn't a member of the EU.

Re:Norway isn't a member of the EU.

[netsharc]

EUR is the code for Euro, the money not the continent...

It's not being pedantic. I live in the EU, and I've never heard of EU being "the short code for EUrope" ever. And it's not "good enough", being a member of the EU means you have to follow laws agreed by the EU, and if Norway's not in the EU, and EU has this law against looking up digital skirts, and Norway doesn't, it means it won't be illegal in Norway...

Is that pedantic enough for you, Mr. Know It All?

Re:Norway isn't a member of the EU.

[mikael_j]

EU = European Union. It never means Europe.

EUR = Euro, currency, not a continent.

Re:Norway isn't a member of the EU.

[Carewolf]

And nudity isn't considered pornographic or even indecent in Denmark. Some parent groups are starting to act weird, and child pornography is banned in Denmark, but child pornography in Denmark does not mean under US legal-consent teenagers, it means tweens or younger.

Re:Norway isn't a member of the EU.

[netsharc]

And after reading the linked post, it's the 3 countries (one of which isn't even in the EU), but the title of this post makes it sound like the game is being pulled out of the entire EU.

Yeah... well done, Mr. Summary Writer. Fucking moron.

Re:Norway isn't a member of the EU.

[Anonymous Coward]

Hell, I walk around nude all day long. That's just how we Vikings roll!

Re:Norway isn't a member of the EU.

[PitaBred]

They're not parent groups. They're moral crusaders, out to inflict their narrow field of view (and likely shame of their own thoughts) on you.

Re:Norway isn't a member of the EU.

[DavidR1991]

I love the way you say you live in the EU under some kind of crappy assumption I don't. I live in Europe too, and I'm aware that EUR is also the Euro. What I was saying is that it's not unheard of for people to (wrongly) refer to Europe as EU or EUR as a form of 'country code', even though it refers to the European Union or the currency.

My mistake here is that I skimmed over where the summary said 'member state' and missed it. Clearly the summary was referring to the actual EU and not the country code. So the summary writer is a moron. My mistake.

Even if that is the case, you're still being a pedant because if you RTFA EU or not EU has squat to do with the issue - the article never mentions European Union or laws against up-skirts at all. What the articles and summary presumably meant to say is that these countries share common conservative outlook on this kind of content or something (because if it was an EU directive then all member states would presumably be effected)

Re:Norway isn't a member of the EU.

[DavidR1991]

I've corrected what I meant to the original post, but I'd just like to point out that under some (non official) variants of ISO 3166, EU is a region code for Europe. It is not as rare as you seem to think it is

Re:Norway isn't a member of the EU.

[arisvega]

EU is the short code for EUrope in some cases

In which cases?

Re:Norway isn't a member of the EU.

[mikael_j]

[...] (non official) variants of ISO 3166, [...]

Yeah, that kind of makes it not part of ISO 3166. The only ones I've seen use "EU" for all of Europe have been people who failed to understand the difference between the EU and Europe.

Re:Norway isn't a member of the EU.

[Anonymous Coward]

I honestly can't believe that these moral crusaders enjoy this stuff and feel bad about it. Though we are talking abut nut-cases so you could be right. I tend to think it probably makes them feel good that they are doing something "good". It doesn't really matter if it benefits anybody.

Re:Norway isn't a member of the EU.

[KingMotley]

EU was the short code for Europe before the European Union was formed. Many companies that had worldwide coverage broke down the regions into short codes, for example ours were: NA, SA, EU, and AP (North America, South America, Europe, Asia Pacific). Our DNS and AD servers and many other internal infrastructure systems still use these abbreviations.

Re:Norway isn't a member of the EU.

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought EU & other European nations had shipped all their wingnut Puritans to the USA long ago!!!

So, there are more of them? Too bad...they are a scourage...

Re:Norway isn't a member of the EU.

[Anonymous Coward]

By scientific definition childhood ends at the onset of puberty. Congrats to Denmark for having a basic understanding of science and applying it to their legal system. Are there different laws for adolescent porn or none at all?

Re:Norway isn't a member of the EU.

[Artifakt]

It's been a common abbreviation for the US Defense Dept. to use for decades. The use of EU shows up in EUCOM (European Command (NATO)). EUMC (European Military Comity) and others.

Re:Norway isn't a member of the EU.

[SirWinston]

You're failing to consider that many of us were alive LONG before the contemporary EU as a political entity existed. It was not at all uncommon to shorthand the world into obvious regions: NA=North America, SA=South America, EU=Europe, AP=Asia/Pacific, AF=Africa. Many multinationals, militaries, and of course geography classes did it as informal shorthand. I'm not saying it's correct & clear usage today, just that it can be the same as an oldtimer accidentally referring to Zimbabwe as Rhodesia or Czech Republic as Czechoslovakia. It doesn't mean they're ignorant, it's just a slip of the tongue (or keyboard).

Re:Norway isn't a member of the EU.

[Canazza]

Sweeden, Denmark and Norway... in Europe we tend to call that "Scandinavia".

The OP is talking out his arse.

Re:Norway isn't a member of the EU.

[SirWinston]

> they are a scourage...

So what do they scour? Genitals? Those douchebags...

Re:Norway isn't a member of the EU.

[Canazza]

yes, but when you say "EU Member States" you can ONLY be specifically talking about the European Union.
You don't say Canada is a Member State of America do you?

Re:Norway isn't a member of the EU.

[Kjella]

And it's not "good enough", being a member of the EU means you have to follow laws agreed by the EU, and if Norway's not in the EU, and EU has this law against looking up digital skirts, and Norway doesn't, it means it won't be illegal in Norway...

Unfortunately, on this point being part of the EEA is as good as being part of EU. We must pass all EU directives unless we veto them, and in the 17 years since we joined we never have. We refused to join EU in a referendum in 1994, but our politicians did the next best thing. By passing the EEA agreement we did not give any sovereignty since in theory all is decided by our parliament, but it's practically impossible to say no. So we're as good as a member, except we don't get to take part in any decision processes - we made ourselves an EU serfdom instead of an EU member.

Re:Norway isn't a member of the EU.

[KingMotley]

I wouldn't ever say "Member State" in any form to refer to anything, I just don't find that it is as precise a meaning as it should be. However, I would agree the summary is misleading, but that wasn't what my response was referring to. It was in direct response to the parent, which stated:

I live in the EU, and I've never heard of EU being "the short code for EUrope" ever.

In which case, I was clarifying that although he had never heard of EU being the short code for Europe, it is quite commonly used. Now EU is confusing, and more commonly used to refer to the European Union rather than the Europe region in general.

Re:Norway isn't a member of the EU.

[Anonymous Coward]

"It's a damn poor mind that can only think of one way to spell a word."--Andrew Jackson

*ahem* AC only added an extra a.

Re:Norway isn't a member of the EU.

[Mursk]

Often, in describing video game release dates for various regions, you will see JP, EU, US, AU, etc. In fact, for the very game this article discusses:

http://www.gamefaqs.com/3ds/997816-dead-or-alive-dimensions/data

It may not be "officially" correct, but it's certainly not unheard of.

Re:Norway isn't a member of the EU.

[Anonymous Coward]

I love the way you say you live in the EU under some kind of crappy assumption I don't. I live in Europe too

That response compounds the ambiguity. You can live in Europe without living in the EU (e.g. Serbia or Ukraine) and you can live in the EU without living in Europe (e.g. Cyprus or the Canary Islands) so responding to "I live in the EU" with "I live in Europe too" indicates confusion.

Re:Norway isn't a member of the EU.

[Duradin]

It's a medical condition. Spawning Induced Stupidity SYndrome.

Symptoms are irrationality, fear, and a belief that anything is justified in the name of their child.

Re:Norway isn't a member of the EU.

[hairyfeet]

Uhhhh who gives a fuck when the important thing is the CP witchhunt has gotten so bad a shot of a cartoon panty is considered CP which is beyond fucking ridiculous!

Ya know when the bullshit first started I actually supported SOME of it. Oh I didn't and still don't support the truly insane amounts of time they give someone who looks at a picture without actually touching a kid themselves (because I have a friend in the state crime lab who says more than 90% of those they bust are social retards who are about as much of a threat to kids as a bowl of marshmallows, most are afraid of or avoid interactions with ANYBODY and they are looking at the same old shit that has been floating around since USENET) but the idea of cops working together internationally to find the child rapists and hunt their sorry asses down? I was ALL for that!

But now we have literally reached the point of thoughtcrime, where it doesn't matter if any child was involved at all it is still treated as child rape! Just in the past few years we have seen a man given several years for writing his own thoughts onto paper which IIRC he was told to do by his shrink to help him work through it (thoughtcrime), a guy given several years for looking at Japanese hentai (thoughtcrime) and even one thrown in jail for looking at one of those crudely drawn Simpsons cartoons, even though legally the Simpson "kids" if they actually existed would be in their 30s!

That is why I urge everyone to stand up, not just here but IRL as well, when these laws are abused to create thoughtcrimes. Remember folks it is NEVER the "good guy" they use to take away our rights it is ALWAYS done by using scapegoats like "terrorists" and "perverts" and "racists" because those in power know too many fear standing up for those types, for fear of being labeled as supporting their views.

But just as my grandfather took a wall dropped on him by a Werewulf squad in WWII yet STILL stood up and said that the Illinois Nazis should have the right to march, because as he said "That is what makes us better than the system they are supporting as here ALL ideas have the right to be spoken of and discussed" so too must we stand up for those used to take away our liberties one thoughtcrime at a time. Remember the words of that wise pastor years ago: "First they came for" because those same laws stretched to cover pictures or words on a page can and WILL be abused to go after sites like wikileaks or maybe even yourself if you protest something the powerful want! Hell according to my friend at the crime lab the way the law is worded now someone could draw a stick figure and someone else write on top "nekked kid" and that would technically get you the same time as a real pic of a raped child! Does that make ANY sense to anyone here? How fucking scary can you get!

Re:Norway isn't a member of the EU.

[Anonymous Coward]

Incorrect. The age of consent is 15 in Denmark, yes, but the child pornography laws still includes all pornography featuring children under the age of 18.[1]

However, unlike Sweden, the child porn laws of Denmark does not ban drawings and 3D renderings... yet. (The law is up for revision this fall, and banning drawings is on the table.)

Incidentally, the primary group of people pushing for a ban on pornographic drawings of children are not parent groups... they're Save the Children Denmark, the same organization that aids the police and ISPs in blocking suspected child porn sites without a court order.

[1] Danish penal code 230 (creation) and 235 (distribution and posession): https://www.retsinformation.dk/Forms/R0710.aspx?id=130158 (in Danish; I know of no URL translator that handles https URLs.) More information: http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=da&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ikt-ret.dk%2Fpapers%2Fstrfl235.shtml (auto-translated to English.)

Re:Norway isn't a member of the EU.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep, you are so right, crap like this just re-affirms my view of how really stupid and sad the human racer is...

Re:Norway isn't a member of the EU.

[semi-extrinsic]

As a person living in Norway: yes, you are technically correct. However, we are a member of the European Economic Area, which is a bilateral agreement (the EEA also includes Lichtenstein and Iceland) between us and the EU. This means we have to implement all EU directives unless we _really_ don't want to (i.e. we veto them). It also means we get some benefits of being friends with the EU. The technicalities are really quite complicated.

So I guess that instead of this lengthy explanation, the OP was a bit sloppy. Or he was ignorant, which is also quite possible.

Re:Norway isn't a member of the EU.

[netsharc]

What I was saying is that it's not unheard of for people to (wrongly) refer to Europe as EU or EUR as a form of 'country code', even though it refers to the European Union or the currency.

No, that was not what you were saying. (Oh dear, now we've gotten into an "that's not what I/you said!" argument). At least if that was you were trying to say, you didn't articulate it very well at all.

And your third paragraph is also just gibberish.

Re:Norway isn't a member of the EU.

[semi-extrinsic]

... and in the 17 years since we joined we never have.

Actually, if you paid any attention to the news, you should know that we vetoed the (third) EU Post Directive about a month ago.

Re:Norway isn't a member of the EU.

[couchslug]

"Norway isn't a member of the EU."

Given the economic troubles of the "PIGS" countries, that decision looks better every day.

Kudos to Norway for not following the lemmings.

Re:Norway isn't a member of the EU.

[Quiet_Desperation]

You don't say Canada is a Member State of America do you?

We tried, but now Canada won't return our calls. I thought the dinner went well. Probably needed flowers as well.

Re:Norway isn't a member of the EU.

[Calydor]

So that's the same as saying Mexico and Canada are in the US because it's all America, right?

Re:Norway isn't a member of the EU.

[Kjella]

Actually, if you paid any attention to the news, you should know that we vetoed the (third) EU Post Directive about a month ago.

Actually, no we didn't. The national congress of AP voted against it meaning there's now a majority against the directive, but we've not formally exercised it yet. We're now in "deliberations" with EU regarding the situation. Here for example is an article where the opposition claims the government is unclear in if they will veto it - which they hardly would say if we already had done it. There is now a very strong possibility that we will, but I wouldn't bet on it. A lot of people said the same about the Data Storage Directive and that passed.

Re:Norway isn't a member of the EU.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Eu" yes. Never "EU". EU stands for European Union. There is no confusion whatsoever if the U is capitalized.

Re:Norway isn't a member of the EU.

[TapeCutter]

IIRC it was a Scandinavian country that insisted Donald Duck should wear trousers.

Re:Norway isn't a member of the EU.

[_133MHz]

For video games it is, they share the same region (because of the legacy NTSC TV standard).

Re:Norway isn't a member of the EU.

[TapeCutter]

Excellent post, I would just like to add one of my own observations...

