You can't have it because I don't like it

[Dalton]

This is particularly relevant information for Keep users, since, if you are, for instance, a furry - one day a government (possibly yours) is going to rule that it is a offense to view sexual pictures of a certain nature.

I decided to make a new thread rather than putting political angst into a thread dedicated to web browsers.

This kind of thing bothers me a lot, about censorship in general and especially USA since we're supposedly the beacon of free thought and independence and etc. Half of banned video games or pornography get banned not for moral reasons, but because some judge or politician catches their teenage child doing something (Playing DOOM, browsing a hentai site, or something) and gets all ticked off at the pixelated blood and boobs and decides that since HE doesn't like cartoon boobs and pixel blood, the rest of the country must not either! And so it begins.

To site exact examples of the video game censorship is tricky as it requires examining video games as they differ from region to region. A well known example among Castlevania fans is Bloodlines. Hailed as one of the first truly gory Castlevania games, European gamers were delighted to buy the game, turn it on, and see enemies spraying puddles of... water! Yes, blood was removed from the game. Pools of blood became mud puddles and the many instances of dripping blood were instead drops of water. Apparently in the early 90s the King of Europe was offended by pixel blood and decided England shouldn't be allowed to see it, and that a "mature" rating wouldn't cut it--it had to be BANNED altogether because adults cannot make their own decisions in regard to pixel blood.

Similarly there is apparently a law against children being in violent video games. If you have a first person shooter or role playing game in which somebody dies a violent death (say Half Life, Oblivion, Final Fantasy 1 2 3 4 5 6lk4140912) the European government will not allow children in the game. You can't even have children if they're totally separated--like, say, the violence happens in the wilderness, then you go back to town and you can talk to a child. No can do. It's not like we're even talking about having a game where you kill the children, just let them EXIST so I don't wander around the city wondering what weird radiation has caused the entire population to go sterile.

I hear Fable II has children in the game but they're impossible to kill (though you can kill your fifty wives, just not the children you had with them). I guess that's a step in the right direction. Except I'm not sure if this game is actualy allowed in Europe? Somebody from the motherland needs to fill me in on this mystery.

But I digress. I just complained a bit about Europe, but here's USA's quirks. Up until recently only adult only games in USA could make even PASSING references to any kind of alcohol or drug, or say swears. Among other things, this has led Nintendo of America to ban these things from their games (they refuse to put their seal on an 'adult only' game) which is why you have famous blunders like beer being soda in almost every squaresoft game on the SNES, and swears being replaced with ridiculous phrases like "YOU SPOONY BARD".

Also homosexuality has until VERY VERY recently been completely banned from games here. At least it seems to be banned. At least half the RPGs I play I end up noticing two characters acting very suspiciously, and I look it up and sure enough in Japan the characters were gay but in USA they're just "blood brothers" or some nonsense. You guys all know I'm not exactly the most pro-gay person in the world but I AM pro-first amendment, and AFAIK video games are just as protected as any other form of speech and expression. If I decide I dislike a game because of its content that is my choice as an adult. I don't need federal governments or professional importation teams deciding that they're offended so as a result they need to prevent me from seeing it as well.

And since I mentioned porn, here's the deal. George Bush, among other brilliant moves, created the PROTECT Act about five years ago. This was meant to crack down on the distribution and possession of child pornography (which is a good thing) by enforcing strict punishments for even possessing child porn, or non-explicit images with extremely suggestive poses that are not for an artistic or moral purpose. Aside from the fact that this leaves a lot up to interpretation from possibly very biased juries as to exactly what 'artistic' is, the real problem is such: The law also bans anything that even distantly resembles depictions of people or characters under 18 years old. So if you're an American and you have lolicon, or even hentai of a character meant to be in the 14-17 age range, you're breaking the law. Yeah, sounds stupid doesn't it? The "high school crush" plots of Japanese hentais are possibly the most common and popular out there next to alien tentacle rape.

And really, it's legal to have a video or manga where a demon from Hell cuts a woman in half and tentacle rapes her innards, but if you have one where an under-18 boy and girl engage in consensual intercourse you're now guilty of a FELONY? I'm not sure what the basis of this judgement call is. If you think that cartoon lolicon will make men into child rapists, wouldn't rape hentai involving adult women do the same thing? Or violent hentai encourage men to beat their lovers?

If you think I'm just making this one up... http://www.japanator.com/elephant/post.phtml?pk=8753

"Handley's case is deeply troubling, because the government is prosecuting a private collector for possession of art," says CBLDF Executive Director Charles Brownstein.  "In the past, CBLDF has had to defend the First Amendment rights of retailers and artists, but never before have we experienced the Federal Government attempting to strip a citizen of his freedom because he owned comic books. We will bring our best resources to bear in aiding Mr. Handley's counsel as they defend his freedom and the First Amendment rights of every art-loving citizen in this country."

