Censorship laws?

[hellabaloo]

Good morning,

I would like to start off with an apology. There's a possibility this topic has already been discussed ad nauseum somewhere else on the forum, I was unable to find it here or elsewhere on the 'net.

I noticed that around late 2016 there was a change in the way all JAVs were mosaic'd. Where before there were noticeable differences in the ways that each studio censored their videos, U & K being a special mention with their 'barely there' mosaics (a favorite, if you couldn't tell), but now every studio has a uniform, hard-to-tell-what-I'm-looking-at, strict-seeming mosaic applied to their videos.
Was there a new law passed in Japan laying down firm guidelines regarding censorship? It would have to be something like that, seeing as how it affected all the studios I follow at roughly the same time, but I haven't been able to find any mention of such an occurrence anywhere.

I guess this post boils down to is 'confirm what I dread happened to all JAVs for the foreseeable future'

Thank you

 

[Inertia]

Ethics companies since late 2016 I believe is when they all pretty much uniformly started requiring thicker mosaic to be used. It's a "look we're upstanding companies" push-back against some of the recent controversies. You also may notice that on big VOD sites the thumbnails have extra mosaic added to them.

My take: mosaic thickness moves in waves and what we're seeing isn't permanent. Studios hate mosaic as much as their fans do.

 

[ribeav]

Ethics companies since late 2016 I believe is when they all pretty much uniformly started requiring thicker mosaic to be used. It's a "look we're upstanding companies" push-back against some of the recent controversies. You also may notice that on big VOD sites the thumbnails have extra mosaic added to them.

My take: mosaic thickness moves in waves and what we're seeing isn't permanent. Studios hate mosaic as much as their fans do.

After 2020 things will change. Japan need "Me too" movement like external pressures to improve the freedom of expression.

 

[ding73ding]

My take: mosaic thickness moves in waves and what we're seeing isn't permanent. Studios hate mosaic as much as their fans do.

Right if you follow JAV more than 10 years you see every few years the mosaic gets thinner and thicker somewhat regularly.

Was there a new law passed in Japan laying down firm guidelines regarding censorship? It would have to be something like that, seeing as how it affected all the studios I follow at roughly the same time, but I haven't been able to find any mention of such an occurrence anywhere.

What we found recently, to our horror, is that under long standing Japanese laws, sex vids (not the exact legal term, but you and I know what it is) is plain and simply illegal. But like so many Japanese laws, implementation and enforcement is something else.

In practice, the authority don't enforce the law as long as the "society" doesn't found the industry practice exceed some unspoken "community standard". So the industry sets up an unofficial committee, IPAA. And every studio sends their products to be reviewed by IPAA, and if they approve, put an stamp on the vid and the studio proceed to sell the product. So far, products with the IPAA stamp have not been prosecuted by the authority. But as I understand, no police, legislature or government officials have ever officially recognized IPAA's authority.

So if IPAA started enforcing thicker mosaic, it's reflecting the industry (via IPAA) feeling "the heat is on" and doing what they think/hope will keep the authority off their back. But in fact there's no guarantee that we may encounter a "regime change" and even thick mosaic won't be enough. So far... this is still just a hypothetical black swan event.

After 2020 things will change. Japan need "Me too" movement like external pressures to improve the freedom of expression.

Do you even know what #Metoo means???

 

[ribeav]

Right if you follow JAV more than 10 years you see every few years the mosaic gets thinner and thicker somewhat regularly.


What we found recently, to our horror, is that under long standing Japanese laws, sex vids (not the exact legal term, but you and I know what it is) is plain and simply illegal. But like so many Japanese laws, implementation and enforcement is something else.

In practice, the authority don't enforce the law as long as the "society" doesn't found the industry practice exceed some unspoken "community standard". So the industry sets up an unofficial committee, IPAA. And every studio sends their products to be reviewed by IPAA, and if they approve, put an stamp on the vid and the studio proceed to sell the product. So far, products with the IPAA stamp have not been prosecuted by the authority. But as I understand, no police, legislature or government officials have ever officially recognized IPAA's authority.

So if IPAA started enforcing thicker mosaic, it's reflecting the industry (via IPAA) feeling "the heat is on" and doing what they think/hope will keep the authority off their back. But in fact there's no guarantee that we may encounter a "regime change" and even thick mosaic won't be enough. So far... this is still just a hypothetical black swan event.


Do you even know what #Metoo means???

Irrelevant in this context? I mean just an example of foreign pressures.

 

[Inertia]

ding: think yo mean IPPA.

IPPA is more of a industry-wide organization. There are like a half dozen Ethics companies studios can submit their works to for the seal of approval. I've no idea though nowadays which of them is the strictest/most lenient. I'm taking an educated guess here as well, but I'm sure studios that have their titles distributed by XYZ rather than doing it themselves may be locked into picking an Ethics companies that XYZ owns/works with (hello kickbacks).

There's also the issue of not even needing to submit your works there. Up like two years ago you could have your wares on the big sites in Japan w/o the seal.

There's also very little from stopping a studio from following the western paysite model. Credit card processors in Japan seem a bit more lax and while they will check to ensure some mosaic is used, it may not be as stringent as Ethics companies. This leads to situations where smaller studios may submit their works to Ethics companies with thick mosaic, but may sell thinner mosaic versions on their site, smaller shops, etc.

 

[hellabaloo]

Thank you all very much for the replies, I very much appreciate your responses.
Here's to hoping for a thinner mosaic in the near future