It hasn't even been passed into law and the Senate hasn't approved of it either. Unless I'm wrong it still also has to go through the House of Representatives as well too, this bill is about as vague as the new Health Care Law which is currently under the process of getting repealed by the GOP and Tea Party Activists.
It's bad enough that we have fascist dictators from countries around the world like Iran, North Korea, Venezuela, and dare I say it Russia that are out to undermine peace and freedom. Bad enough for the U.S. to become just as bad which I hope is not the case at all. Of course Tokyo Bill 156 proved how corrupt the Japanese Government can be.
Stopping Pirating on the Internet would only lead to the death of the Anime/Manga Industry in America cause where would people get their fix on One Piece which is severely underrated in the U.S. and instead Naruto is still popular in the U.S. when it shouldn't be. The Narutards have no idea how their series has declined in popularity in Japan in 3 years time.
Due to what Cartoon Network's Adult Swim and Toonami hasn't learned, Anime/Manga doesn't range from just the Action Genre, there's other Genre's as well which shows in Anime/Manga's decline on Television when there's more and more people viewing their show's online when they can't even get it on TV. Oblivious to Dubbing Companies especially 4Kids sometimes when they dub an Anime franchise they sometimes don't get the age demographic right for example One Piece.
For a Music Industry standpoint I sort of see where they are coming from, music artists are less motivated to release good music cause they're not getting paid for it and it's like we'll why should we care If nobody's going to buy our albums and singles? This is sort of why we have horrible music from artists like Lady Gaga, Justin Beiber, the Jonas Bros., among other crud.
As for the COICA Bill you really have to wonder what kind of impact it would have on social networking sites like YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Skype, Justin.TV, Yahoo!, eBay, Google, among other forms of social media. It would kill those websites in an instant thus hurting the economies based on those sites, CEOs and people who own websites such as those make money too.
Online Businesses and College's are also under the gun due to this as well too.
I was listening to a Conference on C-SPAN, "Americans Against Hate" regarding Fatah as a Terrorist Organization and it appears that due to a loophole in a Reagan Administration Bill to put Fatah under control it appears as though the US Government is funding for Fatah and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is to blame for it.
On Thursday, the Senate Judiciary Committee unanimously approved a bill that would give the Attorney General the right to shut down websites with a court order if copyright infringement is deemed “central to the activity” of the site — regardless if the website has actually committed a crime. The Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act (COICA) is among the most draconian laws ever considered to combat digital piracy, and contains what some have called the “nuclear option,” which would essentially allow the Attorney General to turn suspected websites “off.”
COICA is the latest effort by Hollywood, the recording industry and the big media companies to stem the tidal wave of internet file sharing that has upended those industries and, they claim, cost them tens of billions of dollars over the last decade.
The content companies have tried suing college students. They’ve tried suing internet startups. Now they want the federal government to act as their private security agents, policing the internet for suspected pirates before making them walk the digital plank.
Many people opposed to the bill agree in principle with its aims: Illegal music piracy is, well, illegal, and should be stopped. Musicians, artists and content creators should be compensated for their work. But the law’s critics do not believe that giving the federal government the right to shut down websites at will based upon a vague and arbitrary standard of evidence, even if no law-breaking has been proved, is a particularly good idea. COICA must still be approved by the full House and Senate before becoming law. A vote is unlikely before the new year.
Among the sites that could go dark if the law passes: Dropbox, RapidShare, SoundCloud, Hype Machine and any other site for which the Attorney General deems copyright infringement to be “central to the activity” of the site, according to Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital rights group that opposes the bill. There need not even be illegal content on a site — links alone will qualify a site for digital death. Websites at risk could also theoretically include p2pnet and pirate-party.us or any other website that advocates for peer-to-peer file sharing or rejects copyright law, according to the group.
In short, COICA would allow the federal government to censor the internet without due process.
The mechanism by which the government would do this, according to the bill, is the internet’s Domain Name System (DNS), which translates web addresses into IP addresses. The bill would give the Attorney General the power to simply obtain a court order requiring internet service providers to pull the plug on suspected websites.