Remember folks it is NEVER the "good guy" they use to take away our rights it is ALWAYS done by using scapegoats like "terrorists" and "perverts" and "racists" because those in power know too many fear standing up for those types, for fear of being labeled as supporting their views.

The proportion of peodophiles and perverts in high places is no different to the proportion found in a trailer park, it's in the interests of perverts in high places to dilute the meaning of the term "sex offender" and conduct witch hunts on other people. In both the halls of power and lanes of trailer parks, these people are often the most vocal advocates of prosecuting perverts, Mark Foley is a classic example of a lawmaker using these diversionary tactics, the Catholic preisthood is another well known example.

This is not to say real pedophiles, rapists, etc, should not be hunted down and receive harsh punishment, only that I am wary of anyone who in the words of the Bard, "protests too much".

Re:Norway isn't a member of the EU.

[TapeCutter]

Yep, I remeber when EU=Europe, I also have a globe from my childhood that has place names such as Rhodesia, Ceylon, USSR, etc. Sometimes it seems as if half the planet has been renamed since the last time I sat in a geography class.

Re:Norway isn't a member of the EU.

[Anonymous Coward]

It is still illegal, but I believe there is a difference between near-adult pornography which is illegal to manufacture and sell and child pornography which is illegal to even posses.

Re:Norway isn't a member of the EU.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Social conservatives keep demanding laws to regulate everyone because their usual tools of ostracism and shame are only effective within their own communities."

Re:Norway isn't a member of the EU.

[tjonnyc999]

Techno-Viking, is that you???

Re:Norway isn't a member of the EU.

[vegetasaiyajin]

And it's not "good enough", being a member of the EU means you have to follow laws agreed by the EU, and if Norway's not in the EU, and EU has this law against looking up digital skirts, and Norway doesn't, it means it won't be illegal in Norway...

Unfortunately, on this point being part of the EEA is as good as being part of EU. We must pass all EU directives unless we veto them, and in the 17 years since we joined we never have. We refused to join EU in a referendum in 1994, but our politicians did the next best thing. By passing the EEA agreement we did not give any sovereignty since in theory all is decided by our parliament, but it's practically impossible to say no. So we're as good as a member, except we don't get to take part in any decision processes - we made ourselves an EU serfdom instead of an EU member.

In addition to being an EU serfdom, you have to pay food at twice the price, because being EEA means you don't participate in the common EU market for agricultural products. This means your politicians can "protect" your monopolist food producers from competition from the rest of the EU. Next time, vote "yes".

Re:Norway isn't a member of the EU.

[Anonymous Coward]

But it does mean cartoons and other fictional works?

Re:Norway isn't a member of the EU.

[Joce640k]

EU is the short code for EUrope in some cases

Um, no. It's "European Union".

A country can be in geographical Europe but not in the European Union.

Re:Norway isn't a member of the EU.

[agge]

The company (Bergsala AB www.bergsala.se) that distribute all Nintendo games in Scandinavia is situated in Sweden.
After someone posted (https://www.flashback.org/sp30254653 link in Swedish) that he was thinking about trolling a resent legal ruling
that classify drawing of nude children as child pornography and see what the law say about DoA.
This post on a well known Swedish forum resulted in some media attention and that Nintendo chose to take the safe road and stop the sale of the game in Sweden
and because the storage and distribution point for Norway and Denmark is in Sweden they ain’t getting the game.

To clarify some things about the laws in Sweden.
Nudity isn't considered pornographic (except in sexual settings) and mostly mildly indecent.
It is legal to sell sex but not to buy.
The age of consent is 15 years.
The law about child pornography say that all nude images and images of people below 18 years of age is considered child pornography.
In reality are vacation pictures of nude children playing on a beach or things in the same category legal.
Most artistic images example "Virgin Killer album cover" artistic panting containing nude children.
Swedich police say that DoA is legal and when locking at the characters and judging their apparent maturity it don’t look like they are the age the game say and that makes is more legal (https://www.flashback.org/sp30421994 link in Swedish).


The big problem is that the law is written in a strange way and have never been tried except in a active court case about a professional manga translater (Simon Lundström)
that apparently had an number of pictures that some part of the court system thought was illegal and higher courts didn’t at present a request have been filed that the Swedish highest court looks at it.

Re:Norway isn't a member of the EU.

[RockDoctor]

Sweeden, Denmark and Norway... in Europe we tend to call that "Scandinavia".

Except that most people hearing "Scandanavia" would expect to find Finland and most likely Iceland in there too, and not a few would expect to find Greenland to be there for administrative reasons (It may be formally independent of Denmark, but their relationship is still deep and strong.)

The OP is talking out his arse.

Except for the minor detail that it is very important that Norway is not a member of the EU, particularly if you have to deal with an industry that literally spans the border between EU and non-EU (which I do). You may not like this degree of pedanticism, but the OP is correct. If the Norwegians were to decide that, in their bailiwick, everything that was formerly red should now be made green (traffic lights, electrical cables, tomatoes ...), then that is their country and their rules and the only comeback you've got apart from persuasion is invasion. If they were in the EU you might (NB : might ; subsidiarity may apply) have an alternative channel for forcing them back to at least the negotiating table. But they're not, so there is nothing you can try between persuasion and invasion.

Re:Norway isn't a member of the EU.

[BasilBrush]

Not being in the EU didn't save Iceland.

There are some economic difficulties from the inflexibility of being in the Eurozone. But that's not the same as the EU.

Re:Norway isn't a member of the EU.

[shutdown -p now]

They forgot to tell you that you're supposed to bite your shield and chop up people with an ax while walking around nude, not posting on Slashdot!

A Simple Fix

[DigitaLunatiC]

I don't think it would ruin the story for the developer to just bump the age by one year.

Re:A Simple Fix

[Anonymous Coward]

But the law in question, ie the swedish law here, does not bother about the STATED age. The only age that matters is how old they appear to be.

Re:A Simple Fix

[Anonymous Coward]

So, how old is this beauty?

o|--

Re:A Simple Fix

[Anonymous Coward]

Which is ambiguous to say the least. How can there possibly be a criteria for something like that since no matter where you draw the line, there will be plenty across it that "shouldn't" be there. I'm sure that's the main reason why they rather not enter the market rather then make random changes that may or maynot work and get into trouble.

Re:A Simple Fix

[mikael_j]

Actually it's not as simple as that.

If it's a real person who's over 18 but looks 12 it will still be legal.

If it's a real person who's 17 but looks 20, it will still be legal.

If it's a fictional character that is 50 but looks 12, it's illegal.

If it's a fictional character that is 18 according to the swedish version of the game but 17 according to every other version of the game then most likely it would be illegal as it would be clear that the age was changed simply to avoid the swedish legal system.

Of course, IANAL but I am swedish.

Re:A Simple Fix

[durrr]

The law in question fucked over a professional manga translator in sweden recently due to you know, tentacle porn or something.
To get the law tested some guys on the swedish anti-establishment forum of flashback(.org) planned to sue the swedish distributor for child pornography distribution once the game was out, which might've been what triggered this hesitation from nintento.

So sweden joins the club of countries where you can go to prison for being skilled with a pen.

Re:A Simple Fix

[Carewolf]

What difference would that make? The legal age for consent in Scandinavia is not 18. This story doesn't make any sense.

Re:A Simple Fix

[Anonymous Coward]

This is the fundamental flaw with all fictional-child-porn laws. They are not based on the principle of protecting people from mistreatment, but on the principle that people should not be allowed to imagine mistreating someone. This is literally a victimless crime.

And because there is no objective defense against the charges – you cannot produce a legal ID that confirms whether or not the subject was a certain age or not – it is impossible for a citizen to be certain he's complying. I think the character looks 20; somebody else thinks she looks 15. The distinction is 100% subjective. There's a principle in US law (and other countries' too I'm sure) that states that a person must be able to determine for themselves ahead of time whether what they are about to do is legal or not. Ignorance of the law is no excuse of course, but if you (or qualified legal counsel) read the law but still can't tell from it whether what you're thinking of doing will be legal or not... that's an invalid and unenforceable – and rather obviously unjust – law.

Re:A Simple Fix

[canajin56]

Most countries that have an age of consent that is less than 18 still consider it child pornography if it contains somebody under 18. That is, just because it's legal to fuck somebody who is 17 doesn't mean its legal to see them naked. I don't know if that's how it works in Scandinavia, but that's how it is in Canada. You can have sex with a 17 year old, but if you get them to webcam naked you're both going away for a long time. She'll probably get the worst of it because you just are in possession of child pornography, but SHE is manufacturing AND distributing it.

Re:A Simple Fix

[Opportunist]

You mean, like, how some old judge perceives it?

That's a bit like our law that defines porn as "something able to excite someone". So watch out for those pedo judges that get excited by pics of your daughter, you might be in for CP possession if he gets a boner from your pics.

Re:A Simple Fix

[hedwards]

I'm not sure whether that's more or less insane than the system in the US. You end up with these bondage cartoons where the characters are consenting to whatever it is because somehow that's better than if cartoons characters weren't consenting.

Plus those characters have to be over 18, rather than not obviously children because that would be child porn even though there's no way of determining it otherwise. I mean seriously, because it's really harmful to society to be ogling characters that could theoretically be mature looking and 16 years old. I get the problem when it's real people, but with cartoon characters I have no idea how one would know the difference.

Re:A Simple Fix

[Anonymous Coward]

But the law in question, ie the swedish law here, does not bother about the STATED age. The only age that matters is how old they appear to be.

Ask Julian Assange how perverse Swedish law is when you're not one of the politically-correct victim-of-white-male-aggression classes.

Re:A Simple Fix

[Opportunist]

IIRC they make a difference between being allowed to fuck someone and being allowed to take an "erotic" picture of someone. Yes, we're not talking about real people here, but the law doesn't make a difference here.

Which is odd if you ask me. Laws are supposed to protect someone from harm who cannot defend themselves. And I still refuse to consider the rights of fictional people.

Re:A Simple Fix

[Carewolf]

Don't know the swedish law, but here it is illegal to profit from pornography of people under 18, but the it is not child-pornography. Child pornography has particular harsh laws and only apply to pornography with actual children, not teenagers or young adults.

Re:A Simple Fix

[nospam007]

Let's hope the game doesn't allow them to drink, watch an R-rated movie, vote or pick up a firearm.
Also being minors, they can't be in the game for more than the allowed working hours for minors.
Perhaps somebody from Social Services should stand behind every player to be sure.

Re:A Simple Fix

[aliquis]

Pornography and having sex isn't the same thing.

The retarded thing is that child-pornographic FICTION is a crime.

Who gives a shit about drawings? Murder, violence and so on in fiction form isn't crimes.

Over reaction and 100% retarded.

Re:A Simple Fix

[durrr]

What about drawing children in the bondage cartoons? Oh that's terrible!
But if I write a book about a serial-child-murderer/rapist that's okay. Why?

Re:A Simple Fix

[tverbeek]

Fortunately US law does not define porn as "something able to excite someone". For one thing, it doesn't define "porn" at all. Second, the definition of "obscenity" (which might be what you're thinking of) is more complex than that. One part of the definition (known as the Miller Test) is that the material as a whole has to serve to excite someone, so the fact that the judge got a stiffy during the two-minute bedroom scene in Generic Romantic Comedy VIII doesn't cut it. Also, it has to depict the sex in a clearly offensive way. And finally, it has to have no redeeming literary/artistic/political/scientific value, which is a part of the test that even XXX-rated porn movies are able to pass.

Re:A Simple Fix

[elashish14]

It's true - just like Muslim extremists flip a shit over drawings of Muhammed, the Western world does likewise over images of child sexuality.

We're just as bad as them.

Re:A Simple Fix

[Carewolf]

It might be a crime in Sweden and in Australia, who got the stupid idea in the first place, but what does that have to do with countries that are not Australia or Sweden?

Re:A Simple Fix

[pipatron]

It works like that in Sweden too, and it is because of international agreements. The age of consent is 15, but you're pretty much not allowed to watch the act you're partaking in because now we have laws aginst actually watching child pornography too.

Re:A Simple Fix

[Anonymous Coward]

Evidently Westerners revere children who are being fuckied like Muslims revere the prophet Muhammed (pbuh).

Re:A Simple Fix

[Opportunist]

That's good and nice for the US law.

Our porn doesn't have to have any "values", it just must not be obscene, exploitative or contrary to society's values in terms of sexuality. The advantage is that you don't have to redefine your porn laws every time your society changes its values. The drawback is that it's kinda dependent on the judge to determine whether it's within the legal limit or not.

Re:A Simple Fix

[infolation]

This reminds me of the classic 'second life sucks' dialogue:

Chaotic Hermit: This avatar does not meet the requirements to be here
Chaotic Hermit: Change it or leave please
Chaotic Hermit: 1 minute to eject
Hunter Pearse: OK, I'm back. What exactly didn't meet the requirement?
Chaotic Hermit: Height
Hunter Pearse: ?!
Chaotic Hermit: 4 foot 9 minimum
Hunter Pearse: Are you kidding?
Chaotic Hermit: nope
Hunter Pearse: Why is that?
Chaotic Hermit: children are short
Chaotic Hermit: look it's a beach rule
Chaotic Hermit: comply or not
Hunter Pearse: My friend that is just weird
Hunter Pearse: Do I look like a child?
Chaotic Hermit: you need to follow the rules to stay
Chaotic Hermit: all of them
Hunter Pearse: I'll stay out of your beach
Chaotic Hermit: no you look stupid
Chaotic Hermit: But that's not the point
Hunter Pearse: Yes, I look stupid. I'm a fucking alien
Hunter Pearse: later
Chaotic Hermit: you can look how you want as long as your 4 foot 9
Hunter Pearse: "you're"

Re:A Simple Fix

[residieu]

So you can tell whether the a computer generated person looks 17 rather than 18?

