The previously discussed efforts to protect the children from the wickedness of the Internet, by censoring their access to it, are set to become law, having passed with the unanimous assent of the House of Representatives (lower house, the one with most of the power); it will go before the House of Councillors next week, and then fully come into effect.
With the law, it will become mandatory for PCs and mobile phones to include filtering functionality/software; parental permission is supposed to be required for children to access the Internet in uncensored form.
As to the actual business of judging which sites are “harmful”, the Japanese government will circumvent problems dealing with the Constitutional guarantee of freedom of expression by outsourcing the censoring to some sort of “private” organisation (likely to be some kind of industry group or quango), the details of which are still unclear.
Via TBS.
So… they are censoring 2ch?
The verdict on 2ch seems to be yes.