Scholars, lawyers, technologists, human rights groups and public interest groups have denounced the bill. Forty-nine prominent law professors called it “dangerous.” (pdf.) The American Civil Liberties Union and Human Rights Watch warned the bill could have “grave repercussions for global human rights.” (pdf.) Several dozen of the most prominent internet engineers in the country — many of whom were instrumental in the creation of the internet — said the bill will “create an environment of tremendous fear and uncertainty for technological innovation.” (pdf.) Several prominent conservative bloggers, including representatives from RedState.com, HotAir.com, The Next Right and Publius Forum, issued a call to help stop this “serious threat to the Internet.”
And Tim Berners-Lee, who invented the world wide web, said, “Neither governments nor corporations should be allowed to use disconnection from the internet as a way of arbitrarily furthering their own aims.” He added: “In the spirit going back to Magna Carta, we require a principle that no person or organization shall be deprived of their ability to connect to others at will without due process of law, with the presumption of innocence until found guilty.”
Critics of the bill object to it on a number of grounds, starting with this one: “The Act is an unconstitutional abridgment of the freedom of speech protected by the First Amendment,” the 49 law professors wrote. “The Act permits the issuance of speech suppressing injunctions without any meaningful opportunity for any party to contest the Attorney General’s allegations of unlawful content.” (original emphasis.)
Because it is so ill-conceived and poorly written, the law professors wrote, “the Act, if enacted into law, will not survive judicial scrutiny, and will, therefore, never be used to address the problem (online copyright and trademark infringement) that it is designed to address. Its significance, therefore, is entirely symbolic — and the symbolism it presents is ugly and insidious. For the first time, the United States would be requiring Internet Service Providers to block speech because of its content.”
The law professors noted that the bill would actually undermine United States policy, enunciated forcefully by Secretary of State Clinton, which calls for global internet freedom and opposes web censorship. “Censorship should not be in any way accepted by any company anywhere,” Clinton said in her landmark speech on global internet freedom earlier this year. She was referring to China. Apparently some of Mrs. Clinton’s former colleagues in the U.S. Senate approve of internet censorship in the United States.
To be fair, COICA does have some supporters in addition to sponsor Sen. Pat Leahy (D-Vermont) and his 17 co-sponsors including Schumer, Specter, Grassley, Gillibrand, Hatch, Klobuchar, Coburn, Durbin, Feinstein, Menendez and Whitehouse. Mark Corallo, who served as chief spokesperson for former Attorney General John Ashcroft and as spokesman for Karl Rove during the Valerie Plame affair, wrote Thursday on The Daily Caller: “The Internet is not at risk of being censored. But without robust protections that match technological advances making online theft easy, the creators of American products will continue to suffer.”
“Counterfeiting and online theft of intellectual property is having devastating effects on industries where millions of Americans make a living,” wrote Corallo, who now runs a Virginia-based public relations firm and freely admits that he has “represented copyright and patent-based businesses for years.” “Their futures are at risk due to Internet-based theft.”
The Recording Industry Association of America, which represents the major record labels, praised Leahy for his work, “to insure [sic] that the Internet is a civilized medium instead of a lawless one where foreign sites that put Americans at risk are allowed to flourish.”
The only thing I don't like about Glissa the Traitor is that she's a Mythic Rare which is due to EDH/Commander reasons. She should've been a Regular Rare like Fauna Shaman in M11 but I degress. Oh well, at least Ezuri, Renegade Leader wasn't a Mythic, why does Glissa have to be?
I already thought up of a funny spot removal combo for Glissa the Traitor as well. Cast Flight Spellbomb then sack it to give any one of your Opponent's creature's Flying, Plummet the Flyer, then use Glissa's ability to get Flight Spellbomb back from your Graveyard to do the combo over again assuming you draw into another Plummet.
Don't you just love how a plan comes together?
Thopter Assembly seems solid, but I'm even more curious about Hero of Bladehold.
In regards of Japan, I'm gonna say something crazy. You're likely to see increased crime rates with this turn of events.