Re:A Simple Fix

[Nutria]

But if I write a book about a serial-child-murderer/rapist that's okay. Why?

Is the book about murdering and raping children, or is it about solving the mystery of who the rapist-murderer is and how to catch him/her?

Re:A Simple Fix

[billcopc]

Well now, considering the first DoA game was released in 1996, these "children" should be well in their thirties by now ;)

Re:A Simple Fix

[mwvdlee]

So what you are basically saying is that OS's should include an "age_of_consent" variable into their locales so developers don't have to know and the games will automatically adjust to changing laws?

Re:A Simple Fix

[aliquis]

It's probably legal to see them naked but maybe not have them work as porn stars.

Re:A Simple Fix

[Anonymous Coward]

... and this is why we need to murder every motherfuckin' last christian conservative inbred politician in this once-flourishing country.

Re:A Simple Fix

[cheekyjohnson]

clearly offensive

That isn't much better at all as it's also subjective.

literary/artistic

And these, too.

Re:A Simple Fix

[davester666]

I think we're worse, because we believe we're more civilized and cultured than they are.

Re:A Simple Fix

[durrr]

He is hunted down and killed by being thrown into a woodchipper by a casual non-murdering vigilante pedophile who lost his favourite victim. The whole book could orbit around having sex with children and as long as it contains some plot coherency and whatnot it could be a controversial bestseller and still not induce the equivalent moral crisis that a more visual format would.
Try the same with a comic book and you're in hot water, animated movies and the water is boiling and don't even think about making it into a video game. The difference of course is acessibility, the shock value of reading a piece of text is much less than plastering static pictures and animated media with sound is still a step above that. So the ability of fox news to spin a shocker story of something more or less determines what is wrong in society.

Re:A Simple Fix

[amicusNYCL]

I think we're worse, because we believe we're more civilized and cultured than they are.

I would imagine they view themselves the same way. Anyone on any sort of moral crusade always thinks they're standing on the high ground. They might not choose the words "civilized" or "cultured" though, maybe something like "enlightened".

Re:A Simple Fix

[chocapix]

I'm pretty sure the Muslim extremists think they are the civilized ones.

Re:A Simple Fix

[howardd21]

It's true - just like Muslim extremists flip a shit over drawings of Muhammed, the Western world does likewise over images of child sexuality.

We're just as bad as them.

No, we're not. While it is offensive to some, drawing of Muhammad hurts nobody among civilized people; images of child sexuality feed the lusts of depraved individuals to the extent they are compelled to act, or think we are complicit with them in their abuse of children, Have at least half a brain, or half a heart or both for crying out loud.

Re:A Simple Fix

[metacell]

If it's a real person who's 17 but looks 20, it will still be legal.

Not quite. If the model's age is known, it's child porn if he/she is under 18. If the model's age is unknown, it's child porn if he/she looks under 18.

In practice, the law is used to lessen the burden of proof. The prosecutor just needs to prove the model looks under 18, and then it's up to the accused to find the model and prove he/she was over 18 at the time of photography.

(Yes, I'm Swedish too)

Re:A Simple Fix

[metacell]

What difference would that make? The legal age for consent in Scandinavia is not 18. This story doesn't make any sense.

It's Swedish law which doesn't make sense. The age of consent is 15 in Sweden, while depiction of persons under 18 is considered child porn. Additionally, if the model's age is unknown, the prosecutor only needs to prove he/she appears to be under 18.

Re:A Simple Fix

[Anonymous Coward]

images of child sexuality feed the lusts of depraved individuals to the extent they are compelled to act

[citation needed].

seriously.

can you give one real life case? a single example? a scientific study? can't?

so, put your half heart up in your half ass and stick your morals to yourself. hypocrite. you're not protecting children, you're just want to splash your false sense of morals from your bearded man in the sky into everybody. stop pretending that you are. or if you really believe the bullshit you're speaking have at least a half brain yourself, for crying out loud.

Re:A Simple Fix

[TheRaven64]

The law doesn't usually differentiate amateurs and professionals. This leads to interesting situations where two 17 year olds can legally have sex with each other, but if either of them takes a photograph of the other naked then they can both be convicted of creating child pornography - even if there's no intent to distribute the images.

Re:A Simple Fix

[TheRaven64]

images of child sexuality feed the lusts of depraved individuals to the extent they are compelled to act, or think we are complicit with them in their abuse of children

Do you have even one peer-reviewed citation for that? Your claim seems to have as much scientific backing as a claim that a drawing of Muhammad angers Allah and imperils the immortal soul of anyone who sees it.

Re:A Simple Fix

[DrBoumBoum]

Big news. As one of my teachers said once, the philosophy of 99% of the people on this planet can be accurately summarized in a few words: "Me good, you bad."

Re:A Simple Fix

[DrBoumBoum]

images of child sexuality feed the lusts of depraved individuals to the extent they are compelled to act

We did you get that bullshit from? You are totally deluded; in fact you are the wet dream of all the cynical politicians who rely on the gullible idiots for their election.

Re:A Simple Fix

[Anonymous Coward]

The game IS Japanese, remember. Making fictional characters a bit more in the "mature" side* probably would ruin sales in their home market.

*: You know, like those 18-year-old geezers nobody ever cares about in Japanese comics/cartoons.

Re:A Simple Fix

[MaskedSlacker]

Our porn doesn't have to have any "values", it just must not be obscene, exploitative or contrary to society's values in terms of sexuality

I'm assuming English is not your first language. There is a huge difference between having "value" (what your parent referred to) and having "values."

Example: Money has VALUE, not values. Porn can have literary/artistic value (and thus, not be considered legally obscene in the US) without having any values (though nihilist porn does seem rather niche).

it just must not be obscene, exploitative or contrary to society's values in terms of sexuality

The advantage is that you don't have to redefine your porn laws every time your society changes its values

I'm pretty sure you'd have to given your own statement that "it must not be contrary to society's values in terms of sexuality."

Re:A Simple Fix

[Anonymous Coward]

That is, just because it's legal to fuck somebody who is 17 doesn't mean its legal to see them naked.

I'm afraid this comment qualifies as CP. Please remain where you are citizen, a van will be arriving to pick you up shortly.

Re:A Simple Fix

[aliquis]

I'm not. I don't got an issue with either.

Re:A Simple Fix

[Anonymous Coward]

Right, he couldn't possibly be guilty by virtue of you agreeing with his political activities.

I mean, how could someone who has done good things also do bad things? That's unpossible!

Re:A Simple Fix

[couchslug]

We've not gotten to the "stabbing playwrights" stage quite yet.

Re:A Simple Fix

[aliquis]

... but I live in Sweden.

Re:A Simple Fix

[JamesTRexx]

Why even think of that? They're in that violent game to beat each other to death (or so the title implies)!
Isn't there a law against that? (but certain people think it's okay to show violence, not a natural feeling like sex)

Re:A Simple Fix

[Nutria]

The whole book could orbit around having sex with children and as long as it contains some plot coherency and whatnot it could be a controversial bestseller

I read a quote some time ago about a similar issue. Here's it's essence: It's ok to write a crime novel book about raping/murdering a 12yo; after all, that's a crime and it's a crime novel. It's not ok to write book after book after book about raping/murdering 12 year olds; that's when people start thinking you're worse than a pervert.

Re:A Simple Fix

[mochan_s]

I thought if it's Swedish, it's rape.

Re:A Simple Fix

[tibit]

So two under-18 teenagers are in a jurisdiction where them having sex together is OK, but them taking pics of each other for their own use in NOT OK. So you claim they are feeding "lusts of depraved individuals" by snapping and exchanging with each other naked pics of themselves? What tree did you fall from, again?

Re:A Simple Fix

[dbIII]

We had some merchants in the temple pretending to be a Christian "family" group in Australia pushing the line that any breast size under a D cup was child porn even if the performer was over 40 years old.
These sort of rules are an insane waste of time by any measure.

Re:A Simple Fix

[dbIII]

So, how old is this beauty? o|--

Only twelve! And it's amputee porn you sicko!

Re:A Simple Fix

[tjonnyc999]

So if I draw two stick figures having sex, and say they're 12, that would be illegal? Would they throw me in jail for drawing stick figures?

Re:A Simple Fix

[tjonnyc999]

Try going to any "literotica" site (ex. www.asstr.org) and doing a search for "Mg" or "ped" or any other "interesting" keywords. There's a whooooole universe out there that you haven't seen yet...

Re:A Simple Fix

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm pretty sure the laws in canada also depend on how old *you* are. It's something along the lines of "any 2 people between 16 and 23", but if either is over 23, the other must be 18. Don't quote those numbers, but there is a kind of sliding-rule for people just over 20.

A poll

[catmandue]

At what age do men stop looking up girls dresses? Does it really matter?

Re:A poll

[u17]

Speak for yourself, I want my grave to be made of glass so I can look up girls' dresses after I die.

Re:A poll

[hedwards]

Given that there are sites dedicated to those types of photos, I'm guessing never, or at least there's a sufficient that never stop to make it profitable.

Re:A poll

[Gaygirlie]

At what age do men stop looking up girls dresses? Does it really matter?

I'm not even male yet even I do that, too!

Re:A poll

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not even male yet...

Will you after you are?

Re:A poll

[The Grim Reefer2]

At what age do men stop looking up girls dresses? Does it really matter?

I'm not even male yet even I do that, too!

With the screen name, "Gaygirlie" should I find this surprising? ;-)

Re:A poll

[Anonymous Coward]

All the women willing to identify themselves on /. are either lesbian or tranny. :3

More like...

[DWMorse]

More like Dead on Arrival then?

Re:More like...

[Technician]

Barbie and Ken had better watch out. By the way, what age is Barbie anyway?

Re:More like...

[Anonymous Coward]

She's 52, born 9 March 1959. Total cougar. She likes it when the young guys try to look up her dress.

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Barbie

Re:More like...

[Anonymous Coward]

Barbie and Ken had better watch out. By the way, what age is Barbie anyway?

Barbie is an old bag, she had a young sister named skipper though..... Skeletor sure had a good time with her.

Re:More like...

[Anonymous Coward]

I was thinking a better headline would be "Dead Or Alive KO'd by Fatal Furry".

Re:More like...

[vegiVamp]

Fifty-something, iirc.

Re:More like...

[Anonymous Coward]

About 60. Brain bleach is that-a-way.

Higher Sales

[L473ncy]

This is probably going to lead to higher sales if anything. Since they can't have it they'll just buy it from elsewhere. To be honest if it's banned I'm pretty sure more of us would want to get our hands on it. It's kind of like the Streisand effect, if it's banned we want to check it out for ourselves.

Re:Higher Sales

[pipatron]

Actually, we have the pirate bay, so I'm sure we'll find it eventually.

Re:Higher Sales

[Ensign Morph]

I seriously hope you don't get your warez from tpb, the rate of malware infection is rather high - rising to a certainty for standalone crack torrents. You should at the very least be on a semi-private tracker like demonoid or you fail at piracy forever. (Yes, I know this is a 3DS rom, but still.)

Re:Higher Sales

[cheekyjohnson]

Well, you might get some malware if you're somewhat technologically inept, but if not, that probably won't happen. There are plenty of things you can do to prevent that from happening (reading comments, using a virus scanner, downloading from trusted sources, etc).

OH NOES!

[gilbert644]

How can us Scandinavians be smug about American prudishness now?!

Re:OH NOES!

[mikael_j]

This isn't about prudishness in the "ZOMG A BREAST!!1 THINK OF THE CHILDREN!! AAAAAAH!!!111one" sense.

This is about the usual child porn hysteria. Here in Sweden our politicians were chasing easy points with the public and pushed through various laws against child porn that basically made erotic drawings of someone who could be considered to be a child illegal. That is, it doesn't have to be a real person. In retrospective the only people who seem to like this law are the politicians.

Re:OH NOES!

[Carewolf]

I think someone confused Sweden and Scandinavia. Swedes are prudes, and have really weird laws. Denmark on the hand has legalized prostitution, and considers nudity acceptable most places, and sex in public legal as long as you "try" to be discrete.

Re:OH NOES!

[Krakadoom]

Easy, this is just the distributor being unreasonably worried - not the authorities actually requesting the game be pulled. Anyway hentai isn't even illegal in Denmark, so why should an upskirt shot of some animated broad be a problem?

Re:OH NOES!

[Securityemo]

Place the blame where it should be, in the lap of Beatrice Ask. Just read this interview. She's evidently in favor of thoughtcrime; literally, she says that "children and childhood mustn't be offended" when she's asked about why drawn "child pornography" should be illegal. She's also the one who came up with the crazy suggestion that people who visit prostitutes should have mails with brightly-colored envelopes sent home to them, so that they couldn't keep it a secret from their family (or anyone who saw the letter being delivered). Fortunately, this suggestion wasn't well received by anyone else AFAIK.

Re:OH NOES!

[mmcuh]

People who are suspected of visiting prostitutes, even.

Re:OH NOES!

[h4rr4r]

Since nothing stops you from buying your own brightly colored envelopes, you could have a lot of fun with that. Just mail all your bills, birthday cards, and similar in such envelopes.

Re:OH NOES!

[Anonymous Coward]

That's a good idea. Someone should mail them to her...maybe then she'd change her views on privacy.

Re:OH NOES!

[Jeff DeMaagd]

Which is making an accusation without proof. Cute. What happened that caused her to take this kind of position.

Re:OH NOES!

[hitmark]

All the mentioned nations have their own odd laws regarding porn and sexuality.

