Japan revises law to speed identification of anonymous cyberbullies

Japan enforced Saturday a revised law that simplifies legal procedures to identify cyberbullies, accelerating efforts to relieve victims on social media and online forums more swiftly.

Not that accuracy matters anymore, Japan "implemented" a revised law, not enforced, as enforced means that they actually arrested or charged someone with a crime of cyber bullying!

Sure. Stop using floppy disks first.

Absolutely mind boggling how much influence social media has on some people. We check our phones from the time we get up to the time we fall asleep with the thing in our hands and our very lives depend on what Polly Ann and Reggie think about our posts. There needs to be a block feature on these apps............ oh wait...

The changes in the laws not only affects social media, I know personally the case of a Chinese nurse living in Japan, she participates in some English sites based in Japan answering questions about health and related matters, for a few months she got harassed by trolls that followed around calling her names, contradicting everything she wrote and taunting her just for fun without the operators of the sites doing anything even when the trolls were clearly toxic.

On an unrelated matter she was in contact with a lawyer and asked if something could be done about it, he recommended to sue the site for not enforcing their own rules. When she did it the operator tried to hide things by finally deleting some of the comments, but since they never deactivated the accounts of the trolls it was easy to prove the harassment and my friend won the lawsuit, she didn't become rich but it was well worth involving lawyers and now she can quit her part time job and still be able to pay for her degree.

So be careful JT posters or "someone" is going to call you a cyber stalking bully and have your name on a list down at the Koban.....

There is a world of difference between actual cyber stalking (calling for someone to kill themselves, trolling them on their own social media, doxxiing - one of our lot did this to me) and disagreement, sometimes in a mocking manner, on a public website.

Not even close to the same thing.

Japan enforced Saturday a revised law that simplifies legal procedures to identify cyberbullies, accelerating efforts to relieve victims on social media and online forums more swiftly.

Watch for the first corrupt politicians or corporate heads to use this to identify dissenters.

Better to make the criminal politicians, business people bureaucrats and police more identifiable.

Seems they are often able to remain anonymous in the J. media.

These laws only applies to foreigner,the US has ban foreign countries from prosecuting American for foreign online content

Stick and Stone may break your bones,mere words, should not hurt, you,most foreigner have thick skin,maybe this laws are too protect Japanese, because the government think they are so fragile,but these same laws can be used by government to go after their critic of the Japanese government

So be careful JT posters or "someone" is going to call you a cyber stalking bully and have your name on a list down at the Koban.....

There is a world of difference between actual cyber stalking (calling for someone to kill themselves, trolling them on their own social media, doxxiing - one of our lot did this to me) and disagreement, sometimes in a mocking manner, on a public website.

Not even close to the same thing.

Also, what happens if you experience some type of racism, assault, or sexual harassment in Japan then post that video or photo on the internet to warn people.

Will you be cited or arrested for cyberbullying because it makes Japanese people look bad?

It’s a good thing to do. Cyber bullying has caused too much pain, isolation and even suicides.

Let’s hope the this leads to a significant decrease in cyber bullying.

I am curious if this includes people who live outside of Japan, such as Donald Trump, and suffer insults by cyberbullies on Japanese websites.

@letsberealistic You do not approve of this law?

It will be interesting to see what ends up being protected, and what is not.

Let's see what the Japanese court system considers harassment, which somehow makes me wonder if this is really to protect some random Suzuki Taro that was harassed because of his sexual orientation, or to protect some LDP politician from criticism, and silence criticism, getting that criticism labeled as harassment.

I mean, I know that politicians try all the time to sue newspapers and TV programs because of, "slander" when they talk about some scandal.

Easy way to make a list of political dissidents too . . .

@letsberealistic We are on the same page.

Good!

This is a good small step forward! Let the unmasking begin ! All these people posting patently false statements/information and insulting anyone who calls them out….using their fake accounts to show others agree with them ….

If someone were shouting abuses at you in a restaurant, would you stay or would you leave? No one is forcing anyone to stay on the internet. If you find such behavior appalling then delete your FB and Twitter accounts. It's that easy.

All these people posting patently false statements/information and insulting anyone who calls them out….using their fake accounts to show others agree with them ….

Yeah, good point. Hopefully this will put an end to these people calling others "antivaxxers"...

But seriously, who determines what is true and what is false. Do you expect the government to set up a ministry of truth? We don't want to go there.

Cyberbullies are so dangerous specially for young kids who just don't know how to manage it. I do think that it's a good idea to add a course at schools to teach kids how to handle it.

How will this impact JT and those who post here ?

Great !!, hunt the bulies !!..

GMOs are 100% safe but misinformation in Japan has provoked irrational fears. The question of the safety of GMO's is not up for debate, period but a significant proportion of society cannot accept the truth.

That is the world we have been living in for decades, fear lies and misinformation are nothing new.

Normally I would be for it, but this is Japan and I feel it will probably be abused. Especially since legally everything bad you say about someone here can be judged as slander even if it's true. Japan does almost nothing against offline bullying, so when they push trough to regulate online bullying, I by default think that they have other motives.

But seriously, who determines what is true and what is false. Do you expect the government to set up a ministry of truth? We don't want to go there.

If someone says something that can be demonstrated as false with recognized sources then that is enough to validly say so, if then the people trying to repeat the false information reduce themselves to attacks, insults or threats against those that brought the sources, that may be subjected to the revised law. There is no need to have a ministry of truth to say this is completely unacceptable behavior and people can be made responsible for making (or allowing?) this kind of harassment.

Doesn’t make much sense, because such a cyber bully who is now busy only typing something on his keyboard, will then again go back analogue and bully directly and physically before, during work or school and afterwards. Now tell me where’s the merit for the victims when the computer or smartphone monitor is now clean, but the nose bloody, the school bag emptied into dust or the victim pushed into a river etc? Cyber bullying is very bad, yes, but it’s virtual and harmless and no one gets really hurt or killed physically.