Censorship Now on Sale!
I’m still trying to trace back my steps this morning to make sure I never did anything different that would possibly result in me going back to a time when censorship and xenophobia were rampant and respected for being extreme forms of restraint and nationalism.
With the world becoming aware of the SOPA and PIPA bills and people all over the web engaging in protests against the proposals, I was already really shocked, and would rather not opine too much on this topic since I’m not sure I’m the best spokesperson, not having read too much about it, and I don’t want to be responsible for the shaping of opinions without being sure of everything. All I know is that both of them are very well-intentioned projects but projects that propose absurd methods in order to achieve their goal of fighting piracy.
Honestly, I’m all for fighting piracy but using methods such as censorship over social networks and socialization hubs in the U.S. all over the internet is an absurd way of fighting this evil. I don’t even think our society is even ready for this.
The plan of these bills really remind me of a certain importation reinforcement policy that has been put to action here in Brazil, where the president is now having every order of imported goods unpacked and analyzed to make sure they rarely miss any package that should be taxed (taxes here may go as far up as 60% of the product’s original price + shipping). This policy made no sense at all to me because by importing something, not only is it more likely you are buying original goods (and not supporting the intense level of piracy within the country), but in my case, I import goods from other countries because Brazil does not own any sort of Asian music distribution facility, so they’re goods we don’t have anywhere else! If the purpose of such policy is to enhance the circulation of money within Brazil, then shouldn’t there be a Brazilian shop for everything in the world? It’s a policy that’s clearly an easy solution (also very well-intentioned) to a problem that goes way beyond wanting to escape taxes. That’s how I feel about the two bills; it’s an easy solution to an extremely complicated problem.
Anyway, I decided to write this post after I was reading up on some Japanese pop news at aramatheydidnt about how DC, one of the world’s greatest comic book companies, is motivating its consumers to trade in their Japanese manga for American comics:
When I see this I think that it’s a terrible response to the popularity of some manga that have been receiving special re-issues in America and becoming very popular among comic book fans. Sailor Moon, for instance, made it to #1 on the New York Times and the publisher ran out of copies for the first pressing. Dark Horse Comics has also added powerful manga titles to their roster of comics, like Cardcaptor Sakura and Chobits, so maybe this is DC’s way of getting rid of (non-American) competition.
Regardless of the reason behind this, I’m completely floored by this absurd advertisement. I honestly feel like I was taken to World War II and I’m having to watch out for any Japanese product I own because American products are that much better. I really hope this project fails completely because its premise is mind-bogglingly shameful.
I really don’t understand what DC would get out of collecting a bunch of manga, but nothing justifies their slogan of
Robama wants you to buy American!
The world is really beginning to scare me. I always took the idea of history repeating itself for granted, I thought evolution was a concept that would interfere in that terrible cycle, but it really feels like history is never history, there’s always a need for prejudice and repression looming about, it just sleeps in between generations… So much for the beauty and respect of globalization.