Speaking from a Norwegians perspective, we are allowed to own porn, but one can not sell it. End result is import from Sweden.

As for sex, the minimum age is 18, tho the judge can show leniency down to 16 if both parties are of similar level of development or something like that. I think the rule of thumb is a 5 years age difference, max.

What i think has happened here is that there is one distributor handling the whole region. And when a stink was raised in Sweden, they pulled it from everywhere rather then dealing with it on a nation by nation basis.

Re:OH NOES!

[rasmusbr]

Which is making an accusation without proof. Cute. What happened that caused her to take this kind of position.

It's not what happened, but rather what didn't happen. To my knowledge the woman hasn't taken a single course from the law school curriculum and she's obviously not sufficiently aware of the extent of her own ignorance. If she was she would have asked an adviser with the right competence who would have told her that it's an atrocious idea.

Re:OH NOES!

[arcade]

No. The age of consent in Norway is 16, not 18.

And it's down to 14, not 16.

Re:OH NOES!

[Kjella]

Eh, from all the things you got wrong I have to seriously wonder if you even live in Norway. Sale of hard pornography is legal and has been legal since 2005. The age of consent is 16, not 18 but any pictures or movies of people under 18 is considered child pornography. However, we also include drawings, stories and actors that "appear to be" under 18 in our definition, even if it is proven that all actors were in fact over 18. And yes, there are actual convictions to that effect.

As for actual sex, anyone can have sex as long as they are of equal age and mental capacity, so a 17 year old can legally have sex with a 15 year old. Or a 15 year old with a 13 year old for that matter, 15 being the minimum age of criminal responsibility. There's no strict rule about the age gap but it's smaller the younger they are, you might get away with 20 and 15 but clearly not 18 and 13 or 15 and 10. Apart from the ridiculous child porn definition a very sane country.

Re:OH NOES!

[hitmark]

heh, seems my lack of interest in news beyond tech is pulling a murphy on me. The pornography thing is mostly based on a supreme court decision, right? The actual law have not been changed, only the interpretation of it in court?

Re:OH NOES!

[Kjella]

Only based on a Supreme Court decision in fact. There were specific things outlawed like pornography with children, animals etc. but the general ban against pornography was based on an interpretation of what was "offensive" (støtende), "humiliating" (nedverdigende) or "objectifying" (forrående). Essentially the law was interpreted so that genitalia erect or in sexual activity were considered offensive.

Basically the Supreme Court said in a 5-0 decision it could not find that normal sexual activity between consenting adults was found offensive, humiliating or objectifying by the general public and so could not find them guilty by the letter of the law. That if the parliament wanted a law like that, they'd have to pass one that explicitly said so. Which they didn't, so in practice it changed while staying the same.

Re:OH NOES!

[lordholm]

Luckily it wasn't well received, however, this is not a unique idea. In the Netherlands the debt collection agency (which also collects fines) already send out very brightly coloured envelopes.

Re:OH NOES!

[hitmark]

Thanks. Goes to show that the details gets left out when one try to figure things out on ones own in the days before the net, and then do not bother to look up the details afterwards.

Re:OH NOES!

[metacell]

I agree with the previous speaker (about Beatrice Ask's lack of legal expertise) and would like to add that she made the statement when being lobbied by feminists.

Re:OH NOES!

[DrBoumBoum]

To my knowledge the woman hasn't taken a single intercourse

FTFY

Re:OH NOES!

[metacell]

I think someone confused Sweden and Scandinavia. Swedes are prudes, and have really weird laws.

As a Swede, I agree that Sweden has become a lot more sexually restrictive since the 1970's. But it's not really prudishness. We still encourage teenagers to learn about sex and provide them with free contraceptives. We still talk openly about sex on public TV. We're still topless on the beach. Women still breastfeed in public. And so on.

What's changed is that the feminist movement has gained a lot of political power, which is behind the legislation against prostitution and child pornography. Please note that it's illegal to *buy* the services of a prostitute in Sweden, but it's not illegal to solicit. The law tries to punish the buyer (who is most often a male) but not the seller (who is most often a female).

Re:OH NOES!

[metacell]

Still, it highlights the effects of the law - since nobody is sure what is illegal and what isn't, it has a chilling effect on business and entertainment.

Re:OH NOES!

[Anonymous Coward]

fuck that, mail it to that stupid bitch that suggested the idea

Re:OH NOES!

[Anonymous Coward]

And since she's got two kids, this makes her twice as impressive as the Virgin Mary.

Re:OH NOES!

[makomk]

It's not what happened, but rather what didn't happen. To my knowledge the woman hasn't taken a single course from the law school curriculum and she's obviously not sufficiently aware of the extent of her own ignorance.

Of course, anyone complaining about this violation of moral and legal principles must be a woman-hating rapist themselves, because that's the only reason that someone would complain about this idea. There's a reason I don't support feminism. (Actually, there's numerous reasons, most of them related, but that's one of them.)

Oh, and like all the really unjust feminist-proposed ideas, it was suggested safe in the knowledge that neither the person proposing it nor any other people she had any empathy for would be affected by it, because it was carefully aimed at men only.

Re:OH NOES!

[mmcuh]

As a swede myself I would really like to know which beaches you frequent.

Re:OH NOES!

[KDR_11k]

That's also why you don't see swastikas in games in Germany, they're legal under certain circumstances but nobody wants to take that risk.

Re:OH NOES!

[Anonymous Coward]

I think someone confused Sweden and Scandinavia. Swedes are prudes, and have really weird laws. Denmark on the hand has legalized prostitution, and considers nudity acceptable most places, and sex in public legal as long as you "try" to be discrete.

And Norway, in case anyone forgot, banned "The Life of Brian" for the longest time (which promptly led to it being marketed in Sweden as "the movie so funny it's banned in Norway".

Re:OH NOES!

[rasmusbr]

Well, that wasn't really what happened. The colored letter proposal was dismissed by most other politicians and in op-eds in the media. It was a terrible idea unless it's a fair deal to throw hundreds of years of legal thinking out the window, and have men subtly declared guilty by the attorney without trial, in order to perhaps reduce the amount of prostitution by a couple of percent.

I can imagine that there were more than a few feminists who thought that that would be a fair deal, but I don't think that all feminists agreed.

I'm tired of the poorly founded "feminism = evil" crud that's floating around these days. I'm tired of anecdotes. If you want me to jump on the anti-feminism bandwagon you need to show me data and statistics that support the idea that men are being oppressed.

Re:OH NOES!

[hitmark]

mea culpa.

Re:OH NOES!

[webserf256]

Thoughtcrime is already real. If you are convicted of looking at child porn then most states require regular polygraphs to see if you are thinking about sex with children.

Re:OH NOES!

[Anonymous Coward]

LOL - how? A US company just stopped us from getting the game for fears of being accused of something in our countries that really would not have been a problem. I'd say that's as prude as you get! (and also a clever publicity stunt, since DK, NO and SW are very small countries, but this news hit slashdot)

Re:OH NOES!

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm tired of the poorly founded "feminism = evil" crud that's floating around these days. I'm tired of anecdotes. If you want me to jump on the anti-feminism bandwagon you need to show me data and statistics that support the idea that men are being oppressed.

Is that a joke? Go find out what the divorce rates are in America. Go find out what percentage of those divorces are initiated by the female. Simply take a guess at which side more often gets custody of the children. Or how the wealth is divided in divorces initiated by the female.

Merely search for stories of rape accusations or think back to celebrities ho have come up in the news. The accuser remains anonymous while the accused's face and reputation is plastered all over the papers and television, imprinting lasting damage even if the accusations are later proven false. On that note, how often is the victim's word all that is necessary to put a man in jail for rape?

Domestic violence, family structure, the contradiction of sexual liberation versus the oppression of women it is also proof of, I could go on and on.

There is too much to dig up, so let me just point you here as a start.

Re:OH NOES!

[tjonnyc999]

Srsly? ..."try" to be discreet?

So fucking in a fountain in a public square is OK as long as one of you holds up a letter-sized piece of paper over the "interesting bits"? Awesome.

BRB, booking plane tickets.

Re:OH NOES!

[Anonymous Coward]

And you are confusing Swedes in general with Beatrice Ask. I'm not calling Danes racist, uptight, too-worried-about-their-reputation-as-easygoing-to-deal-with-real-problems and generally annoying, am I?

Re:OH NOES!

[metacell]

The islands off the coast of Gothenburg. Sometimes even in Slottsskogen park in the city.

Re:OH NOES!

[Anonymous Coward]

What? No. Porn trade has been allowed in norway for several years (about 10?), and the age of consent is 16.

Re:OH NOES!

[Anonymous Coward]

Not quite, you are still placing yourself in a place that is hard for other people to ignore. Try an alley, or in the bushes of a park. You need to give those who might be offended the option of not seeing. If they go looking anyway, it is their own fault if they get offended.

Should be mandatory

[Anonymous Coward]

All new games should come with porn modes.

Re:Should be mandatory

[plunderscratch]

Up up down down left right left right B A select start

Re:Should be mandatory

[Anonymous Coward]

Or up down up down up down up down up down ... done roll over and fall asleep.

Re:Should be mandatory

[zippthorne]

Up up down down left right left right B A select start

Heh... two-player mode...

Don't RTFA

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't bother clicking the link. There aren't any pictures.

Re:Don't RTFA

[Anonymous Coward]

So it didn't happen!

Re:Don't RTFA

[Anonymous Coward]

rule 34 on Dead or Alive: Dimensions

Re:Don't RTFA

[Alsee]

Here's a link to a story containingh a video of the pose-and-photograph-mode.
It doesn't have any "upskirt" shots, but it pretty well shows how absurd the entire issue is.

-

Pull it

[Anonymous Coward]

Pull it from all countries until that function is removed...what's the point of even having that function? I mean, other than to be perverse....

Tomorrow's news

[Anonymous Coward]

Cameras banned to prevent people taking photos up children's skirts.

Re:Tomorrow's news

[PNutts]

Cameras banned to prevent people taking photos up children's skirts.

Some are already required to make a noise to prevent this and voyeuristic activies.

Define "looks like"

[AnotherScratchMonkey]

Some 30 year old women look like that. So we can define that "look" to be 30.

Re:Define "looks like"

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not the slightest bit turned on by children, but fucking a 30 something who is wearing her old school dress is an awsome experience.

What the fuck is wrong with the Japanese?

[Anonymous Coward]

Can somebody who is more familiar with Japanese culture please explain why they're so obsessed with young girls? Why do they feel the need to portray the molestation of them in video games, their poorly-drawn comics and cartoons, and even at their comic book conventions?

Basically every other modern culture has realized that there are some things that you just don't do to or with children. Why haven't the Japanese figured this out yet?

Re:What the fuck is wrong with the Japanese?

[Anonymous Coward]

Good to know the pedophile apologists still post on slashdot.

Re:What the fuck is wrong with the Japanese?

[ThePhilips]

1. Asian women look younger to us westerners.
2. All men are obviously obsessed with young girls.
3. All women are obviously obsessed with looking like young girls.

Shortly: youth is the only thing which never gets out of fashion.

Regarding molestation... This actually interesting question. But it should be rephrased: why it is only that kind of stuff gets imported into the West?? Why it is nearly impossible to find a decent romance or ero manga here?? They are actually in Japan are more numerous compared to the hentai.

Re:What the fuck is wrong with the Japanese?

[Opportunist]

Now, I'm not that big into Japanese culture. But from what I gather they're not really that "obsessed" with young girls. Not any more than the Dutch are obsessed with dope. Or the average US person with guns.

We just perceive it that way because we get told a lot that these things are legal there while being illegal where we live and our sensationalist media show us that Japanese businessman who buys little girl panties, the Dutch dopehead who smokes one blunt after another in a coffeeshop and the gun-toting redneck enjoying his afternoon with a machine gun.

Re:What the fuck is wrong with the Japanese?

[Anonymous Coward]

Two points:
1) What you describe is a stereotype of Japanese culture, which may have a grain of truth behind it, but is based on a rather limited familiarity with that culture, and is not generally true. Japan punishes actual child sexual abuse, much like any other modern industrial country does.
2) What you do see, that gives you this impression, is an example of the unintended consequences of censorship. Japan's culture has its own flavor of prudery, which enacted laws intended to stop the publication of sexually indecent images. One key provision of this was "no images in which pubic hair is visible". But rather than stopping artists and photographers from showing nekkid females, it merely stopped them from showing nekkid females with pubic hair. Which makes them look a bit like children, and in the minds of some Japanese men, has eroticized those childlike features.
But like I said, most Japanese men have no interest in sex with little girls. They may indulge in school-girl fantasies and role-play, they may want their female partners to sport the hairless look of the porn they grew up beating off to. They are obsessed with youth Just Like American Men. But the Japanese are not (as a culture) obsessed with molesting young girls.

Re:What the fuck is wrong with the Japanese?

[Jeff DeMaagd]

Why do they feel the need to portray the molestation of them in video games, their poorly-drawn comics and cartoons, and even at their comic book conventions?

Basically every other modern culture has realized that there are some things that you just don't do to or with children.

In all fairness, it's works of fiction. Just because it acceptable to portray it in fiction doesn't mean we actually find it acceptable to do in real life. A drawing of abuse has no equivalence to actual abuse.

Re:What the fuck is wrong with the Japanese?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, it's probably more creepy to have the more realistic depiction of underaged girls that might come out of Western art. I haven't seen too much of anything outside of the anime style posted on 4chan, for instance, and it's apparently legal for the loli-dumpers to do so. Either that or they're not getting banned, but still getting reported to any authority who asks...

...speaking of which. (actual Dead or Alive pr0n, nsfw)

Re:What the fuck is wrong with the Japanese?

