Stories about Japan

Japan: The Police Don't Want You to Use Tor [UPDATE]

  23 April 2013

According to an April 18 news report, Japan's National Police Agency may soon urge Internet Service Providers to 'voluntarily' block the use of Tor, the anonymous online communication system. The NPA report carrying this announcement has not been formally released; whether NPA will actually put this move into practice remains unknown.

OpenNet Initiative Releases Results on Filtering in Asia

  17 June 2009

From the Great Firewall to the Myanmar Wide Web, Asia is well-known for its practices in Internet filtering. China has long taken the lead in blocking Web sites, filtering sites across the spectrum – from social to political content, pornography to Internet tools. The OpenNet Initiative (full disclosure: I'm involved)...

Japan: Bloggers respond to new filtering measures

  5 February 2009

Over the past week, Japan's major mobile phone operators have commenced filtering web access on mobile phones contracted to minors (users under 18 years of age), following on legislation introduced in late 2007 and on developments over the last year toward the regulation of “harmful” content. On January 30th, NTT...

Japan: Mixi in hot water over terms of use revision

9 March 2008

Japan's hugely popular social networking site Mixi is in hot water this week after news [ja] that a proposed revision to its Terms of Use (ToU), to become effective as of April 1st, will force its users to agree to grant Mixi no-royalty, non-exclusive rights over all content published on...

Japan: Final Report on Internet Regulation

16 December 2007

The idea that a country boasting one of the world's most active net cultures, with possibly the world's largest blogosphere and almost certainly its largest online forum, would attempt to regulate online content within its borders may appear to some not only far-fetched, but infeasible. Plans unveiled (with little fanfare)...