In an interview regarding freedom of expression in Japan, Negima! and UQ Holder mangaka-turned-politician Akamatsu Ken (pictured above) warned about how the major threat to creative freedom of expression doesn’t come from within Japan but from international pressure that’s been censoring manga.
Akamatsu reiterates his goals in politics to protect freedom of expression:
Protecting the freedom of expression was also part of your campaign pledge when running for your position.
Akamatsu: Right. You can tell from incidents like last year’s case where an international women’s entity complained about an ad on The Nikkei that we are in an age where pressure on restrictions on freedom of expression comes from overseas as well, so we must take measures in order to deal with this threat.
Currently, there is only a very low possibility that national law restricting expression will be passed. However, if international agreements to that sort of effect are passed, then national law will have to be changed to fit with the agreement, so we must avoid this scenario from ever happening.
Akamatsu also discussed his stance on the popular topic of AI art:
In recent years, illustrations using AI art have seen a massive increase. Will there be any problems with freedom of expression or copyright?
Akamatsu: Regarding AI art, currently what is being discussed is the ‘transparency of the data learnset’. In order to create AI art, billions of existing art needs to be learnt from, and there have been criticism that copyright holders have not given permission in many cases, making it illegal.
However, having AI learn illustration is not illegal – the term ‘illegally learning’ is wrong from the start.
For me, having profit from the commercial use AI illustrations be given to the creators used as part of the data set is the favorable outcome.
Considering how many billions of illustrations are used, splitting profits easily is impossible, so the creation of some sort of management institution like JASRAC for music, or some sort of fund to bring profit back to the industry is a more realistic method.
Or, selling image generation AI that has finished training can also be considered […] That way, AI other than officially sold versions can be treated as ‘pirated versions’, giving back some amount of control. This way, creators used as the data set can also directly earn back profit too.
[…]
There are some people who might say that ‘AI has gotten to the point where it can draw better illustrations than me’, but look at the world of chess. AI has been stronger at chess than humans for quite some time, but many people still enjoy it.
For the world of comics, I hope people can remember the joy of the act of drawing itself.
A big step for fighting censorship is removing mosaics
Akamatsu for prime minister 👍
Yeah it is so funny and sad to see Japanese people tiptoe around that issue while pretending they have freedom of expression to protect.
Maybe, but you gotta appreciate how many creative ways to go around it the Japanese have invented. Like maybe half the perverted stuff wouldn’t be there without the pressure of coming up with non-pussy-related lewd stuff.
I like my mosaic, thank you. Mosaic feel like that good middle ground between not wanting seeing disgusting dicc but wanting to know it goes in. So yeah, keep the mosaic up Japan.
I heard more women do porn because of the mosaic, though.
Ignore ppl especially Americans just put an age rating on it and if young ppl view it blame the parents
This should be the de-facto. The onus should have *always* been on the parent. It existence should not be predicated on if it is OK to consume. It should be on whether or not if there is a demand. Parents should be educated and involved in whatever their spawn are consuming – and restrict it accordingly. Not my problem you can’t control your seed.
Storefronts will refuse to carry works with age ratings they consider too high. Adding age ratings is actually a very effective form of censorship. Compare Daggerfall to Morrowind and see what happened when the ESRB got its claws on the Western video game industry.
the way to bypass stores is to sell it online and use delivery methods it reaches customers that way
Except Battlespire released with an ESRB rating and that had nudity, so it makes no sense to blame the ESRB for “censoring” Morrowind.
People still use stores?
Is it though? When you have parents just arbitrarily buying stuff they don’t understand for their kids irrespective of the age-rating, is that really effective? It’s similar to people handling a gun with a safety. The mechanical safety is there for a reason, but best safety is knowing not to voluntarily look down the barrel of a loaded gun. Likewise, age-restriction is fine but the best safety is just know why it’s age-restricted and not bypass it.
What we really need is a Steam-like storefront but for adult content. Have tags that are appropriate that will filter the content people feel ‘uncomfortable’ to them and pull every piece of adult material into that storefront. Secure it using credit card verification and call it good. Then have Steam resort to Steam credits that can be purchased via debit/credit that does *not* require credit card verification. Those credits can be purchased at any online or physical storefront and cannot be used with the adult store. This would differentiate the two significantly and would allow for funneling of funds in a controlled manner for all purchases AND reduce the possibility of purchasing even 17+ content that may have things parents don’t agree with in a way because they would be going out of their way to credits on that steam card for that purchase. They would be required to review said material before the purchase with the necessary warnings and accept that warning before purchasing the steam credits. That ‘stamps’ the purchase with a digital signature stating they accepted those terms and should be admissible in any legal proceedings going forward that they accepted the license of use as well as the content in which they were agreeing to.
This, plus put it in an “adults only” section curtained out from the rest of the store.
“Regarding AI art, currently what is being discussed is the ‘transparency of the data learnset’. In order to create AI art, billions of existing art needs to be learnt from, and there have been criticism that copyright holders have not given permission in many cases, making it illegal.
However, having AI learn illustration is not illegal – the term ‘illegally learning’ is wrong from the start.”
Since art by its nature is derivative it never ceases to amaze me when i see people get so vocal about A.I. You’d see people who pose a 3D model of Tifa whining about how A.I steals art and it unethical but i digress.
Akamastu’s stance on A.I is correct.
And yes, Akamatsu got it right there. Art is similar to science, at how it plagiarize and build upon each other. What need to be more focused is on issue of fairness of incentive. Akamatsu’s proposal is in the right direction.
People get defensive because they don’t want to face the reality that they might only be a highly sophisticated biological neural net. They don’t want to face the fact that how modern AI learn is similar to how human learn. It’s like the same OS run on two different machine physical implementation.
And the false believe that AI art will finish off human artist industry, which is won’t, even if you aren’t that good. Current AI art simply feel soulless and without character, most people has natural kneejerk reaction against it. It’s only good for personal fapping at most, that’s it for most people.
But if you want to sell it, you has to generate shittons of it, and curate which is most interesting, otherwise people are not interested. The time it takes to curate and select which is to be presented to the mass (to sell), and resource required to generate the massive amount of generated arts to pick from, may be similar to how a human artist spend time drawing an art and human artist need much lesser electricity cost after initial upfront investment, and we know which is better most of the time.
More people like him need to step up and take control from those assholes who are easily offended by people just living.
God bless this based legend.