Also happening in Japan. Quite a number of big-name vendors like DMM, DLsite, and others are getting heavy pressure from Visa and Mastercard to censor certain merchandise for no justifiable reason (as in no legal basis) and in some cases have been blacklisted outright.
The Japanese response, and this is after placating the first round of censor demands, has been to reverse-blacklist Visa and Mastercard because Japan realized that giving an inch only means they will then demand a mile, then a league, and so on.
This reads like an American, once again, deciding to enforce American cultural norms on other nations
I'm not defending or condemning any of the artwork in question, just pointing out that American corporations have been forcing through their own cultural norms for decades, even in countries where that may not always be welcome
In turn, this makes American corporations the arbiters of what is de facto legal, despite not being the ones elected to write the laws
> I feel like you are omitting the content that visa and mastercard find particularly objectionable that is commonplace in japan but not elsewhere.
At this point, I would argue that the reasoning isn't even cohesive or unified. Some sites lose all processors (e.g., Amex bails too) whereas others lose only Visa and MasterCard, and the distinctions aren't made clear to end users.
Sure, DMM and DLSite end up offering a large variety of pornography, but it's not just that -- Niconico Douga's premium subscription service was also blacklisted, despite the fact that it's basically just YouTube Premium for Japanese livestreamers (i.e., not pornography).
A lot of people argue that the reason is specific genres of pornography, but the practical reality is that it can be basically any type of content of reason. Stripe considers pornography an industry that's too-hot-to-touch, for example, despite the fact that some processors do work with pornography, and end up charging much higher processor fees for the hassle. A lot of user-generated content, which is wildly uncontrolled, combined with a relatively high risk of refunds, can lead to this type of action without necessarily transgressing a general rule like "this specific variety of pornography is bad".
>DMM and DLSite end up offering a large variety of pornography
What's really twisted is these same payment processors seemingly have no qualms about Steam's large variety of pornography[1], some of which are Japanese eroges[2] (with less/no censoring![3]) that DMM, et al. are demanded to delist.
Banks and payment processors really need to stick to just doing their business, which is securely storing money and facilitating the transfer of money between two parties regarding legal business transactions.
It's clearly Japanese amateur content publishing economy that they are after. They're leaving professional comic/porn sections of same websites as-is, while cutting off multiple amateur bookstore chains[1] altogether. This is not even double standards.
Their intent is undoubtedly to throw wrenches into Japanese manga ecosystem that incubate and train authors rather effectively through out-of-economy feedback mechanisms in social media and self publishing, massively supercharged in the past decade through Twitter; it had proved immune to foreign replication attempts, financial incentives, leverages, even generative AI tools[2]. Those tools don't do much, other than raising barrier to entry by raising expectations and bolstering Japanese dominance.
Some crazy person somewhere must be on a cultural crusade trying to "solve" that problem, not understanding that trying to deny financial incentives just widens the cost-performance gap between Japan and the rest of the West by suppressing market valuation of Japanese manga and anime, allowing it to be more heavily subsidized by authors' dayjobs. They never made money in manga. Introducing money to disinterested then refusing it achieves nothing. Otherwise it makes no sense.
1: as in small videogame-shop-like franchises that specialize in casual self-published books - yes, that's a thing in Japan.
2: AI is completely useless in manga, I mean, there's no way copyright flamewar and watermarking movement existed if it worked. Pornographic voice drama authors[3] are loving it for generating cover arts for free. But even they don't look interested in AI content generation, they just love free covers.
3: yes, it's a thing in Japanese language, seem to be steadily growing even among English speakers. They're picking up Japanese fast. The hardest language on Earth, not anymore.
Omitting that tends to result in more productive discussions. Most people are much more principled when discussing in the abstract than when it comes to something that they have been two minutes' hating for their whole lives.
Your feelings as a non-Japanese have absolutely no bearing on what flies in Japan.
Whether the content concerned is tentacle hentai, or goth lolis, or genderbent King Arthur and Leonardo Da Vinci, or whatever else, that stuff is legal under Japanese law and Visa/MC are violating Japanese rights ordering Japanese creators and merchants to censor them. Visa/MC are quite literally engaging in foreign interference and subversion of democracy and Japan's very culture.
That's a, uh, rather overheated statement and ironically, a very Western point of view. Japan is one of the richest nations in the world, they can (and do) run their own payments systems.
Also, it's risible to call that stuff Japan's "very culture". It's not. Otaku culture is fringe there, too. Japan is not anime.
Also, there are plenty of legal things that are (rightly) publicly shamed and ostracized.
For example, I don't want white supremacists to go to jail for what they say, but I want their lives to be as annoying and lonely as possible.
> For example, I don't want white supremacists to go to jail for what they say, but I want their lives to be as annoying and lonely as possible.
Do you want e.g. electricity companies to refuse to do business with them? Do you think that's a private business decision that doesn't need any particular right of appeal or evidentiary standard?