The sheer irony of the Japanese people is that they're for the most part introverts in comparison to the US or even the rest of their East Asian neighbors. They've had that practically drilled into their DNA as a survival instinct throughout their history.
The only people who are exempt from this social paradigm are people in the media industry, and only in the area where the mass media's hands aren't as strong. A good chunk of more famous people who've contributed to Japanese culture in the past 60 years are idiots or have a few psychological disorders.
In a country as tightly wound as this, you'd need a means of catharsis to relieve excess stress and reduce psychological pressure on an already fragile psyche. East Asia may have some of the most efficient educational systems in the world, but its people don't exactly KNOW anything or have any true sense of self. Without a means of catharsis, you're likely to see increased suicide rates and more people snapping.
People need to run from reality. Capitalism is not fun when it's mixed with a primarily Confucian social paradigm. It leads to the ultimate form of social hierarchy. Social ties are THAT much stronger, leading to THAT much more corruption and influence. When all of that pressure finally gets to you, unless you've experienced at least 3 years of western life, you'll become a shell of your former self that literally can't do anything.
Of course, those who've already gone past the edge are likely to be more heavily influenced by the media and become a danger to society, but that applies to all forms of expression, really. People who've gone past the edge will often become bums, nutcases, or criminals, fitting whatever they come across into their own mindset.
While the industries targetted have been making major mistakes left and right these days, it still had hope for aspiring artists. Now, everybody in the industry is effectively a government official. They can't do anything without the government's approval.
This is a bad joke. They're giving up freedom of speech for effective martial law on the anime/manga/game industry instead of trying to push the social paradigm into a state where the industry is responsible and even the bad is used for an ultimately positive social influence. East Asia NEVER does what it says it'll do. It'll do more in the favor of the people with the most power, and this'll just serve to increase the amount of lobbying that's required to get something done and the amount of control the Japanese government has over the media.
Japan, for all its sick ****-ups and negative aspects throughout the past 100 years, has been at least praised for its social and cultural freedom and diversity when it comes to expression. And otaku culture's been the backbone of it. Now, said culture is gone, and a Japan that's faring badly in most industries in comparison to relatively cheaper(and more corrupt) Korean and Chinese competitors just lost the edge it had.
And the "Sell outside of Tokyo" debate is effectively invalid. The market share for Tokyo is so high that it isn't the majority of Japan, it IS Japan. 80% of your potential customers effectively falling into government surveillance is basically a death blow within the Japanese market.
Japan's decided to turn back to the facism that screwed East Asia over in the first place. The "ethics" part isn't the issue here. It's what the government's likely to do on the pretense of "ethics" to control society. Anything that openly attacks the negative aspects of Japanese society can be treated as material that invokes treason, thus giving the government an iron shield that makes it next to invincible, what with the mass media having already been under their belt forever. It also gives Japan a means to shut down foreign comic/animation/game industries that are trying to make their bid in Japan. Everybody's going to be reduced to sucking up to the government to avoid getting shutdown. And for the most part, it's more or less the equivalent of the age of the Samurai or the dictatorship during World War II where you have to pledge absolute obedience or else you're dead. Just that it's less obvious now.
The last line of defense is the internet. And luckily, said line is something not even governments know how to handle. All we can hope is that the last line can turn the situation around, or East Asia's tensions are eventually going to reach the level between the US and the Soviet Union during the Cold War. Which in turn means lies flying all over the place and entire populations being reduced to government sheep herds.
I don't believe it will destroy the internet cause part of the U.S. Economy relies on the internet itself. Destroying the internet could potentially turn the U.S. into a Third World Country infact I could see it having devastating effects on the Worldwide Economy and you thought the Recession and bailing countries out of debt was just the tip of the iceberg.
Internet businesses such as Google, Skype, Verizon, they all rely on the internet for business. The Internet needs to be free otherwise corrupt politicians are gonna try to get ahold of it and try to turn it to their advantage where people won't have the choices to do what they wanted or had with the Internet in the first place.
If it hasn't we probably wouldn't be alive today no thanks to the Large Hadron Collider or what I like to call Switzerland's advanced super nuclear warhead which far exceeded anything Albert Einstein would fathom.
