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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."
Norway isn't a member of the EU.
I don't think it would ruin the story for the developer to just bump the age by one year.
At what age do men stop looking up girls dresses? Does it really matter?
More like Dead on Arrival then?
There's a spot in User Info for World of Warcraft account names? Really?
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.
How can us Scandinavians be smug about American prudishness now?!
All new games should come with porn modes.
Don't bother clicking the link. There aren't any pictures.
Some 30 year old women look like that. So we can define that "look" to be 30.
Child? You call those virtual plastic-y goddesses of bounce physics CHILDREN?
What is becoming of this world...?
So it's OK to have 17 year old characters pummel each other so long as you don't see their underwear?
Make them 18!
Norway has ties to the EU through various treaties which force most of the EU laws on Norwegian citizens anyway.
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?
PlusFive Slashdot reader for Android. Can post comments.
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.
All hope abandon ye who enter here.
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?
"Work is the curse of the drinking classes." -Oscar Wilde
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.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
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.
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.
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.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
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.
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.
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..
It's because Sweden, Norway and Denmark are the same distribution region.
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?
Have gnu, will travel.
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.
Twinstiq, game news
The headline could lead one to believe that the EU is afraid of porn, which they certainly are not.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
No, the legal age for watching porn is 16
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.
My -1 Troll is actually a +1 funny. And my -1 flame is actually a +1 insightfull.
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.
More Dead or Alive here!
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
But the legal age to appear in said porn is 18. :P
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.
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).
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
... and that is that you can look-up the dresses of Ayane, Koroke, and Kasumi and apparently see something pornographic, and in 3D
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.
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.
Loony, an upskirt cartoon is porn. Anyway, as they say on /b/, PICS OR IT DIDN'T HAPPEN.
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!
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.
Molestation? Where's the molestation in that? Young sexuality doesn't mean rape.
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.
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.
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.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
or delete stupid_law;
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.
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
Pedantry is its own reward.
They feared that it could be used to suppress protest or support unpopular rule.
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.
Those who can't do, teach. Those who can't teach either, do tech support.
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.
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!
Be seeing you...
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?
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
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...
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.
Have gnu, will travel.
Lines on a piece of paper aren't children. They're lines on a piece of paper.
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.
Artix
Your Linux, your init.
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).
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?
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.
Don't tailgate - the end is near!
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.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Love the priorities.
While this and this is happening, they're concerned about potential panty-shots in a videogame.
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.
Surely changing the age of the characters in question is going to be cheaper than cutting out an entire country?
http://www.awfullybigmoustache.com
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.
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