I'm waiting for the day the government bans yiff because I got enough on my computer to go to prison for life.

I'm done with this for now, but if you consider yourself a proponent of free speech stop sometime and think about how many TV shows, books, video games, movies, song albums, etc get banned by the government because somebody you elected thinks you're incapable of making adult decisions.

Because remember, if they were trying to keep it away from children they would label it "adult only", not ban it outright. By banning anything outright they are making the statement that you are not capable of forming your own opinion of the matter, and that freedom of speech somehow does not extend to the person whose material they are prohibiting.

[Ytts]

This is particularly relevant information for Keep users, since, if you are, for instance, a furry - one day a government (possibly yours) is going to rule that it is a offense to view sexual pictures of a certain nature.

This kind of thing bothers me a lot, about censorship in general and especially USA since we're supposedly the beacon of free thought and independence and etc.

To be fair, I should indicate that I am not thinking the US will head in this direction. It is the situation in the UK that I find the most troubling and while I could go on at length at the nature of things going on there, it's probably better if I don't.

I will however state that a root cause of the intrusions into our civil liberties* lay with the diminishing amount of privacy we enjoy. In the past, it was completely unfeasible for a government to know the details of what any given citizen was up to; so even if they have passed a law (such as: homosexuality is a crime) it was still possible for a person to be homosexual and not get charged with a crime, so long as they hid it, at least when the government came around.

With diminishing privacy and computers, however, it's becoming possible for a government to know virtually everything about a given citizen and what they're up to. Coupled with an ability to apply immediate, direct punishment without delay (fines automatically deducted from your bank account, barred from holding various occupations, ASBOs, social shaming, etc) we are approaching a state in the development of society where we can have completely effective and comprehensive "justice" applied to us.

The only people who will escape from this situation are those already above much of the law: large corporations, politicians and other powerful people; and people who make a living breaking the law and are very good already at evading justice - criminals.



There will be no end to people trying to pervert the justice system with oppressive new laws. This is nothing new. What is changing is the old protections we enjoyed against idiotic laws and oppresive restrictions are vanishing. Our freedom is inextricably tied to our privacy; to lose one is to lose both.


* and please realize that the following comments have nothing to do with some of the situations described in the bulk of Dalton's message, but is instead a general comment on all things we ought to consider a right, such as criticizing our leaders, engaging in peaceful protests, and otherwise.

[Dalton]

That's really rather disturbing when you think about it, the fact that laws meant to stop crime end up punishing more law-abiding citizens than criminals. And sadly it's something that most people don't GET. You have no idea how many times I've debated, say, possession of firearms, and tried to explain that making guns illegal has no effect on a person who acquires them illegally in the first place--that is, criminals. It only strips liberties and protections from those who already submit to the law. The same can be said of free speech, religious practices/lack thereof, sexual orientations, etc.

If our law enforcement were ideal this wouldn't be much of a problem of course. They would overlook stupid little things and save their budget for important stuff. If I'm not mistaken it costs a great deal of time and a greater deal of money to investigate a person, starting with tracking down IP addresses to physical locations, then search warrants, dispatching police to arrest the individual and search their home, and finally getting some computer experts to spend who knows how long searching the computer hard drives for evidence. If this were reserved for people who are serious threats (ie distributors of actual child porn, people planning out the details of terrorist activity, whateve) then that's one thing. It's nice to know that FBI is so desperate to catch SOMEBODY that they're blowing hundreds of thousands of dollars in tax payer money to bring individuals to court for things like insulting people on Myspace (yes somebody was convicted of that, unfortunately cannot cite a link right now) or possessing imported mangas.

[Soja]

You think it's bad here or in the U.K., check out Germany, as far as video game censorship goes. I'm not too up to date with censorship in, like, games and such, because whatever's going on isn't affecting things enough for me to notice personally. In fact, I thought the ESRB has been getting less restrictive lately.

[Ytts]

If I'm not mistaken it costs a great deal of time and a greater deal of money to investigate a person, starting with tracking down IP addresses to physical locations, then search warrants, dispatching police to arrest the individual and search their home, and finally getting some computer experts to spend who knows how long searching the computer hard drives for evidence. If this were reserved for people who are serious threats (ie distributors of actual child porn, people planning out the details of terrorist activity, whateve) then that's one thing. It's nice to know that FBI is so desperate to catch SOMEBODY that they're blowing hundreds of thousands of dollars in tax payer money to bring individuals to court for things like insulting people on Myspace (yes somebody was convicted of that, unfortunately cannot cite a link right now) or possessing imported mangas.

My point in the preceding post is that the cost to do this is falling rapidly by the centralization of large stores of data. Who needs to search your hard drive or find out who your IP address belongs to if all it takes is a subpoena to Yahoo to get all the information they need right there? Similarly, especially in the UK, the cost to actually punish a person for something is falling rapidly. Who needs to arrest anyone or send them to jail or have a real trial when you can hit them with ASBO (anti social behaviour order) for the cost of a couple hours of work?