This law is specifically designed not to protect children, it is designed specifically to kill a cultural movement.
But why kill that cultural movement since it's already been proven to be successful especially for Japan's economy?
Judging by what you're saying it seems as though Ishihara passed this bill in order to not let anyone else in Japan share the same kind of sex fetish that he has.
Talk about being selfish and a corrupt politician at that.... >_>
Regarding Tokyo, it accounts for the majority of Japan's population. Roughly 80%, IIRC. Take Tokyo, and the rest of Japan effectively doesn't matter.
If, the law only restricts distinctly illegal content, it's fine. The industry's been relying on cheap tricks and sex too much. But knowing East Asia, this effectively means no free speech in otaku culture. If somebody's work is deemed unhealthy by the government, it doesn't matter if there are strict standards or not, that person's gonna get lynched by the government. The system's now been rigged so that the politicians have full control over otaku culture. Whatever hope the Japanese industry had left is gone.
We'll probably see government appointed CEOs for major companies and massive lobbying to even get a remote amount of fanservice, corrupting an already unstable industry. Japan seems to be hellbent on following the Korean and Chinese models of a media-based dictatorship after all. They've always had control over everything save otaku culture, so it shouldn't be too hard.
Well incase you didn't know, this law that was recently set in stone only effects Tokyo as Japanese publishers can still sell their content to other regions in Japan despite that Tokyo is their biggest market.
With that said, the Tokyo Governor is a douschebag and still needs to be fired from office. Don't blame Japan as a whole on this, blame their government.
I knew this was going to become law because Ishihara and the Tokyo Metropolitan Party used dispicable tactics to get it through regardless of the opposition of the Japanese public.
Nintendo and other companies are multinationals, and if you know your history of the keirutsu system, unique corporate culture, and pro-corporate policies coupled with parliament's corruption in Japan. You'll know they'll do jack ☺☺☺☺ when jobs begin to be off shored. San Diego, Salt Lake City, San Antonio, New York, London, and other such cities have very good talent pools to make games. Korea is also starting to get good pools of people. Either way, this is a win for the US as we have Nintendo of America and several subsidiary companies or potential subsidiary companies that can and do make games.
Well call me crazy, but I'm concerned that this might effect the release of future Nintendo titles in the works for U.S. Releases especially "Pokemon Black and White" which is expected to be released on the Nintendo DS next year in Spring 2011.
Is there going to be any problems with that? What about other Japanese Video Game Companies like Square Enix or Sega? What's going to happen with the Final Fantasy franchise as well as Sonic The Hedgehog? That sort of thing. What about Level 5's Dragon Quest franchise?
More about "exciting" than quality, which I would argue Bleach falls into, Naruto the middle, and One Piece having the best overall balance and characters. I feel that overall more One Piece and on the American side Avatar: The Last Airbender is what strikes the balance in action series.
You make alot of good points Captain Morgan, however Naruto is overrated in the U.S. for reasons which most people who have followed the Japanese Sub and Manga Scanlations have understood. It's true that One Piece would've been more popular in the U.S. had it not been for 4Kids messing it up despite FUNimation's attempts of resurrecting the franchise in the U.S. but it seems like the damage has already been done I'm afraid.
Avatar: The Last Airbender is a good series but wasn't nearly groundbreaking and the Live-Action adaptation hindered that alot in some ways as being more of a cash grab than good quality with solid storyline consistency. Bleach on the other hand is doing decent but could be better, at best it's just a rip-off of past Anime/Manga such as Yu Yu Hakusho and Rurouni Kenshin.
Naruto just uses the DBZ formula too much to the point where it makes the story very dull as with One Piece it's original where it has an epic storyline followed by a great cast of characters and action to boot as well. Infact you could say that One Piece is the successor of the DBZ formula that Shonen has tried to sway around.
Quote from Captain Morgan »
Tying this back into Japan, they're getting older and therefore more conservative and looking for token morality clauses. The weakness in any legislation is its enforcement. Even if this does have teeth, it means that Anime moves to another country and deprives a country of revenue. The Japanese are concerned about their youth, the first was to try and use debt to build entertainment structures like theatres in external towns and cities which has come back to bite them in the ass. This is the "poor man's version" of that same grab to keep youth in the country to "control the poets" as Plato's Republic built up into his framework for the perfect city-state.
