This link has been bookmarked by 5 people . It was first bookmarked on 27 Feb 2008, by Martin Carel.
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07 May 08
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03 Mar 08
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27 Feb 08
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The panel, set up by the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, said Internet service providers (ISPs) should be answerable for breaches of vaguer "minimum regulations" to guard against "illegal and harmful content."
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"Soon after the war we followed the U.S. model with the government issuing licenses through the FCC," Hizumi said. "As one party, the LDP, came to dominate politics, it sought more control of the media so the FCC was abolished. There is no ombudsman here, so the government controls the media directly. With this new bill, the LDP will seek to do the same for the Internet."
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Since then, government's cozy relationship with big media has become legendary, as has the media's self-censorship, which, Hizumi said, had repeatedly restricted the spectrum of voices heard - until the arrival of the Internet started to open the field up to dissent.
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However, Japanese bloggers, wary of future controls on the larger Internet, have been busy pointing to the less obvious material that is also being filtered out on the mobile Internet.
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The existing filtering services in use by the leading Japanese provider, DoCoMo, for example, reveals that categories like "religion" and "political activity/party" are filtered by the software.
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What really strikes Hizumi and others is that there is so little public opposition or debate on a bill that would bring enormous change.
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