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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.
How can us Scandinavians be smug about American prudishness now?!
Don't bother clicking the link. There aren't any pictures.
Child? You call those virtual plastic-y goddesses of bounce physics CHILDREN?
What is becoming of this world...?
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.
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Speak for yourself, I want my grave to be made of glass so I can look up girls' dresses after I die.
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?
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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
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.
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.
ASCII stupid question, get a stupid ANSI
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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Pedantry is its own reward.
They feared that it could be used to suppress protest or support unpopular rule.
Only twelve! And it's amputee porn you sicko!