The Japanese Government aren't concerned about their youth, they're only interested in their own political agenda's to undermine the freedom of speech of their youth thus they are violating their own Constitutional rights which have been established in their Government since the Meiji Restoration period. If anything Tokyo Governor Shintaro Ishihara should be fired and replaced by a Japanese politician who has common sense about how the Japanese public feels about this issue, even the Prime Minister knows this is bad for his country yet he's not doing a single thing about it.
I would really hate to think the people in charge of the Anime/Manga Industry would move outside of Tokyo to another famous city like Osaka or something like that. It's not right to change tradition, why start now? Why would the Japanese Government undermine a pop culture that has been successful for 3-4 decades only to turn their backs against it? Why isn't the Japanese public standing up for themselves on this issue? It doesn't make any sense.
If they get their way it could also leave negative impacts not just in Japan but throughout the world even in America, specific video games from Japan would end up getting banned for having any sexual content and/or violence, even Nintendo wouldn't stand up for that sort of thing either. Why do you think Shonen Jump would take this sitting down cause they're not. If anything boycotting Anime Conventions in Japan next year is going to prove how wrong the Japanese Government's policies are and put a negative image on their image to the world as well.
They can't afford that unless they take action and get some freakin' common sense...
It's bad enough that we have fascist dictators from countries around the world like Iran, North Korea, Venezuela, and dare I say it Russia that are out to undermine peace and freedom. Bad enough for the U.S. to become just as bad which I hope is not the case at all. Of course Tokyo Bill 156 proved how corrupt the Japanese Government can be.
Stopping Pirating on the Internet would only lead to the death of the Anime/Manga Industry in America cause where would people get their fix on One Piece which is severely underrated in the U.S. and instead Naruto is still popular in the U.S. when it shouldn't be. The Narutards have no idea how their series has declined in popularity in Japan in 3 years time.
Due to what Cartoon Network's Adult Swim and Toonami hasn't learned, Anime/Manga doesn't range from just the Action Genre, there's other Genre's as well which shows in Anime/Manga's decline on Television when there's more and more people viewing their show's online when they can't even get it on TV. Oblivious to Dubbing Companies especially 4Kids sometimes when they dub an Anime franchise they sometimes don't get the age demographic right for example One Piece.
For a Music Industry standpoint I sort of see where they are coming from, music artists are less motivated to release good music cause they're not getting paid for it and it's like we'll why should we care If nobody's going to buy our albums and singles? This is sort of why we have horrible music from artists like Lady Gaga, Justin Beiber, the Jonas Bros., among other crud.
As for the COICA Bill you really have to wonder what kind of impact it would have on social networking sites like YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Skype, Justin.TV, Yahoo!, eBay, Google, among other forms of social media. It would kill those websites in an instant thus hurting the economies based on those sites, CEOs and people who own websites such as those make money too.
Online Businesses and College's are also under the gun due to this as well too.
Source:
http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2010/11/coica-web-censorship-bill/
I already thought up of a funny spot removal combo for Glissa the Traitor as well. Cast Flight Spellbomb then sack it to give any one of your Opponent's creature's Flying, Plummet the Flyer, then use Glissa's ability to get Flight Spellbomb back from your Graveyard to do the combo over again assuming you draw into another Plummet.
Don't you just love how a plan comes together?
Thopter Assembly seems solid, but I'm even more curious about Hero of Bladehold.
Okay now you're confusing me, Net Neutrality is what we've had or will have up till now. Net Neutrality = Internet Freedom.
Here's how it got resolved by the FCC recently:
http://www.dailyfinance.com/story/fcc-internet-rules-net-neutrality/19772380/
To be honest I don't know why the Republicans are against Net Neutrality, sounds to me like they obviously haven't done their homework on this issue.
In regards of Japan, I'm gonna say something crazy. You're likely to see increased crime rates with this turn of events.