(The author deliberately presents the notion that a bank account is something different from a utility as though this were an objective, immutable fact of nature, rather than the product of choices that the financial industry makes because it finds it very convenient to think of itself that way)
The idea of making people with 19th century views actually live in 19th century conditions is extremely amusing. We could try it, sure.
On a more serious note, I don't think it's accurate or fair to say it's merely because of industry choices.
The US stretched the idea of the common carrier (ie everyone has equal access to send freight on the railroads) to things like oil pipelines and telecommunications lines. Utilities offer services under license from the government and have special rights and subsidies.
I don't think a bank account is that similar. It's essentially floating you a loan - you can cash a fraudulent check and skip out with the money, for example, and the bank eats the cost.
>Japan is one of the richest nations in the world, they can (and do) run their own payments systems.
Indeed. JCB and certain western credit cards contracted with them for access into Japan (namely AMEX and Discover) have no problems (and why should they) with what Visa/MC want to censor.
>Also, it's risible to call that stuff Japan's "very culture". It's not. Otaku culture is fringe there, too. Japan is not anime.
Tentacle hentai goes back at least as far as Katsushika Hokusai[1], so you are mistaken. Otaku culture is very much a part of Japanese culture and inseparable.
>Also, there are plenty of legal things that are (rightly) publicly shamed and ostracized.
When legal tender cannot be used for legal transactions, there is a problem.
> When legal tender cannot be used for legal transactions, there is a problem
Why? Something being legal for you doesn't make it compulsory for others. With limited exceptions, nobody is required to do business with you.
Also, I must stress again that Japan is a real country with real people. It is not anime, and it's even more risible to point to famous historical porn and say it's analogous to modern porn.
That's like gay slurs are deeply central to American culture because the Roman poet Catallus lost his cool once at some critics.[0]
>> When legal tender cannot be used for legal transactions, there is a problem
> Why? Something being legal for you doesn't make it compulsory for others.
Because this undermines soverignity. Nation monopolizes violence. There can't be a private police with its own laws, that's a mafia. Once an entity has powers comparable to that of the nation it resides in, within few orders of magnitudes, that power must to be destroyed and transferred to the government of the nation.
In this case, the US government, as well as the governments of other nations, will tacitly impose its monopoly on violence against banks, processors, and merchants to ban content it doesn't like. So it was with Wikileaks, and so it goes with ero-manga. The only mafia are the ones prodding the credit card companies into a financial dilemma between legal liability and cutting off a market.
VISA isn't doing it in compliance right now. It's doing its things using "global standards" as an excuse. That behavior is not democratic, and such functions need to be regulated out.
I remember seeing people debating who's the kingpin and where the orders are coming from, as it'll change which of anti-monopoly laws, financial transaction laws, trademark laws, outsourcing laws, etc. would apply or has to be amended.
Whoever it is, it's kind of obvious that the mafia isn't a US or European official government entity or employee. Last I've heard, people doing this research-activism seem to have largely excluded direct involvement of VISA Inc. in US as well as its Singapore subsidiary, and was poking around few specific VPs in VJA or something.
>Why? Something being legal for you doesn't make it compulsory for others.
Money is legal tender for all debts public and private, money has value precisely because everyone can and should use and accept it.
If banks or payment processors inhibit or prohibit my ability to conduct business by refusing to transact my money with no justifiable basis, then that is violating my and the other party's rights to free association as well as destroying the very essence of money.
If you truly do not see the very serious problem here, I'm not sure what it will take to enlighten you.
>Also, I must stress again that Japan is a real country with real people.
You are literally talking to a Japanese man, I probably know about Japan more intimately than you will ever do.
>It is not anime
Otaku culture is an inseparable part of Japanese culture and attacking it like Visa/MC are doing is attacking Japanese culture, what part of that do you not understand?
>it's even more risible to point to famous historical porn and say it's analogous to modern porn.
Kinoe no Komatsu[1] is quite literally a doujinshi-equivalent[2] from its time. Classic Japanese eroges are sometimes featured[3] as a symbol of Japanese culture of its time.
>That's like gay slurs are deeply central to American culture because the Roman poet Catallus lost his cool once at some critics.
Whitewashing histories and cultures is nothing short of reprehensible. Whatever happened to diversity and heritage?
[3]: https://x.com/Ian_Fisch/status/1820897232746594354 - The lower screenshot (it is SFW) is from Words Worth[4]. The dialogue translates to English like so: [Astral]: Hey Katra... Are you always peeping at Sharon when she's naked?
It's a throwaway account intended to be detached and hopefully untracable to whoever the owner/main account is.
What I'm wondering is what point you're trying to make here; account age has no bearing on whether it's a throwaway or not, though the longer a throwaway is used the more it accumulates an identity of its own.
The Japanese response, and this is after placating the first round of censor demands, has been to reverse-blacklist Visa and Mastercard because Japan realized that giving an inch only means they will then demand a mile, then a league, and so on.