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The thoughts, reviews and analysis of Comedy, Romance, Drama and Slice of Life Anime of a College Student

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The Trans-Pacific Partnership – The Trade Agreement that will Destroy the Anime Fandom as We Know It

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Artist: 彩季なお
Artist: 彩季なお

Remember the Stop Online Piracy Act and Protect IP Act from 2011? These acts aimed to stop piracy, but at the same time introduced unintended consequences since the legislation was so broad that companies and government can use it to request internet service providers to censor sites. If thy were to pass, companies can use it to censor your content and limit free speech. Thankfully, people protested and these two legislations died. ACTA (Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement) faced the same fate since it was SOPA-like.

Now, we have a new bogeyman that will threaten free speech, reign in censorship and limit free speech. This will not only destroy anime blogging, but the anime fandom as we know it. That is the TPP, which is commonly referred to as the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a secret trade deal that involves the United States and other Asian countries in the pacific, including Australia, Canada, Japan and others.

This recently leaked treaty has a lot of nasty copyright restrictions that will undermine fair use and make copyright violations a criminal offense. This mean that you might get a hefty fine or even get thrown into jail. With that, I’m going to share some background information about the treaty and then go into certain provisions that will possibly impact the anime fandom as a whole.
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Net Neutrality and Anime – Why you should care?

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Back in 2012, many people in the Anime Blogosphere protested against the Stop Online Piracy Act and Protect IP because it would have ended the Internet as we know it. These two bills eventually caused so much backlash that Congress had to shelve it.

In January of this year, the Supreme Court has shot down FCC’s Net Neutrality rules, which would have protected the free Internet. Just a few days ago, the FCC has decided that they are not going to keep it, thus effectively killing Net Neutrality.

I know that most Anime fans won’t care about this for the fact that he or she might not know what all of this means and/or just want to watch Anime and interact with the community. However, ignoring this will eventually lead to a rude awakening as it can adversely affect legal streaming sites, Anime related blogs, etc., which is why I wanted to share my thoughts about the whole issue.
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Censorship in Anime – Looking back at the Past and Why its Ineffective

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But, they don't look like doughnuts!
But, they don’t look like doughnuts!

When Idolmaster Shiny Festa got released in the United States, it’s apparent that they have removed swimsuits scenes from the game. When I heard about this, I got the idea to write about censorship in Anime since I knew about some pointless changes in the Pokémon anime. Besides the awkwardness, there are some reasons why they do this such as the differences in cultural values. However, some of the reasons why changing or censor some things is not acceptable in my opinion.
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Reflecting on Today’s SOPA/PIPA Strike… (Update)

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As most people knew already, today was the SOPA strike and several anime bloggers like myself have joined in by either blacking out their site or spreading awareness by writing a post about it. If you haven’t known already by now, SOPA and PIPA are two extremely dangerous pieces of legislation that will severely harm freedom of speech, innovation, security and the openness of the Internet. Not only that, it will have profound effects on the Anime Blogosphere as we rely heavily on derivative works to share our thoughts about Anime, which protected under fair use. Most bloggers who didn’t participate and Anime Fans have to realize that this law will not affect everyone in the United States, but everyone if they were to get passed. Therefore, I have been proactively reminding others to keep a close eye on this and take action, even if you are in a different country.

Aside from that, I want to share an exhaustive list that participated or mentioned the bill’s existence (perhaps as an excuse to get out of a post):

With that, the blackout was a success as it caught everyone’s attention even though some very ignorant SOPA/PIPA supporters like Chris Dodd still paints this as a “dangerous” gimmick and usual mainstream media supporters like CNN still against the opposition. On the other hand, the large-scale protest had convinced three co-sponsors to drop their support for the SOPA bill along with thirteen senators dropping support for PIPA, which is good news. Still, the fight isn’t over yet, so we still need to keep the pressure on Congress and supporters for both bills. Continue to spread the word to everyone in the fandom, not just the blogosphere and contact congress! We need to effectively kill both bills so we can keep continuing what we enjoy most, blogging about Anime.

Update: Just today, the creator of the SOPA bill killed it off for good. Not only that, PIPA got delayed indefinitely. This is good news for everyone in the internet, not just our fellow Anime Bloggers. Even with this huge victory, we must stay vigilant so future bills that are similar to these won’t pass by us without our knowledge like the “Indefinite Detention” clause in the NDAA. Needless to say, I hope congress will get behind the OPEN Act that will attack the source rather than the free, open and innovative internet.

Anyway, let’s thank the tech companies, our fellow Anime Bloggers and everyone else who spread the word about this disastrous bill and saved us from censorship… 

SOPA, The Cancer that will kill the Aniblogosphere… in America.

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In the past few years, there are notable and controversial legislations that deemed as the apocalypse of Anime Industry and its fandom. Just last year, I have shared my thoughts on Tokyo passing a very controversial ordinance called “Bill 156” also known as the Nonexistent Youth Bill, which aims to restrict sexual content. Up to this day, the industries’ impact of the bill is still questionable, but that is only the tip of the iceberg. (Image Source)

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Thoughts about Bill 156 and Why the Law is Censoring like it’s 1984.

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Am I angry about this bill? Well yes and I am pretty vicious!

If you have known already, Tokyo pass the very controversial ordinance, Bill 156, which is also known as the “Nonexistant Youth Bill” that have strong support. However, this bill has been called an act of censorship and an apocalypse for the Anime Industry as a whole. While I think the bill is overblown by a certain tabloid blog in the Anime Blogosphere, I still think that this bill is very destructive to the industry and it’s an excuse to promote government-sponsored censorship. (Original Image)

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