The sheer irony of the Japanese people is that they're for the most part introverts in comparison to the US or even the rest of their East Asian neighbors. They've had that practically drilled into their DNA as a survival instinct throughout their history.
The only people who are exempt from this social paradigm are people in the media industry, and only in the area where the mass media's hands aren't as strong. A good chunk of more famous people who've contributed to Japanese culture in the past 60 years are idiots or have a few psychological disorders.
In a country as tightly wound as this, you'd need a means of catharsis to relieve excess stress and reduce psychological pressure on an already fragile psyche. East Asia may have some of the most efficient educational systems in the world, but its people don't exactly KNOW anything or have any true sense of self. Without a means of catharsis, you're likely to see increased suicide rates and more people snapping.
People need to run from reality. Capitalism is not fun when it's mixed with a primarily Confucian social paradigm. It leads to the ultimate form of social hierarchy. Social ties are THAT much stronger, leading to THAT much more corruption and influence. When all of that pressure finally gets to you, unless you've experienced at least 3 years of western life, you'll become a shell of your former self that literally can't do anything.
Of course, those who've already gone past the edge are likely to be more heavily influenced by the media and become a danger to society, but that applies to all forms of expression, really. People who've gone past the edge will often become bums, nutcases, or criminals, fitting whatever they come across into their own mindset.
While the industries targetted have been making major mistakes left and right these days, it still had hope for aspiring artists. Now, everybody in the industry is effectively a government official. They can't do anything without the government's approval.
This is a bad joke. They're giving up freedom of speech for effective martial law on the anime/manga/game industry instead of trying to push the social paradigm into a state where the industry is responsible and even the bad is used for an ultimately positive social influence. East Asia NEVER does what it says it'll do. It'll do more in the favor of the people with the most power, and this'll just serve to increase the amount of lobbying that's required to get something done and the amount of control the Japanese government has over the media.
Japan, for all its sick ****-ups and negative aspects throughout the past 100 years, has been at least praised for its social and cultural freedom and diversity when it comes to expression. And otaku culture's been the backbone of it. Now, said culture is gone, and a Japan that's faring badly in most industries in comparison to relatively cheaper(and more corrupt) Korean and Chinese competitors just lost the edge it had.
And the "Sell outside of Tokyo" debate is effectively invalid. The market share for Tokyo is so high that it isn't the majority of Japan, it IS Japan. 80% of your potential customers effectively falling into government surveillance is basically a death blow within the Japanese market.
Japan's decided to turn back to the facism that screwed East Asia over in the first place. The "ethics" part isn't the issue here. It's what the government's likely to do on the pretense of "ethics" to control society. Anything that openly attacks the negative aspects of Japanese society can be treated as material that invokes treason, thus giving the government an iron shield that makes it next to invincible, what with the mass media having already been under their belt forever. It also gives Japan a means to shut down foreign comic/animation/game industries that are trying to make their bid in Japan. Everybody's going to be reduced to sucking up to the government to avoid getting shutdown. And for the most part, it's more or less the equivalent of the age of the Samurai or the dictatorship during World War II where you have to pledge absolute obedience or else you're dead. Just that it's less obvious now.
The last line of defense is the internet. And luckily, said line is something not even governments know how to handle. All we can hope is that the last line can turn the situation around, or East Asia's tensions are eventually going to reach the level between the US and the Soviet Union during the Cold War. Which in turn means lies flying all over the place and entire populations being reduced to government sheep herds.
Internet businesses such as Google, Skype, Verizon, they all rely on the internet for business. The Internet needs to be free otherwise corrupt politicians are gonna try to get ahold of it and try to turn it to their advantage where people won't have the choices to do what they wanted or had with the Internet in the first place.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/12/20/net-neutrality-rules-pois_n_799439.html
If we lose Net Neutrality, then America will no longer be a Republican Democracy anymore because Obama sold us out.
http://act2.freepress.net/sign/real_net_neutrality/?source=STNhomepage
Oh and here's the FCC's Guide to Losing Net Neutrality without Really Trying:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/craig-aaron/the-fccs-guide-to-losing_b_795061.html
This is for a great cause, this is for freedom of speech. The Internet is the voice of the people of the world!