These key factors (more readily available evidence and falling costs to perform certain legal sanctions against people) will ensure that it will be increasingly easier to enforce the sort of oppressive social laws you're talking about.

There will be a day (and it will likely be China, first) where the entire process becomes automated. Search for democracy, the next day you get a letter in the mail informing you you've lost the right to leave the country.



Not for the sake of depressing anyone, but let's detail what an ASBO is to give some perspective.

ASBOs are in effect an order that can be applied to anyone in the UK over the age of ten to prevent them from any number things, including but not limited to barring them from government property, imposing curfews, preventing them from leaving the country, organizing or participating in parties, using computers and/or the internet, becoming involved in environmental or political protests and/or organizations, driving, swearing, attending specific institutions.

A large number of people have the power to apply ASBOs. We can start with the police and judges, registered social landlords, city councilors, town officials and, soon, citizens with special designations that give them the power to hit their neighbors with one of these orders.

If successful (and nearly all of them are - less than 50 ASBOs of the 3000+ issued before march 2004 have actually been overturned) they will criminalize the activity the person has been accused of, even if it is something like a peaceful political protest and can carry jail time (five years) and hefty fines for the person who breaks the order. Similarly, there is legislation on the books to remove the right to appeal against these ASBOs, and hearsay is already permitted as evidence; they do not have to prove you have done anything wrong, merely have someone say that you have.

They are the perfect tool of any perverse government; secretive, nearly impossible to escape, and readily circumvent the established justice system with nigh immediate punishment. But they are not just tools of the government - anyone in a position of power has the capacity to use and abuse these orders to their own gain and the detriment of others. They have been used to order farmers to kill their chickens because the noise woke their neighbor up one morning, by landlords against tenants, by city councils to quash political opposition during election times.

And so it is. We have far more important things to worry about than just whether you can play topless characters in video games.

[Dalton]

Now Webby, I do hope you realize that I am more offended by the principals BEHIND the things I complained about in my rant than the specific incidences I mentioned? You're right, pixel boobs aren't that big of a deal. That's precisely why I find it hard to believe what a big fit it causes and how much trouble people get in for it.

I suppose my question is how I can gain enough public support to oppose this kind of stuff without having to be a martyr first. I can only feel that if I were to lobby against the very things being discussed in this thread then half the people would simply think I'm a conspiracy theorist, and the other half would immediately assume the reason I am so interested in privacy and anonymity is because I'm trying to get away with something.

and frankly I suck at politics because I am entirely untactful and dislike compromising on things that I consider black and white. .. Wanna be my agent, Webby?

[Ytts]

Now Webby, I do hope you realize that I am more offended by the principals BEHIND the things I complained about in my rant than the specific incidences I mentioned? You're right, pixel boobs aren't that big of a deal. That's precisely why I find it hard to believe what a big fit it causes and how much trouble people get in for it.

Yes, of course. I just wanted to keep my responses general; I would not want to be quoted out of context. The principle of the thing is what is the big deal, and I certainly agree there.

I suppose my question is how I can gain enough public support to oppose this kind of stuff without having to be a martyr first. I can only feel that if I were to lobby against the very things being discussed in this thread then half the people would simply think I'm a conspiracy theorist, and the other half would immediately assume the reason I am so interested in privacy and anonymity is because I'm trying to get away with something.

I run into the same thing whenever this discussion seems to come up. There's a lot of people who will automagically lump you into the crackpot bin if you suggest than anything is less than hunky dory - one is supposed to complain only about established and long running gripes, like taxes and owning guns, it seems.

the other half would immediately assume the reason I am so interested in privacy and anonymity is because I'm trying to get away with something.

There really isn't much of a way to get around these people. My only suggestion is that perhaps we ought to put people who hold this view under surveillance. : )

[Elijah]

Chicken butt! HAH!

(This thread was progressing too normally for my comfort.)

[Tamagotshii]

You should look at Australia's videogame censorship... we were almost disallowed to even get a release of Fallout 3 due to drug use. We eventually had a release, but a few scenes were cut out >>

We don't even have an 18+ rating for games, so you know... think of the many games our political bastards will throw into the bonfire.

Also, if this thing passes (highly doubtful, I will say), Australia's internet will become a 'safe haven' for children all over the country (no porn for us... or anything harmful/disturbing to children). Even adults who don't have children will have to put up with it, along with an 80% slower internet.

[Fox]

WJ ain't lying. That IS the sort of nanny-state PC wet "liberal" bullshit twats like Jacqui Smith and Lears have introduced here.

[Elijah]

Well, ya don't have to love your government, as long as you love your country.