What we do is basically for people who are having censorship problems in their home
country, we relocate the information electronically so it' served from a different
country. Somewhere where the laws are liberal enough to accept the information. In that
way, people can publish their information electronically and avoid prosecution. It can be
anything from totally normal corporate stuff to totally offbeat stuff like drugs,
pornography, even political stuff. for instance, in Japan, it's illegal to publish
anything political on the Internet. A lot of people don't realise that.
To begin with, people thought the Internet was totally safe, that it offered total
freedom. That was until people started getting arrested because they were publishing, or
even downloading, stuff that their government said was illegal. And in some countries,
that can mean death by hanging! We're starting to get a lot of response from countries
like Singapore, where the political situation is so intense.
We are worried about our security. We discovered recently that we probably won't be
allowed back into Germany because we carry the leftwing radical magazine on our website.
According to the German government, anyone involved with the magazine is a
"terrorist". But other places in Europe are extremely liberal: Denmark, Finland,
Holland, for example. In fact, we'll be moving the company to Holland next year. As for
the UK, the English are just so anally retentive about sex it's unbelievable. Australia
looks to be going the same way; they're just waiting for the right test case to happen.
The people making decisions are just bureaucrats, basically. They've got nothing better to
do than upset perverts like us!
In terms of the material we accept, we take everything individually and look at it for
what it is. If it's legal in only one country in the world, for example, we'd have to sit
down and really think about that. But basically, as long as it's legal, then we can do it.
The stuff we're dealing with at the moment ranges from Australian government to
pornographic sites and that'll spead even further as people come up with really new and
interesting ways of using the Web. The Web is still only in its infancy. Globally
speaking, still, not many people use it.
Do you know an
interesting person in Tokyo? E-mail us at editor@tokyoclassified.com