[Dogtanian]

More Dead or Alive here!

Re:What the fuck is wrong with the Japanese?

[Dekker3D]

I'm sure it takes as much effort to import something relatively innocent, as it takes to import something quite vile. The innocent thing will often also be available locally though, making the import much less interesting. That might be an explanation why only the worst of Japanese porn gets to the west.

Anyway, as far as I know the Japanese simply do not have any real "legal age", and there's a whole lot of other laws about sex that the west has, but they don't. So, whatever's attractive and doesn't fight them off is fair game. That's why incest, pedophilia and the like aren't frowned upon that much. Frankly, as long as no real harm is done (permanent diseases, pregnancy, physical or psychological harm etcetera), I don't even see any problem with that. It's definitely more natural than the strict age limit that most western countries have.

Re:What the fuck is wrong with the Japanese?

[pandrijeczko]

Sorry, but anyone who can come up with a word like "encunt" probably needs to get out more and definitely needs to get a real girlfriend.

Re:What the fuck is wrong with the Japanese?

[Dunge]

Molestation? Where's the molestation in that? Young sexuality doesn't mean rape.

Re:What the fuck is wrong with the Japanese?

[metacell]

This is just a guess on my part, but it could have something to do with the huge social pressure Japanese men live under. They're expected to support their family, be loyal to their employers and bosses, not lose their face, be successful, etc, while rarely being allowed to show their emotions. I think kinky porn is often used as a pressure valve under these circumstances. It's not just under-age porn which is common and relatively accepted in Japan, but also B/D, S/M, tentacle porn, incest, etc.

Re:What the fuck is wrong with the Japanese?

[spauldo]

I lived there for a couple years, but I'm not an expert (I lived on base, but went out and about quite a bit).

From what I can tell, it has something to do with the fact that they don't have historical ties to a religion that condemns sexuality. A lot of the prudishness in western culture comes from the idea that sex should be a private matter between married people.

It's not natural. Men are attracted to young women because they make better mates from an evolutionary standpoint. As long as they survive childbirth, they'll stand a better chance of surviving long enough so their children can tend for themselves, and they're less likely to have diseases. Think about it - men like perky breasts - the type women start to lose after age 17 or so if they're not wearing a bra.

In western culture, we're taught that thinking sexual thoughts about young girls is evil, and that keeps it somewhat in check. Japan, however, doesn't have as strong a moral issue with it.

Now, as for the rape scenes and other misogynistic themes, this is just a theory I formed while I was there, but I've always thought it was due to the fact that women were granted equal rights before the culture was ready. Japanese culture still has strong gender roles, with men very much in charge. The legal reality doesn't match the culture, so a lot of Japanese men resent being under a female authority figure in the same way that a white guy from Mississippi in 1940 would feel about having a black boss. We'll probably see that sort of thing fade over the next couple generations.

Re:What the fuck is wrong with the Japanese?

[Anonymous Coward]

Just going by the roots and basic etymology of similar words, you would expect encunt to be a verb applied to a male object not the other way around.

As in "His wang was encunted by the jailbait."

Sheesh,

Re:What the fuck is wrong with the Japanese?

[Anonymous Coward]

It looks like there is prior art. Also by a troll, though...

CHILD!?

[Windwraith]

Child? You call those virtual plastic-y goddesses of bounce physics CHILDREN?
What is becoming of this world...?

Re:CHILD!?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, yeah. Everyone knows that in Japan, as evidenced by their comics and cartoons, every girl is given a free set of FFs* when they turn 15. Geez, don't you know ANYTHING about foreign culture?

*: If they're poor, that is. Anyone with money could trivially get a pair of HHs or start inventing even more absurd cup sizes further down the alphabet.

Re:CHILD!?

[Anonymous Coward]

This could be fixed in a patch. Anywhere in game where they are reported as being 17, could be changed to them being 18. Since they don't actually exist, who is to say any different?

Re:CHILD!?

[KDR_11k]

They never mentioned the age of those characters in the west, it's only the Japanese instruction manuals that even list their age as 17 AFAIK. In the one manual I've seen they're listed as "???".

Re:CHILD!?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not only that, but they were probably only created last year, so they're *ONE* *YEAR *OLD* CHILDREN!1!1!! Lying about their age even!!!

I probably shouldn't even post this as a joke, someone, somewhere, will start judging artwork based on it's "real" age.

Re:CHILD!?

[Anonymous Coward]

You call them goddesses?

If there's grass on the field ... let them fight

[Anonymous Coward]

So it's OK to have 17 year old characters pummel each other so long as you don't see their underwear?

Simple fix...

[ThoughtMonster]

Make them 18!

Re:Simple fix...

[hedwards]

That's our solution in America, but to be honest I don't really get it. I can understand not depicting characters that are clearly prepubescent in pornographic situations, but once the characters start looking post-pubescent, I'm not sure what difference it really makes as there's no way of really knowing one way or the other and the description in that dimension isn't going to be particularly influential to the viewers.

Re:Simple fix...

[Anonymous Coward]

Make them 18!

It's a brilliant solution. Just have a formal announcement that the characters just had a birthday. Throw a birthday party for them in each of the complaining countries and everyone get on with their lives!

Re:Simple fix...

[ktappe]

Make them 18!

Or wait one year until they turn 18, sometime in early 2012.

And if you say "no, they don't age" then they aren't human and porn laws don't apply to them. You can't have it both ways.

Re:Simple fix...

[mmcuh]

And when the characters are fictional and animated, age shouldn't matter one way or the other.

Re:Simple fix...

[Anonymous Coward]

Or just put it back on the shelves in 2012 when they will have gracefully aged one year.

Re:Simple fix...

[amicusNYCL]

And if you say "no, they don't age" then they aren't human and porn laws don't apply to them. You can't have it both ways.

What about "the pictures were made when they were children?" If you have a picture of a naked 15-year old (I mean an actual human), that picture doesn't become legal once the person turns 18.

My personal solution would be to say "Oops, that's a typo in the manual. Those 'people' are 18, not 17." The whole concept about treating a cartoon as a person is just too ridiculous for me to take this whole thing seriously. It makes it even more stupid when these decisions are based off some 30 or 40-year old writer whose job it was to make a backstory for these characters.

I'm interested in what actually shows up under their dress though. Surely this bullshit isn't just about a pair of rendered underwear. But surely Nintendo wouldn't actually put the goods under the dresses.. this is just stupid all the way around.

Re:Simple fix...

[DrBoumBoum]

You can't have it both ways.

Well when it's for the purpose of fucking you sheeple we definitely can and do.

Re:Simple fix...

[ArundelCastle]

Not so simple! It's from Japan! 18 is too old to be cute!

Re:Simple fix...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, precisely! Change the backstory to say that they're 18.

of course, this would create the interesting legal situation whereby two identical images might be considered illegal porn or not illegal porn depending upon which version of the game they're taken from. Love to see that court case.

Re:Simple fix...

[Anonymous Coward]

They did this in one of them hentai dating sims I played once (note that not all dating sims are hentai).

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheSagaraFamily

Older Than They Look: Ruruka, due to censorship laws forbidding depictions of sex involving characters under the age of 18. Also, Maria.

        Lampshaded in the help file for the game even.
        It seems likely that Ruruka was created to demonstrate how much one can get away with under the aforementioned censorship laws, as the game itself pretty much runs under the assumption that she's 13-15. Several parts of the game actually make little to no sense if you assume that Ruruka is 18:
                Her stature is the most obvious. Underdeveloped adults might not be uncommon in fiction, but in Ruruka's good ending, time skips forward a few years and shows a very well-developed Ruruka. Did she somehow avoid puberty for 18 years?
                At one point in her route, Ruruka visits Yusuke at his university and teases him by flipping her skirt and revealing a lack of lower undergarments. Yusuke proceeds to reprimand her, saying that he could get arrested if someone caught them. This comes off as odd if you assume she's 18, since sex offense charges shouldn't be a problem if Ruruka is above the age of consent (more likely she'd get fined for public indecency). One could argue that a random passerby wouldn't know that she's not underage, but if being mistaken for underage is such a potential problem for Ruruka, wouldn't she carry around ID?

It's really hilarious since the age of any character in anime or cartoons is completely arbitrary. Other examples I've seen are a thousands of year old girl who looks like she's 10 and a 3 year old that looks like she's in her mid 20s. And yet I have no idea which of the two would be legal and which would be illegal.

Re:Simple fix...

[hedwards]

And how precisely do you propose we tell the difference between a fictional character and one that's been run through a set of photoshop filters? Or is a depiction of something that really happened?

Re:Simple fix...

[Anonymous Coward]

Ding. Ding. We have a winner. I came here to post this if it wasn't already posted.

Mod this +6, move it to the top of the thread, and lock the discussion.

Re:Simple fix...

[Anonymous Coward]

What about "the pictures are rendered by the console at a time where they're 18" (in a year, when they'll have turned 18)

Also, Norway is not a member of the EU, however:

[Anonymous Coward]

Norway has ties to the EU through various treaties which force most of the EU laws on Norwegian citizens anyway.

Modern society

[Noughmad]

There's a game with the word "Dead" in its name, and people have a problem with it because you can look up women's skirts?

Re:Modern society

[Anonymous Coward]

I suppose if the players could blow them away from that vantage point, it would be acceptable.
And, as another post said, bounce physics animation = child pron? I mean, Jesus, why the fuck would Nintendo even include the capacity to upskirt, and how desperate do you have to be to go looking for it (and getting excited by it)?

Re:Modern society

[Opportunist]

Hey, nobody gave half a shit if they wore long dresses while bludgeon each other to a gory death with baseball bats.

Re:Modern society

[hedwards]

Everyone eventually dies, but not everyone looks up women's skirts.

Re:Modern society

[novium]

My question exactly. What the hell were the designers thinking? Creeper thoughts, apparently.

Re:Modern society

[EnsilZah]

I don't see what having the word 'Dead' in the name has to do with anything.

Re:Modern society

[Noughmad]

I don't really know the game, so I assumed it a shooter, or an otherwise killing game. Now I informed myself and I see that it's about fighting.

Also, I assume that more people were killed or otherwise hurt because of fighting than because of skirt look-ups. Until this assumption is also proven incorrect, I will continue to be worried by a society where violence is socially more acceptible than looking at women.

Re:Modern society

[KDR_11k]

To be fair this is the game series that spawned a spinoff series (Extreme) that was all about dressing women in bikinis and oogling them.

Re:Modern society

[Issarlk]

Why the fuck does Kodak include the possibility to do upskirt shots with their cameras? What the hell is wrong with these people?

Plain wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

Norway is not part of EU, and the sexual age limit here is 16. Nor are there any prior cases where people has been prosecuted over offences towards imaginary characters so I really dont get where they get this from.

Pull it

[Anonymous Coward]

Pull it from all countries until that function is deleted. What's the point of it? Other than to be perverse....

WTF?

[Ephemeriis]

You've got to be kidding me... This is so ridiculous I can't believe it's real.

It's a video game. They aren't real people. It's pixels on a screen. No child is being harmed, regardless of where you position the camera.

I also doubt if there's much to look at under those skirts. I doubt if the developers spent much time rendering realistic genitalia that'll likely never be seen... And if they were seen, would just generate outrage.

Further, they're 17 in the game. Here in the US that's just one year shy of legal adulthood. Are you telling me that there's some magical transformation on your 18th birthday that renders you immune to the psychological harm of somebody looking at your crotch?

But even if we accept that this is some kind of virtual child pornography that's somehow exploiting underage pixels... If we really want to make sure we protect the children... It's somehow OK to brutally beat them to a pulp? I mean, Dead or Alive is a fighting game. A "beat'em up". Like Tekken or Soul Calibur or Mortal Combat or Street Fighter... It's OK to pummel some virtual 17-year-old girl into a bloody mess, but it isn't OK to look up her skirt? How does that make any kind of sense?

Re:WTF?

[Anonymous Coward]

laws are meant to remove thought from the judgement process.

and this is what we are left with: mindless drones (politicians) making rules without any sense or reason.

we could probably strike down 90% of the laws on the books (in all countries) and be better off for it.

laws should age out and have to be rigorously defended or they will expire. but again, that would be too sensible.

the older I get, the more I see the world as an unjust, random, cruel and mindless place. each day I believe this more and more.

Re:WTF?

[Anonymous Coward]

The backgound is the a Swedish Manga translator got convicted for child-pornography for some hentai that he had in his computer. The age of consent in Swedn is 15, however you may not show sexualised pictures of anyone under 18. For some sick reason a court of law ruled that that included cartoons.

Re:WTF?

[geekmux]

...Further, they're 17 in the game. Here in the US that's just one year shy of legal adulthood. Are you telling me that there's some magical transformation on your 18th birthday that renders you immune to the psychological harm of somebody looking at your crotch?

Short answer according to the law? Fuck Yes.

18 = look all you want, no harm, no foul

17 = could result in being a convicted felon(lewd and lascivious, indecent acts) and most likely a registered sex offender for life

I never said the laws make sense, but don't sit here and just blow off 17 as "one year shy" like it's no big deal within the legal framework today. The difference between those ages, as I've pointed out here, can be permanently life-altering.

Re:WTF?

[Anonymous Coward]

What's even crazier is that Kasumi was 17 a decade ago on the PS1. You'd think they'd have bumped the ages up a few years in the interim just for the sake of the in game story. Well, what there is of one, anyway.

Re:WTF?

[westlake]

No child is being harmed, regardless of where you position the camera.

But Nintendo can be harmed when someone asks why the camera is being allowed that particular view. The game developer can be harmed when someone asks why the camera is being allowed that particular view.