This law is specifically designed not to protect children, it is designed specifically to kill a cultural movement.
But why kill that cultural movement since it's already been proven to be successful especially for Japan's economy?
Judging by what you're saying it seems as though Ishihara passed this bill in order to not let anyone else in Japan share the same kind of sex fetish that he has.
Talk about being selfish and a corrupt politician at that.... >_>
If, the law only restricts distinctly illegal content, it's fine. The industry's been relying on cheap tricks and sex too much. But knowing East Asia, this effectively means no free speech in otaku culture. If somebody's work is deemed unhealthy by the government, it doesn't matter if there are strict standards or not, that person's gonna get lynched by the government. The system's now been rigged so that the politicians have full control over otaku culture. Whatever hope the Japanese industry had left is gone.
We'll probably see government appointed CEOs for major companies and massive lobbying to even get a remote amount of fanservice, corrupting an already unstable industry. Japan seems to be hellbent on following the Korean and Chinese models of a media-based dictatorship after all. They've always had control over everything save otaku culture, so it shouldn't be too hard.
With that said, the Tokyo Governor is a douschebag and still needs to be fired from office. Don't blame Japan as a whole on this, blame their government.
I knew this was going to become law because Ishihara and the Tokyo Metropolitan Party used dispicable tactics to get it through regardless of the opposition of the Japanese public.
Well call me crazy, but I'm concerned that this might effect the release of future Nintendo titles in the works for U.S. Releases especially "Pokemon Black and White" which is expected to be released on the Nintendo DS next year in Spring 2011.
Is there going to be any problems with that? What about other Japanese Video Game Companies like Square Enix or Sega? What's going to happen with the Final Fantasy franchise as well as Sonic The Hedgehog? That sort of thing. What about Level 5's Dragon Quest franchise?
You make alot of good points Captain Morgan, however Naruto is overrated in the U.S. for reasons which most people who have followed the Japanese Sub and Manga Scanlations have understood. It's true that One Piece would've been more popular in the U.S. had it not been for 4Kids messing it up despite FUNimation's attempts of resurrecting the franchise in the U.S. but it seems like the damage has already been done I'm afraid.
Avatar: The Last Airbender is a good series but wasn't nearly groundbreaking and the Live-Action adaptation hindered that alot in some ways as being more of a cash grab than good quality with solid storyline consistency. Bleach on the other hand is doing decent but could be better, at best it's just a rip-off of past Anime/Manga such as Yu Yu Hakusho and Rurouni Kenshin.
Naruto just uses the DBZ formula too much to the point where it makes the story very dull as with One Piece it's original where it has an epic storyline followed by a great cast of characters and action to boot as well. Infact you could say that One Piece is the successor of the DBZ formula that Shonen has tried to sway around.
The Japanese Government aren't concerned about their youth, they're only interested in their own political agenda's to undermine the freedom of speech of their youth thus they are violating their own Constitutional rights which have been established in their Government since the Meiji Restoration period. If anything Tokyo Governor Shintaro Ishihara should be fired and replaced by a Japanese politician who has common sense about how the Japanese public feels about this issue, even the Prime Minister knows this is bad for his country yet he's not doing a single thing about it.
I would really hate to think the people in charge of the Anime/Manga Industry would move outside of Tokyo to another famous city like Osaka or something like that. It's not right to change tradition, why start now? Why would the Japanese Government undermine a pop culture that has been successful for 3-4 decades only to turn their backs against it? Why isn't the Japanese public standing up for themselves on this issue? It doesn't make any sense.
If they get their way it could also leave negative impacts not just in Japan but throughout the world even in America, specific video games from Japan would end up getting banned for having any sexual content and/or violence, even Nintendo wouldn't stand up for that sort of thing either. Why do you think Shonen Jump would take this sitting down cause they're not. If anything boycotting Anime Conventions in Japan next year is going to prove how wrong the Japanese Government's policies are and put a negative image on their image to the world as well.
They can't afford that unless they take action and get some freakin' common sense...