Are you a witch? Are you or have you ever been a member of the communist party? Do you sell an R4? You haven’t? Funny because your friends say you do!

Oh haven’t you heard? Witch Hunts are in style once again thanks to Nintendo in Japan. The company, along with a coalition of other gaming industry companies are asking people to rat out people or companies selling the R4 backup player for the Nintendo DS. In a secure and anonymous website users are asked to tip Nintendo off about individuals or companies selling the device which allows you to play downloaded copies of games, they are even going after personal auctions selling an R4. The intention is to use the information in a legal suit Nintendo has against the selling of the device.

Call me old fashioned but when you’re asking your customers to rat out on each other, even on a personal level, that’s just asking for trouble. Thankfully this is only in Japan, sadly this is only in Japan and unless Nintendo somehow insults the nationalist spirit of Japan no one is going to say as much as a peep about it.

[Kotaku]

Back in 2006, avid manga collector Christopher Handley’s life changed dramatically. Expecting to receive a new shipment of manga direct from Japan, Handley was greeted by his local police. The traveling package was marked as suspicious by U.S. Customs agents and protocol required them to open and inspect the contents. What they found among the various manga were seven books containing cartoon representations of minors engaging in sexually explicit acts, read loli-hentai.  Further search and seizure at his home revealed numerous anime related sites (animesuki, animenewsnetwork) and an extensive collection of animated DVDs, some being hentai as well.  A lengthy court battle ensued with the prosecution portraying Handley as would-be pedophile; the defense highlighting the fact he is a “prolific collector”, not one who focuses on specific lolita type manga, but all manga. 

Last week Handley pleaded guilty for lesser charges of possessing obscene visual representations of the sexual abuse of children and mailing obscene material, although many feel Handley was duped into taking the guilty plea rather than continuing the fight. Now comes the sentencing part, Christopher Handley faces up to a 15 year prison term along with $250,000 in fines and of course the loss of his manga. For a collector this can be a death sentence and if imprisoned, the real death rates in prison among pedophiles is higher than other convicted felons. While he is not charged with pedophilia, I doubt convicts will understand the nuances of acquiring and looking at drawings of characters who do not actually exist when the U.S. government doesn’t grasp this concept either.   

 The 2003 Protect Act under which Handley was charged outlaws cartoons, drawings, sculptures or paintings depicting minors engaging in sexually explicit conduct, and which lack “serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.” I am not advocating any type of exploitation of children, but I consider manga having artistic value. At no time during the search of his home or computer records did they find real child pornography nor advocacy of it. Drilled down to the core arguments, this was a guy, who likes reading manga, who has a smaller collection of loli-themed manga engaging in sex acts, in his own home, who is now being punished for a crime, with a max sentence of 15 years. Once again manga are comic books, he is not abusing children and somehow this translates to justice. 

[Wired]

There have been a number of incidents in which online predators have used online gaming services such as Xbox Live as a means to facilitate lewd relationships with minors. A newly purposed Texas bill (HB 22) aims to force convicted sex offenders to register their online handles and gaming persona. Depending on how strictly you interpret the bill, this may bar sex offenders from being able to utilize the internet to access commercial social networking sites. Read: Increasing the overall scope for future applications.

While this bill has not passed the Texas House or Senate, the Lone Star state has launched a major campaign to combat online predators. Being a resident of Texas I find it difficult to believe that such resources to police such a proposal exists. However, I do see the need to limit predator access to minors, but is HB 22 the way to go?

[GamerPolitics]

Ever felt like your experience with a game was so bad that your basic dignity as a gamer was put at stake? Stardock and Gas Powered Games feel your pain, in fact, they feel it so much they think we deserve better. So they went ahead and wrote the Gamer Bill Of Rights which grants 10 basic rights that every gamer should inherently be entitled to. These are as follows:

1. Gamers shall have the right to return games that don’t work with their computers for a full refund.
2. Gamers shall have the right to demand that games be released in a finished state.
3. Gamers shall have the right to expect meaningful updates after a game’s release.
4. Gamers shall have the right to demand that download managers and updaters not force themselves to run or be forced to load in order to play a game.
5. Gamers shall have the right to expect that the minimum requirements for a game will mean that the game will adequately play on that computer.
6. Gamers shall have the right to expect that games won’t install hidden drivers or other potentially harmful software without their express consent.
7. Gamers shall have the right to re-download the latest versions of the games they own at any time.
8. Gamers shall have the right to not be treated as potential criminals by developers or publishers.
9. Gamers shall have the right to demand that a single-player game not force them to be connected to the Internet every time they wish to play.
10. Gamers shall have the right that games which are installed to the hard drive shall not require a CD/DVD to remain in the drive to play.

Stardock and Gas Powered Games are adhering to these principles with every game they create and are looking to gather industry support in what would eventually become a consortium that would watch over the industry and ensure that you, as a gamer, get a fair deal. The boys over at EDGE are having a through discussion about this and I strongly suggest you at least glance over it. We’ve been getting the short end of the stick more and more in the last couple of years, its about time something like this happened.

Now if only we could get the same for anime DVDs and video game movie adaptations…

[EDGE]