Because there are no good answers.

Re:WTF?

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude, this is sick. Those girls are mere /months/ old despite what the characters' profiles say. I am a firm believe that virtual life begins at rendering, and what exists in my understanding exists exactly that way in reality, which in my understanding is an understanding of reality as I understand it. Either way I'm right, because as far as I understand it skepticism means you don't know enough to prove me wrong, and I'm American educated.

Re:WTF?

[Anonymous Coward]

There's a perfectly good reason. They wanted to give free control of the camera. They didn't then want to go to the trouble of figuring out all the camera angles that would be considered "naughty" and find out a way to forbid those particular angles.

Re:WTF?

[Blakey Rat]

Jesus Christ, because it's a FIGHTING game. FIGHTING. Not a puzzle game. Not a standing-around-doing-nothing game. The characters here are using kung fu and doing flips, kicks, twirling around, jumping, movement movement movement. That's kind of the point!

Even if the camera was exactly static and the user couldn't move it at all, you'd still get panty shots every so often. Even the most innocent, kid-friendly game gets panty shots from time to time if the lead character is a woman who's actually doing action-game things-- think about the Tomb Raider games, or Kameo. (Although to be fair to Tomb Raider, Lara's wearing pants and not a skirt.)

I can't imagine how anybody would defend this ban.

Re:WTF?

[petes_PoV]

Further, they're 17 in the game. Here in the US that's just one year shy of legal adulthood.

Just checking .... has anyone told you that Sweden, Denmark and Norway are NOT in the United States? Strange as it may seem to you, other countries do have different laws and the ones that the US enacts don't apply elsewhere.

Re:WTF?

[Ephemeriis]

Further, they're 17 in the game. Here in the US that's just one year shy of legal adulthood.

Just checking .... has anyone told you that Sweden, Denmark and Norway are NOT in the United States?
Strange as it may seem to you, other countries do have different laws and the ones that the US enacts don't apply elsewhere.

You think maybe that's why I specified here in the US?

A quick Google search indicates that the age of consent across most of the EU is between 13 and 18, so it isn't like the laws here in the US are completely out of line. It isn't like these 17-year-old video game characters are still decades away from being considered legally adult video game characters.

Regardless... They're still video game characters, which makes this all kinds of ridiculous.

Re:WTF?

[billcopc]

Fine then. Rather than trying to restrict the camera (no easy task btw), how about a few strategically-placed polygons to "protect" the "offensive" areas ? You know, like underwear !?

Nintendo + government = an even dumber generation of gamer kids that can't think for themselves.

Growing up in the 80s, I'm sure every last one of us knew at least one kid who'd swipe his father or big brother's Playboy/Penthouse and sneak them into the clubhouse to give his friends a peek. It's called being a curious, male, and totally normal kid. Did it ruin our childhood ? Fuck no. Conservative insecure boneheaded nanny-state politicians ruined our childhood!.

Re:WTF?

[Ephemeriis]

No child is being harmed, regardless of where you position the camera.

But Nintendo can be harmed when someone asks why the camera is being allowed that particular view. The game developer can be harmed when someone asks why the camera is being allowed that particular view.

Because there are no good answers.

There are good answers. Answers like:

What the hell? It's a fighting game. You punch people in the face. We built a game that allows you to do all kinds of funky combat moves. We added a photographer mode so you could capture pictures of you beating the crap out of people. We weren't really contemplating whether you could turn our bloody brawl game into some kind of cheesecake pornography generator. Absolutely nobody on staff even contemplated whether it was possible to get a good upskirt shot of some pixelated underage panties. I'm sorry the possibility of angling the camera to get a picture of some pixels positioned in the crotch of a 3D model in a video game offends you. I'm even more sorry that "can I get a picture of that underage virtual pussy" is the first place your mind went when we showed you the photographer mode.

Re:WTF?

[Ephemeriis]

Oh, yes, I understand the legal implications. Regardless of whether the law makes sense or not, lines need to be drawn and crossing them is bad. I understand that.

I guess I was just musing on the insanity of the situation... They're characters in a video game. Their birthdates are an arbitrary fiction. The developer could just easily claim that they were 100 years old and had simply aged very well.

I was imagining some kind of Zelda-esque dramatic moment on their 18th birthday... You know, like when you pull the Master Sword from the stone, or whatever. It's nearing midnight... This 17-year-old combatant is asleep in her bed... The clock strikes 12:00, she's 18 now... Dramatic music, particle effects, glowing lights... Ding! Level Up! Womanhood Acquired, press "B" to equip!.

Re:WTF?

[DNS-and-BIND]

It doesn't matter if they're 15, 18, 25, 55, or whatever. If you're portraying them as underage, then they're underage, period. You're liable for prosecution. If you don't agree, then you're just asking for a sub-industry of porn where people pretend to be underage, and that will gratify a lot of men. The whole entire purpose of anti-kiddieporn laws is to deny unholy men satisfaction. Unless you're on the side of giving men sexual gratification by seeing underage girls...you're not, right? What would you say if you saw a couple consisting of a creepy 42-year-old white guy and an ignorant 21-year-old Asian girl? And they're kissing in public? If your answer is not "spit on them" or "humiliate them with all means at your disposal," then we can only assume that you're one of them.

You don't have to harm children for it to be a crime. You just have to give sexual gratification to perverts. That's it. If the perverts like it, then it's a crime. Perverts don't get off to Chun Li losing a fight. Perverts DO get off to looking up Chun Li's skirt. Again, if you're on the side of the creepy old guys, you're not on our side.

Society has decreed that raping children is the worst crime a man can commit. Worse than murder. A girl of 17 cannot legally consent to sex, therefore it's rape, just like having date rape with a drunk woman who is legally inebriated and cannot give consent. Your mileage may vary if you live in one of those American redneck states where it's legal to have sex with underage girls (Sarah Palin territory...do you really want to identify with that?) You want to change this? Go ahead and start your own political campaign where your platform is "there's nothing wrong with looking up the skirts of underage girls in video games." Let me know how far you get before feminists find your house and dump a truckload of manure on your front yard.

It's one thing to anonymously say this on Slashdot, and it's quite another to say it in public. Although I wouldn't expect someone who uses the phrase "underage pixels" to understand. Go ahead, put your real name, address, and phone number attached to your comment that "no children are being harmed." I dare you. I double-dare you. Go ahead, pussy, you don't have the guts. You know that women's groups will come down on you like a ton of bricks, and you lack the balls to disagree with the dominant paradigm.

Re:WTF?

[Anonymous Coward]

the game developers should put male genitalia on the girls then accuse the complaining countries of being homophobes.

Re:WTF?

[VortexCortex]

Just imagine the Child Pornographers and Virtual Child Abusers that created those characters -- Why, they got VERY intimate with those characters! They touched ALL of their bits, even the Naughty Bits! I'm sure meshes can't give consent! Hell, in reality the meshes themselves are only a few years old, or just born! How would you feel if someone textured your child's genitals moments after they were born!

Seriously -- We can never put "under age" child characters in video games ever again -- If we do, their crotches will be missing -- The developers of Rayman are a step ahead of others in this respect.

Re:WTF?

[Anonymous Coward]

Just for information; In Norway the age of consent is 16, and in Denmark it is 15/18. (http://www.avert.org/age-of-consent.htm)

Re:WTF?

[demonlapin]

IIRC the law has been sufficiently vague on some occasions that you might want to wait until the day after her birthday. Just to be safe.

Re:WTF?

[KDR_11k]

AFAIK Dimensions is one of those retellings that include the whole story of the previous games in one new game.

Re:WTF?

[KDR_11k]

Rendering? Rendering happens in real time with games like that. So they'd be aged at most 16 milliseconds.

Re:WTF?

[Ephemeriis]

IIRC the law has been sufficiently vague on some occasions that you might want to wait until the day after her birthday. Just to be safe.

Seriously? We're talking about video game characters here. Nobody is getting deflowered.

Re:WTF?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's even worse! Think of the 16ms-old children!

Re:WTF?

[Ephemeriis]

I'm sitting here, after reading your response, pondering to myself... Poe? Not Poe? It reminds me of when I was a kid and we'd get a daisy and pluck the petals off while debating over whether someone loved you or not. I can't imagine that a discussion about a possible pantyshot of a video game character would generate a response like this in earnest... But... It is the Internet, and I'm sure stranger things have happened.

Re:WTF?

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously, dude. Take a chill pill.

Re:WTF?

[Anonymous Coward]

What kind of sense?

Nonsense, of course.

Re:WTF?

[sjames]

Yes, it's perfectly fine to sit back and watch or even photograph a couple of 17 year old girls beating each other to death with baseball bats, but if one of their skirts flips up when you snap the shutter, you'd best burn the memory card immediately just to be on the safe side.

Re:WTF?

[mark-t]

It doesn't matter if they're 15, 18, 25, 55, or whatever. If you're portraying them as underage, then they're underage, period.

So what you're saying is that a person who is 21, but who happens to look much younger, could not legally be shown in any sexual context where they might be pretending to be a high school student?

Re:WTF?

[tjonnyc999]

BTW, the federal AOC of 18 is meant as a "safeguard" so no state could raise the AOC above 18. Many states have AOC of 17, 16, and a few even set it at 15. Here's a chart listing the AOC by country, as well as by individual US states: http://www.avert.org/age-of-consent.htm

Re:WTF?

[tjonnyc999]

The whole "next hour/next day/next week" thing is just overly paranoid, since most places have adjustments to AOC laws like the "Romeo & Juliet Clause" in many US states (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statutory_rape#Romeo_and_Juliet_laws), or judicial/prosecutorial guidelines that make a "reasonable allowance" (i.e. 1-2 months, sometimes as much as 6, in the case of a long-term relationship substantiated by character witnesses and material proof) for cases where the ages are close enough that making an adjustment of a couple of months will make it a non-issue.

It has nothing to do with the judge/prosecutor being a "nice guy", they just realize that the burden of proof is ridiculously high + there would be little or no public pressure if the accused is 18 and his girlfriend is 17+8months + there are too many precedents where such cases were thrown out on the first appeal. Plus, prison overcrowding is already an issue. So overall, if it's "very close", you realistically have nothing to fear. At least in "civilized" states like NY, NJ, CA, and FL. Can't vouch for Arkansas et al.

Re:WTF?

[tjonnyc999]

Yes, there are good answers. "Because our game engine allows any camera view of any object. Prove intent now, asshole." is one I'd give, followed by something along the lines of "...and your pretentious moral outrage should be shoved right up your ass until the problem of real rape on the streets is resolved. When women aren't gang-raped for real anymore, then you can be upset about pixels on the screen."

Re:WTF?

[tjonnyc999]

Dude... "I'm even more sorry that "can I get a picture of that underage virtual pussy" is the first place your mind went when we showed you the photographer mode."...

BRILLIANT!

Re:WTF?

[Hast]

The reason for this is actually to put the spotlight on some new Swedish childpornography laws.

It used to be that there were no age limit on child pornography, basically pornographic material of people who were not sexually mature was child pornography. That was changed due to pressure from the EU to add the 18-yo limit as well. (Basically, this makes pornography of people who are sexually mature, but under the age of 18, NOT child pornography unless is explicitly states that they are under 18.)

In Sweden there is also a law that drawings of children can also be considered child pornography (under the same rules) in order to not incite child predatory behaviour.

The DOA games have existed before in Scandinavia, but in this new games there is a "camera" mode (with up skirt potential). And the characters have their "ages" written out.

So one guy on a Swedish forum decided to inform the police of this potential child porn in order to test the law. (Previously a swedish manga translator has been charged with possession of child porn under the same law.) After this the Scandinavian Nintendo distributor decided to not carry the game. The guy who contacted the police was informed (by them) that they did not consider it child porn.

You can find the discussion at Flashback (in Swedish): https://www.flashback.org/t1525412

Re:WTF?

[shutdown -p now]

The game developer can be harmed when someone asks why the camera is being allowed that particular view. there are no good answers.

The obvious answer is that the camera is allowed any view, because the thing in question is, essentially, a free camera vanity view. Here is the actual video from the game (NSFW in Norway, Sweden etc).

Hey, Nintendo!

[Opportunist]

Next time just let their skirts ride up a bit while they get gunned down with the blood splattering the screen from the inside. That should be ok.

Re:Hey, Nintendo!

[supersloshy]

For the record, the game is being developed by Team Ninja, not Nintendo, and it isn't even being published by them. And I know you might have not been totally serious, but you do know that Dead or Alive is a fighting game, right? A fighting game that, like almost all of the other famous fighting games out there, does not involve "blood splattering the screen from the inside". The complaint had to do with a mode where you can position the camera to look at their clothed crotches, not normal gameplay.

Re:Hey, Nintendo!

[Opportunist]

Still, I'm pretty sure a "bloodpatch" would not have caused the same level of hysteria.

Re:Hey, Nintendo!

[supersloshy]

Agreed. One-year-underage panties never killed anyone (neither did bloody virtual violence).

Norway?

[wvmarle]

Factual error in the summary: Norway is not a member of the EU.

Of course it's by now one of the very few countries in Europe that has chosen to stay out of the EU, still they're not a member and likely won't become a member anytime soon.

Re:Norway?

[Sprouticus]

Norway is my hero. They found a shit ton of oil, and instead of going on a spending spree took a big chunk of the money and set it aside in trust. They dont belong to the EU because there is absolutely no value in it for them. They are set for the next 50 years. They can use that trust as oil runs out to become energy independant (wave?) and laugh their asses off at theiddle east, mexico, Africa, South America, and the US, who have squandered their resources.

Re:Norway?

[Anonymous Coward]

You're naive. Or stupid.

Re:Norway?

