Recent VN Regulations and Restrictions

Ok well, time to spill forth and collect the news that have been affecting a certain sect of the Visual Novel industry. To be specific, it's the eroge industry. Now for most of you, you probably won't give a damn, and don't really care, so you don't really need to read this. But it is quite interesting to read anyways.

The beginning came from this article on Canned Dogs.
"TBS news reports that all rape games will be banned from sale or production in Japan. It has been decided. It is estimated that this particular genre takes up about 10% to 20% of the entire industry but the PC software independent review committee has made the decision to ban all these games."
To sum it up for you, it wants to ban rape games. Simple, right?




Oops.
TBS apparently jumped the gun on the Ethics Organization of Computer Software (EOCS) meeting, and kinda brought the news too early. Whoops.

Results.
Ok well, looks like they confirmed it this time that rape games will be banned. That's good. I wasn't a big fan of the rape genre though. But as you can see from various comments on these pages, there's a lot of backlash from the community over this decision.

The Terms of the Contract.
Funny comments from the companies people, (especially VisualArt's) but that's not the main focus of this article.

Words such as “training” (調教) or “slave”, among others, are not allowed in the title or packaging

HCG involving sexual violation cannot exceed 20% of a game’s total HCG count (ie: can’t try to build this up by having lots of everyday life CG events)

Even if it’s below 20%, anything that is promoting a criminal offense is not allowed

Anything that promotes rape, confinement, stalking, domestic violence, and portrays it in a way that the offender gains something out of it is not allowed

New games that have already passed the review process by the EOCS are considered “safe” from this

Regulations stated in the fax are completely different from what was being discussed in the emergency meeting yesterday

New regulations starts 5th of June

This looks fine to me, but do points 2 and 3 seem a bit contradictory? Lessee, sexual violation is not a criminal offense? That seems weird?
But as I stated, I wasn't a fan of the rape genre, and so, here's the first step into the current "VN Crisis."
"Oh yeah, hypnosis is okay, apparently."
As you can see from the posts again, there is much different split opinions between the two sides. Those who support the ban state...Well I can't pull anything out right now. It's too complex for me.
But those who oppose the ban are on the state that it's not the rape games that cause people to rape, as Japan has a low rape percentage (That's true actually.)
Obviously.

No comment.
Wait. What the HELL DID YOU SAY?!

Here's a good one.

"Norn also reports that the various sides are still having negotiations right now, but there is currently a possibility that games featuring non-human heroines (robots, elves, cat girls, vampires etc) may no longer be accepted for sale."
This is something I must take a stand on. What is the different between non-human characteristics and humans? The only difference is that heroines such as robots, cat girls, and so on are given human characteristics through a fairly common literary method called anthropomorphism. But where do you draw the line between humans and non-humans? Read the comments for more debating topics.
List of banned items
For those too lazy to click on this link, the following will be restricted (Noticed, not banned.)

Rape

Loli

Gang Rape

Sexual violence (陵辱)

Cruel sexual play (鬼畜)

Reverse rape

Shoujo

Forbidden sex (相姦)

Reverse sexual violence (逆陵辱)

Forced (強要)

Multiple play (複数プレイ)

School council (生徒会)

Bestiality

Bondage

Threaten

Train groping (車内わいせつ)

Enjo Kousai (wikipedia link)

Incest

Torture

Bind tightly (緊縛)

Pregnant

Rape (強姦) (another way to refer to rape)

Slave

Pregnant woman

Imprisonment

Impregnation

Hmmmm. This looks like common sense to me. But in my opinion, the two main topics may affect me are the loli and shojo aspects. And in reading this regulation term, you see that nothing of the yaoi genre is affected much <_<.

And just recently, minori, a big (or pretty popular) company has now banned any foreign IPs from entering their site because

"Some foreigners seem to be having an antipathy against EROGE.
Therefore, We prohibited the access from foreign countries, to defend our culture.
Sorry for you of the fan that lives in a foreign country."

More strict regulation because of much of the foreign outbursts against EOCS.
(But ironically, minori website is set in the philippines domain, and I don't think the philippines can access it either.)

What does this mean to you? Probably not a hell of a damn lot.

But to people who are into the genre of VN, this seems to be the first step into regulation, but it could mean a step too far in one direction, and this could end up being a very big issue.
Or not. It just depends.
My Stand
Ugh my opinion. Well, I see how rape is a bad thing. I don't need a damn regulation to tell me that rape is bad.

"Dear Tony,
Unlike the readership of the Daily Mail, we, your humble readers, do not need to be told that rape is "depraved", "sick" or "twisted" -- we are intelligent enough to know this for ourselves.
Please stick to reporting the facts and desist from trying to tell us what to think or feel.
Yours,
A. Reader. "
Quote from one of the articles mentioned above sum this up nicely. But they ban rape as a beginning. Now they're moving into the grounds of different aspects of VN. The shojo aspect, the lolicon aspect, and the bondage.

Many people accuse EOCS of being feminist, and it looks kinda right in a way. There seems to be no mention of the shouta aspect or yaoi within games, but maybe it's because they're not popularized as much.

I can only see what happens next. I a bit sad over these news, but I have a bad feeling it's going to start delving into a more common genre, and will start affecting more than just VN readers.
I can see murder being another target...Wait. How come EOCS hasn't tackled that just yet?