[lordholm]

They are members of the EEA, which means that they are obliged to implement all Union directives regarding the single market. A perfect arrangement: Let's join the Union, but only so we need to implement the laws, we actually don't want to have a say in how these laws are implemented, so we can claim that we are outside the Union.

Re:Norway?

[Anonymous Coward]

They also don't have to pay contributions to the useless prats in Brussells. And the single market is probably a good thing, seriously apart from the oil what does Norway manufacture? How many immigrants actually want to go to Norway when they can go to the UK or France where they know the language, or Spain and Italy which are warm?

Not illegal in Denmark.

[phagstrom]

There is no way in hell this is illegal in Denmark and I doubt that it is illegal in Sweden & Norway. In reading the article this seems more a matter of being afraid that the game or company might get the stigma of paedophilia attached to it.

Keeping child molesters away from children = Good

Saying that everything involving children is child molestation = Not so much.

Re:Not illegal in Denmark.

[cronius]

IANAL, but I believe this is the Norwegian law in question (translation courtesy of google):

204a. Whoever

a. produce, acquire, introduce, possess, leaving to another or for a fee or systematically familiarize themselves with the production of sexual abuse against children or representations sexualising children,

b. concerned with depictions of sexual abuse of children or representations as sexualising children, otherwise referred to in 204, first paragraph, or

c. misleads anyone under 18 to have himself photographed as part of the commercial production of motion and motionless pictures with adult content, or produce such representations where anyone under 18 is depicted,

punishable by fines or imprisonment for up to 3 years.

                With children the purposes of this section, persons who are or appear to be under 18.

                Anyone who negligently performs the action specified in the first paragraph, punished by fines or imprisonment for up to 6 months. At the same penalty the owner or parent who willfully or negligently fails to prevent it in a business is carried out actions described in the first paragraph.

                The penalty can be eliminated for the taking and possessing an image of a person between 16 and 18, if it has given their consent and the two are roughly equal in age and development.

                  204 second paragraph, second and fourth paragraphs shall apply correspondingly.

Added by Act of May 20, 2005 No. 29

Emphasis (for what I think is relevant) mine. The law was probably written in good intent, but I think cartoons (which this basically is) being illegal is just crazy, it should count as free speech.

It does define children as persons though, so I would say it's not actually illegal (since a fictional character is not a person).

Re:Not illegal in Denmark.

[cronius]

More info here:

But if you know the backstory, it is perhaps not so difficult to imagine why. On 29 January was a manga translator sentenced for being in possession of child pornographic drawings, which has initiated a debate in Sweden about whether the laws are too strict.

A user on the Swedish forum Flashback spent Dead or Alive game as an example of a product that should go below what he considers to be an overly strict law, as the game according to the manual contains three characters who are all under 18, and in addition, shot and zoomed in on in all possible angles through the game mode Showcase. The plan was to report Bergsala for distribution of child pornography on launch day, not because he believed it was right, but to ridicule the law.

The problem is, according to a user on NeoGaf forum that another, hitherto unknown person decided to report them now, which in turn led to the Bergsala stopped the game to not only Sweden, Norway and Denmark as well. According to the user to chains such as Game and Gamestop have removed the game from their stores, giving customers who have paid the deposit for reservation of game money.

Re:Not illegal in Denmark.

[billcopc]

Then can we please, for the sanctity of our future, please lock up every last prostitot FOREVER ?!

Children sexualise children, at least the girls anyway. There is nothing more abhorrent to my libertarian hedonistic eyeballs than the sight of scantily-clad twelve-year-olds at the mall. I swear, every year it gets worse, like I'm trapped in some fucked up reality show called "American Hooker Child" where the winner is the one who gets preggers the youngest.

I mean these kids don't even have freakin' hormones yet and they get called skanks by the local crackwhores. I just want to slap their teenage mothers :P

Pulled from Denmark, due to swedish laws???

[TheSunborn]

This is wierd. The text says:
"but the back-story for some of the characters has led to a possible breach of child protection legislation in Sweden."

And
"The game will now no longer be available in Sweden, Denmark, or Norway - despite no formal investigation having yet been made".

So they pull the game from Denmark and Norway because it may break the law in Sweden?

Oh and I case you wonder, The legal minimum age for having sex in Denmark is 15  (18 If you have a professional (teacher/Student) relationship)  so I really can't see the reason to pull it.

Re:Pulled from Denmark, due to swedish laws???

[Zironic]

It's because Sweden, Norway and Denmark are the same distribution region.

Re:Pulled from Denmark, due to swedish laws???

[PPH]

Oh and I case you wonder, The legal minimum age for having sex in Denmark is 15

You just can't look at it until they are 18?

Re:Pulled from Denmark, due to swedish laws???

[Anonymous Coward]

That's not so outlandish. Even here in Australia the age of consent in regards to sex is 16, but it's not legal to look at pornography until you're 18. Makes no sense to me.

Re:Pulled from Denmark, due to swedish laws???

[Anonymous Coward]

and the distributor in question would be Bergsala AB

Re:Pulled from Denmark, due to swedish laws???

[Carewolf]

Oh and I case you wonder, The legal minimum age for having sex in Denmark is 15

You just can't look at it until they are 18?

No, the legal age for watching porn is 16

Re:Pulled from Denmark, due to swedish laws???

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it's only considered child pornography if they're 15 too.

Re:Pulled from Denmark, due to swedish laws???

[Pandur77]

It's because all three countries have the same distributor which is a Swedish company. Since they're not importing the game to Sweden, Norway and Denmark won't get it either. Which makes Norway and Denmark collateral damage.

Re:Pulled from Denmark, due to swedish laws???

[Pandur77]

But the legal age to appear in said porn is 18. :P

Re:Pulled from Denmark, due to swedish laws???

[Anonymous Coward]

At least you can't in Norway. It's ridiculous...

Re:Pulled from Denmark, due to swedish laws???

[Anonymous Coward]

Because porn is not the same thing as having sex.
Porn can be brutal, obscene, demeaning to women... Porn is very different from what a man and a woman do together in real life. Ok, some people do the same things you can see in porn, but it's rare and it's something they come up with on their own, while porn might suddenly show you something you never thought of. While teenagers are mature enough to have sex, they might lack the maturity to realize porn is not what real sex is like.
Also, as one of my sex ed teachers said "In porn, guys have big penises, ejaculate huge amounts of sperm (often it's not real sperm), girls have huge breasts, etc... Teenagers who are not informed that these are exaggerations often end up believing that their penis is smaller than average (for guys) or that they have tiny breasts (for girls). This can affect their self-esteem and their confidence".
I know a guy who's first girlfriend didn't shave her pubic hair. The first time he saw her naked, he was shocked and disgusted by the hair because in all the porn movies he saw, women were shaved. He couldn't perform. He obviously wasn't traumatized - that first experience wasn't a great one but he got over it eventually. But the point is: porn is not the same as the sex you have and should not be considered as nothing more than "What you do in the bedroom, but on camera".

Also, I think if the majority of people had sex the way porn depicts it, it's possible the legal age of consent would be moved up a little. I'm quite sure we would not think it's OK for teen guys to abuse their girlfriend like women are frequently abused in porn.

Re:Pulled from Denmark, due to swedish laws???

[cheekyjohnson]

they might lack the maturity to realize porn is not what real sex is like.

The key word here is "might." Just like someone (likely a miniscule amount of people) "might" not be able to differentiate video games from reality. Really, how many people actually make this mistake? Difficult to answer. I think that number isn't large at all because I think most people, teenagers included, can differentiate between fiction (even if it appears real, like a movie) and reality.

I know a guy who's first girlfriend didn't shave her pubic hair. The first time he saw her naked, he was shocked and disgusted by the hair because in all the porn movies he saw, women were shaved.

It's called preference. He likely didn't dislike the hair just because it wasn't in pornography, but because it just wasn't his preference.

Re:Pulled from Denmark, due to swedish laws???

[PPH]

Because porn is not the same thing as having sex.

As if there was only one flavor of porn. This might have been a problem back in the day when Junior was limited to sneaking into dad's stash of mags. And dad was only into amputee midget porn.

There are so many variants of 'sex' in the porn available on the Internet today that there is no excuse for not being able to find something that floats your boat. Big tits, little tits, barely legal, MILFs, big dicks, limp dicks, little dicks, no dicks. By the time a teenager has visited a fraction of the stuff available on RedTube, it should be obvious that there's no one script for having sex.

One thing that porn does (which some prudes don't like) is to reveal just how many variations on a theme are available. And undermine the argument that 'normal people don't put those things in their mouth'. Yes they do. And if you are looking for a husband (or wife) that doesn't know any better and won't expect what has become accepted as fairly common behavior, good luck.

One thing I will admit: Most of the gymnastics in porn videos is done for the purpose of getting good camera angles. It may look hot, but it can be uncomfortable and physically demanding. Ask Charlie Sheen about his hernia.

Ha, Ha, Ha, Who Is Kidding Who, Yuk, Yuk...

[Anonymous Coward]

Bet this will boost sales....

simple solution

[SuperDre]

the simplest solution would have been to change her age from 17 to 18, no-one would notice the difference, hell I sometimes can't tell the difference between 14 year olds and 18 year olds in the bar I'm working at..

Hypocrisy?

[HalAtWork]

You see less when you look up their skirts than if they were wearing only bathing suits. They had no problem with the EU releases of Dead or Alive: Xtreme Beach Volleyball 1 & 2, which features the same girls in bathing suits.

Re:Hypocrisy?

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder if they have a problem with people going to the beach. And seeing actual 17 y/o girls wearing bikinis. Should all guys on a beach be arrested whenever some underage girl wears a bikini?

Age them

[Anonymous Coward]

Add "1 year later" to the title, and say the girls are now 18.

Not a very good headline...

[damn_registrars]

The headline could lead one to believe that the EU is afraid of porn, which they certainly are not.

Put some pants on them!

[Anonymous Coward]

Jeez, even the cover art shows a view right up her dress, and she is wearing thigh-high white stockings. Streisand Effect for profit?

Actually...

[Deus.1.01]

The story about the lawsuit isnt really about some grannies with their nickers in a wad, the game was charged under the pornography law in sweden to challenge the law itself.
The one that put forth the charge wants to show the problems with the law.

The age of cosnent is thos country is 17

[Anonymous Coward]

Norway : 16 , sweden : 15 ; denmark 15. So why the heck is this defined as *CHILDREN * pornography ?`

This is NOT local laws

[Splab]

This is Nintendo overreacting to some ass hat Swede who threatened with a lawsuit.

Denmark has some of the worlds most liberal laws regarding pornography and game violence, granted, we don't allow child pornography - but we do for instance allow models from age 16 as long as they have their parents consent (and supervision) to pose nude.
At no point would anyone consider throwing the book at Nintendo for making a game where you can see up a skirt on a 17 year old cartoon player.

(It has become illegal to poses cartoons portraying child pornography here, but again - emphasis on pornography - a naked child does not porno make).

Re:This is NOT local laws

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, the guy who reported this game as being child pr0n in the first place did so to simply to illustrate how moronic the law is. He posted about thinking of reporting the game on the Swedish forums http://www.flashback.org quite some time ago, and apparently it did get some reactions.

Re:This is NOT local laws

[Splab]

Fair enough, didn't know that - just saw someone from the brother folks had made a mess of our baconated culture :-)

Re:This is NOT local laws

[Anonymous Coward]

Rupert Murdoch built his empire on that; securing his finances with the "page three" brand, back when 16 was old enough for girls to model topless in a national newspaper in England (i.e. before 2002). I can't remember if that was when he was buying "Fox" or some other financial crisis. Remind him of that if Fox does some anti-nudity campaigning :-)

A tactful

[Anonymous Coward]

and decent gesture. Respectful of Nintendo, or publicity for their game and it's porn to invite people from those countries to get the game illegally - forbidden fruit tasting better and all that. Stay away from those Japanese prostitutes Mr. Bergstrum. They'll only corrupt you!

I didn't really think it'd snowball this far...

[zalas]

I had read about this a bit earlier about someone who didn't believe it actually was child pornography "reporting" this. Decided to try to dig up a source and found this, if it can be believed:
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=27926917&postcount=140

You guys are all missing the important point...

[matunos]

... and that is that you can look-up the dresses of Ayane, Koroke, and Kasumi and apparently see something pornographic, and in 3D

Good PR

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course when they voluntarily pull the game from a handful of small European markets, the attention from the controversy will likely boost the sales in all the other markets. I'm sure this predictable effect had nothing to do the decision?
 

Solution

[Anonymous Coward]

Since the characters are fictional, and not real persons... simply say that they are 18, not 17.

Re:Or you could save yourself millions...

[billsayswow]

I don't know why comment is scored at -1, since this is the first thing I thought when I saw the story. Change a few text files and suddenly you're back in business. It's kinda sad that that's all it really takes to sidestep such a law, though, since they'd still be the exact same characters, just with a number ticked upwards by one.

Did you mean... KOKORO?

[sakura the mc]

DOA does not feature a mode where you can look up the skirt of a fried dish. And if it did, her name would have been spelled Korokke.

cartoon upskirt is porn?

[1u3hr]

Loony, an upskirt cartoon is porn. Anyway, as they say on /b/, PICS OR IT DIDN'T HAPPEN.

I'm doing ok in the UK

[thetoadwarrior]

I've had the game since day 1. TBH, none of them look under age. It was probably a bit dumb not to change their ages to something a bit safer but if anyone mistakes Kasumi for a minor then please tell me where you're meeting 17 year olds that look like that especially given that 16 is generally legal in Europe!

Re:I'm doing ok in the UK

[Anonymous Coward]

You're a sicko pervert, and I hope you spend the rest of your life in prison for owning this smut. I kid... I kid... but if this is deemed child porn in one locale, will owners in other locales need to be concerned about a forthcoming arrest?

Not all that difficult to resolve

[Veggiesama]

Uh... am I missing something? Why don't they just change the age of the characters to 18? It's not like they have a birth certificate proving otherwise.

age++;

[CaptainMoron]

Problem solved!

Re:age++;

[Dunge]

Better fix : legal_age--;

Re:age++;

[kthreadd]

or delete stupid_law;

Re:Or you could save yourself millions...

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, it may not have been the first comment like that; there's a thread with some posts of this nature, but I can't be arsed to check times. In that case, the moderator hadn't the balls to use redundant. Or maybe they didn't like slightly assertive and presumptive tone of his subject line -- Slashdotters tend to use the academic humility in more spheres of their lives than they should, and by should, yes, I know better than them.

Another possibility is that it doesn't really add to a "discussion," but that would mainly be based in said tone, though admittedly the lack of content beyond that one line doesn't help matters. A poster who comes in with actual details asking about laws, precedents, and things of that sort can probably do better with his own thread than replying to this one, but that too is rooted unnecessarily in dominance issues.

Hope that helps!

The story is bullshit Re:WTF?

[Anonymous Coward]

Most likely just a publicity stunt.

At least to anyone living in Norway the whole idea should be completely bizarre. I mean I practically live in a cave and I still find it laughable.

We're not exactly prudes up here (well some aren't), some women are pretty much naked even with clothes on (there seems to be a fad among young women this year with ultra-skin-tight tights that look sprayed onto the skin, and ponytails).

Look up the skirt? Lol not much to fuss about when some people dress so you can't avoid seeing if they have a cameltoe or not...

Word of warning: if you come here thinking it will be bliss you couldn't be more wrong, you'll be damaged and broken and you won't have the faintest idea of what destroyed your very existence and it will be too late to matter.

Re:If there's grass on the field ... let them figh

[kthreadd]

Nope, but it's OK to have sex with them. It's actually legal as low as 15, even lower if the age difference is not significant. But don't you dare take a picute, that's a big no-no. This law is flawed.

It's worse than that...

[mark-t]

Considering the short amount of time that the 3DS has been out, these characters are not even a year old yet, although they are masquerading as characters that are much older. In fact, this would apply to all characters in the game, not just the three "teenagers" mentioned.

Therefore, not only could this be construed as child pornography, but it could also be said to actively encourage pedophilia!

I trust that the absurdity of this argument makes my underlying point apparent. If not, I will try to emphasize it now:

They are computer graphics, and are not real

I don't condone child pornography for one minute, but if even the appearance of it is illegal where it clearly isn't actually happening, then something is wholly F*'ed up.

For crying out loud, if fictional sexually oriented depictions of minors are illegal, then ought it not to also be illegal for a person of majority to make themselves appear much younger than they are and engage in any sexual act? And if the latter is reasonable to be legal, then I can see no even slightly coherent reason to outlaw the former.

Oh, the irony.

[hoboroadie]

Pedantry is its own reward.

Age of Consent in those Countries is like 15 &

[Nyder]

It's weird, but a quick google will show the age of consent in those countries is 15 & 16.

So how is looking up the skirts of a 17 year old possible child porn?

They aren't children at that age in those countries.

Not to mention, it's not real people.

Seriously, wtf!

Re:If there's grass on the field ... let them figh

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

So it's OK to have 17 year old characters pummel each other so long as you don't see their underwear?

What's more likely, teen murder or teen suicide?

Silly beyond belief

[Anonymous Coward]

The age of consent in Norway is 16, and 14 in Sweden. So, no problem marrying a 17-year old girl. But a drawing of such a girl is not ok, if it shows her underwear?

patch it!

[Zargg]

Can't they just release a patch that changes their 'age' to 18? It's not like they need new graphics or anything, it's just a text change in some info field...

Funny....

[Anonymous Coward]

This seems funny to me, because back in the '70s in Europe, they had magazines dedicated to child pornography; yet they have a problem with something in a video game..?!

Sweden and CP

[Anonymous Coward]

This is officially because of a verdict in January where a manga translator was found guilty of possession of child pornography. Drawn pictures of children are considered offending to all children, not just the theoretical model. Denmark and Norway are probably only affected because they share the Swedish distributor Bergsala AB.

Now, the reason Bergsala AB pulled the game was likely because they were contacted by the police, which in turn had received at least one complaint from people on the freedom-of-speech forum Flashback, who want to test the Swedish CP law this way. Thread in Swedish.

What?

[Seumas]

Lines on a piece of paper aren't children. They're lines on a piece of paper.

Re:Age of Consent in those Countries is like 15 &a

[Artemis3]

What is porn? Looking up a skirt can not be porn, and is not even nudity; could be voyeurism at most; but on animated characters? Nonsense. It is a known fact many "underage" girls in Japan wear the skirt up/short, not unlike it used to be in the 60ies.

It's a psychological thing. If the girls were in bathing suits, or leotards what would you see? Just put a skirt on top of that. I don't think anyone considers the Olympic games or Ballet porn -_-

Besides the bodies in the DoA games have always looked out of proportion, close to gym heavy lifters with breast implants and doll faces.

Defining their age is silly, but i think in Japan the age 17 for girls is some sort of gold thing.

Wrong. She's 31.

[Anonymous Coward]

Nintendo, you seem to be quite bad at doing math. Kasumi was 17 years old when the first Dead or Alive came out in 1997 (I know it, I saw her driving license). This actually makes her 31 years old now. An old lady by any fashion house's standard.

True age?

[currently_awake]

Given that the game is less than 17 years old, wouldn't that mean ALL the girls pictured are under age? Or could you avoid the criminal charges just by changing the stated age of the girl to 19? (but with no graphic alterations).

Solution to child porn?

[currently_awake]

If child molesters could be satisfied by watching animated/cartoon child porn without needing any actual child harming porn, then wouldn't legalizing that eliminate the actual child porn?

Nudity != Porn

[CaptainDefragged]

I'm quite perplexed as to how these zeolots have managed to get the mainstream populace to go along with "nudity == porn". Now we have a society that is terrified of taking photos of their own children and any photographer even near children is viewed with suspicion. Whilst porn generally involves some nudity, the converse is not the case. Nudity without a sexual context cannot be pornography. There really isn't a paedophile hiding behind every tree waiting to photograph your children and beat off to the pics later.

Re:Age of Consent in those Countries is like 15 &a

[Kjella]

In short, it became a global witch hunt after Internet came. If one country has an age limit of 16, then porn with 16 year olds would be everywhere. Norway raised the age limit for child porn from 16 to 18 as late as year 2000, mostly after international pressure. Any country that tries deviating from that will raise a hellish shit storm, I remember there was one guy in Eastern Europe who wanted to lower it to 14 - same as age of consent - and the reaction was just absurd. The funny thing is the age of consent stayed at 14, you can still have sex with them as long as moral freaks in other countries don't get to see it.

Virtual Child Pornography (in the US)

[Anonymous Coward]

I look at what is called "Virtual Child Pornography" on a semi-regular basis. I have yet to find a victim of my thought crimes, but perhaps I'm not looking hard enough. Under a somewhat recent law proposed by John McCain (that guy that ran for president, remember?), "Virtual Child Pornography" was made illegal, despite no children being harmed or even involved whatsoever. There have been a handful of similar laws proposed in the past, but they were all struck down by judges when it came time to enforce them. This law was upheld when an anime collector was arrested for recieving six or so porn comics through the mail so that he could add them to his collection of several thousand japanese comics, the most of which weren't even sexual in nature.

So someone who is clearly some sort of art collector, is now branded a pedophile despite presumably having never harmed a child. This might seem silly to you, but I believe in my right to pursue happiness as long as I'm not harming anyone, even if I'm looking at drawings of underage women. A lot of people would like to argue that looking at virtual child pornography leads to molesting children. I'd strongly disagree, but even if that were the case, we can't make something illegal on that basis. We can't make it illegal to make a movie where people smoke marijuana, just because it might lead to the person watching to smoke marijuana. We can't make it illegal to make porn where someone seduces a police officer to avoid arrest just because it might give someone the idea to do this.

I wish I had paid more attention to the issue when it was starting, because I honestly thought that in the US the bill of rights would protect me. Oh well...

Not An Actual Child - Not actual child porn

[Anonymous Coward]

A largely bypassed point in this discussion is the simple fact that a CGI-character isn't a real person. She could be running around wearing nothing but a bracelet and it still wouldn't be child pornography, because it's a computer animation, not the depiction of an actual person.

I am Norwegian and I actually looked up the relevant laws for the occasion, so take it from the insider: Not child porn, despite this day and age's popular hysteria.

Now, I may be mistaken, but I will assume that Swedish and Danish law are equally commonsensical on the point of computer generated images and animations, and that it can in fact not be considered child porn in any of these countries. Makes me wonder whether those fearful parties who decided to pull the game even bothered to check the relevant laws before smacking the hammer. Hopefully, the article suffers from exaggeration or/and or mis-quotes.

"Sales from three entire countries lost? You're sure we have to do this?"
-"I don't HAVE to be SURE! It could be considered INDECENT and that's criminally illegal!"
"Touché, marketing person. You have convinced me completely."

Priorities in an age of "rape epidemic"...

[tjonnyc999]

Love the priorities.

While this and this is happening, they're concerned about potential panty-shots in a videogame.

No use arguing in a culture of guilt

[UBfusion]

It's weird that most of you were born and raised in christian countries, but few seem to get it.

All western religion is anchored on the concept of guilt. Any stimulus that might cause 'improper' thoughts is called a temptation (facilitating a phantasy of acting on one's thoughts) and therefore it becomes sinful/immoral/illegal not because it actually promotes the commitment of 'bad' acts, but because it will inevitably lead to guilt. Don't forget that "guilty" is the lowest possible existential status of a human person, representing both the biblical Fall of Man and the eponymous verdict in a court of law.

It doesn't matter whether a stimulus comes from photos, pixels or lines/words on paper - if it has the potential to 'offend' i.e. cause feelings of guilt, either intentionally or unintentionally, it is going eventually to be classified as sinful, immoral and illegal. No use bitching at these written or unwritten laws, they originated millenia ago. On the other hand, killing (but not murder) is not only OK and highly appreciated, it even becomes mandatory, especially when killing infidels or enemies at war. Therefore, trying to be clever by pinpointing contradictions or double talk between game violence and game sexuality won't save you in court.

Eastern culture is not based on the concept of guilt and therefore has no moral or legal problems depicting all sorts of 'indecent' (according to the western point of view) materials, a fact causing major headaches to import regulators of literature, animations, films, TV shows and computer games.

Change their age

[wesleyjconnor]

Surely changing the age of the characters in question is going to be cheaper than cutting out an entire country?

Re:Age of Consent in those Countries is like 15 &a

[Anonymous Coward]

There's a difference between the age of consent and age of majority.
In Scandinavian countries you're allowed to have sex if you are over the age of consent, but not take pictures or film it unless you are over the age of majority.

Re:Age of Consent in those Countries is like 15 &a

[Anonymous Coward]

It's true that the age of consent in Sweden is legally 15, but you are still not considered an adult until you are 18. We also have a kind of funny situation here in Sweden where I think most people have a mental view of the age of consent being 18, simply because of the great influence of american culture, when it of course really is 15, but that is rarely talked about.

Re:Age of Consent in those Countries is like 15 &a

[Anonymous Coward]

AoC is not the same as the age of, well, appearing in porn.

Video of bannable content

[BrekiT]

It's been posted in another comment pretty deep down in some conversation, but http://www.csicon.org/child-pornography-laws-blocking-scandinavian-dead-or-alive-release/ has a good video of what the actual bannable content looks like. Quite mild, if you ask me.

Most likely

[Anonymous Coward]

this is due to a combination of:

1) Nintendo thinking Scandinavia is a country, and that that country is basically Sweden,
2) Nintendo's legal department being FULLY aware of (possible NSFW coming up) a recent child porn trial in Sweden that has caused significant controversy over the child porn laws here. They define child pornography as any visual depiction of prepubertal individuals or individuals under the age of 18 in sexual situations (i.e. with absolutely no regard to the nature of the "visual depiction" with regard to the involvement of actual children in actual sexual situations).

Link in Swedish but basically, a leading Swedish anime/manga authority and highly regarded translator was reported to the police by his disgruntled ex in a flabbergastingly successful attempt to get full custody of his children, he was in fact convicted of child porn crime after they found a handful of manga drawings like the one in the link above, among his collection of literally tens of thousands of graphic novels and drawings.

The picture in the link was among a few which were later deemed by a higher instance of the Swedish courts to not in fact be child pornography, but the guy's name has still not been cleared, his life and career are ruined DESPITE the fact that basically everyone outside of the legal system is claiming to be on his side, and last I heard he's still lost his kids.

Also note that although yes, the age of consent in Sweden is 15, the age of porn is 18.

If not that real then all ok, no?

[hesaigo999ca]

If the developers of the game had made them wear regular panties under their skirts, that way even if you did tilt the camera to see under them, you would only see underwear, which you can see in any walmart catalogue where they are modeling them for their customers, then all is ok. No real issue here, my guess though is that the devlopers did NOT make them wear underwear, and left this as an easter egg for those hardcore fans of games like GTA which would allow you to get bonus material once you entered a code, or in this case, once you truly knew how to use camera mode

Re:Also, Norway is not a member of the EU, however

[Anonymous Coward]

This article should say EEA, which Norway is part of it instead of EU. It stands for Europe Economic Area or simply just Europe would be fine as well in geographical sense.