"DLSite just deleted the 'petite' tag and blocked off access from overseas " - X (Twitter)

[Rafster]

At this point Japan should just invest in creating their own international payment method. Sadly I don't think they have much incentive since I assume they don't get many purchases from overseas, so they just change some english words, block some stuff outside of japan and call it a day. I wish they would give those payment processors the middle finger and do their own thing instead.

That won't happen. As I am writing this, I've read somewhere back on January (EDIT: source

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)that japanese adult devs had their earnings transfers from Steam blocked by the japanese banks, alleging them as... I can't remember what they said... suspicious activities or some shit. And this is NOT happening only to the loli devs, no, this is happening to NSFW devs in general in Steam, which is the largest west market. If japanese banks deny transfers, I doubt any alternative solution like SS or Patreon would work (unless we enter with payment processors like Paypal... and that is ridiculous).

I dunno is the situation improved or this was resolved, but if it isn't, Japan is NOT the free speech haven some claim to be. This type of shit is not exclusive from the west.

 

[Omnom88]

Different site similar topic: hentaiera seemingly started to censor themselves as well. Does anyone have insight into the why?
Usually i use hitomi and hentaiera for CG packs. hentaiera now requires a useraccount to fully browse their website which wasnt the case like 2 weeks ago.
I noticed the censored tags are realllly similar to the various DL site ones. Uniform tags swimsuit for some reason.
Is there like a offical info or newsource for the change? Is anyone in on the offical discord of hentaiera who could give any info?

On another on topic note. Its not only DLsite that gets attacked. The two CC companies try to choke the life out of any japanese otaku media directly at the source. From manga sites to doujin ones, from regular video game to nsfw content. Even the sfw ones are getting attacked. With a similar stick as Rafster mentionend: They label the sites or bank accounts of the content creators as somethign illegal which then gets their account frozen till the legal claim is solved. This is how they then demand that the follow their ToS instructions or they else....
This by the way is exactly what they did to all various payment and content hosting site like patreon, paypal, pixivfanbox etc.
The sudden wave of ToS change as to what is allowed or not allowed. All of them claimed it was CC that forced their hands.
There are some japanese politician who stand up for all that content. Which then showed japan has very little to none CC law and regulations. Almost none for foreign credit cards. Which means it will take a very long time for them to get anything done and by then the 2 CCC might have such a iron grip over the yen that they cant cut them off anymore withouth harming their own economy.

On the videogame front Nintendo recently for example showed them the door as they will discontinue the usage of these 2 credit cards for the online shop. A bunch of semi-indie semi-known videogamedevs;Yokotaro, SUDA51 also mentionend that they seen pressure from CCC regarding their reach into their own marked.

 

[defnotalt]

That won't happen. As I am writing this, I've read somewhere back on January (EDIT: source

You must be registered to see the links

)that japanese adult devs had their earnings transfers from Steam blocked by the japanese banks, alleging them as... I can't remember what they said... suspicious activities or some shit. And this is NOT happening only to the loli devs, no, this is happening to NSFW devs in general in Steam, which is the largest west market. If japanese banks deny transfers, I doubt any alternative solution like SS or Patreon would work (unless we enter with payment processors like Paypal... and that is ridiculous).

I dunno is the situation improved or this was resolved, but if it isn't, Japan is NOT the free speech haven some claim to be. This type of shit is not exclusive from the west.

Interesting, as the article says it seems pretty counter-intuitive for Japan. Maybe it's a deliberate "fuck you" to the west (for multiple reasons) or a way to strong arm jp creators into limiting their content to JP sites, but that seems really dumb considering that exporting anime and games online with virtually no additional cost feels like a no brainer to increase economic growth.

Or maybe it's just really old people doing really old people things, and not understanding how things work

 

[BobJojo]

This definitely isn't just the one tag, tons of other stuff got hit. Anything with the "School / Academy" tag was blocked, which includes tons of works with only adult characters. Teacher x teacher vanilla romances have that tag and nope, now they're gone.

Check the tag's page before or after using JP VPN

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I'm sure the tag in the title was just the first that was checked, I'd be interested on a whole list of what got hit.

 

[Zabon]

I was starting to wonder what was going on when I started noticing circles with content missing that I knew used to exist. At first I just assumed maybe they had removed titles from DLsite but over the past few weeks I noticed more and more "error" messages when trying to find artist or game pages.

That's the part that kind of annoys me when it comes to DLsite, that they didn't tell me that they were doing this. I didn't notice an announcement anywhere, I didn't see it mentioned in the FAQ, I didn't see an email about it, their twitter didn't say anything, and it wasn't in the newsletter from what I could see. I only noticed in the first place because I had a tab already open on a game that had some content that was blocked, and it turned into an error page. I assumed that the game just got deleted or that it had AI content so it got hidden. Then over the next few days I would follow links to games on the site and a bunch of them would give me error pages, until finally I happened to have my VPN on and set to Japan and all those pages showed up again.

My point being that DLsite should have announced that this was going to happen. So that people could plan accordingly and get VPNs ready to be able to use the site or so they at least know that games are being hidden from them in the first place. A list of tags that it was going to affect would also be nice, because from what I can tell it's a lot of them, somewhere between 25-30% of their games are being hidden, that's just games, I haven't looked at what it was when you add manga, animations, voice, and so on.

 

[sonlun96]

This circle removed tsurupeta tag so it's visible for everyone. Probably wise considered they made translation in English, Chinese and Korean.

 

[crimsoncarmine]

I didn't think I have to use VPN for Dlsite as well but so be it. Is there an extension that translates FANZA and Dlsite all the time? Google Translate keeps shitting itself where it doesn't translate it at times or stops the translation after it translated the page.

 

[teraexbf]

I didn't think I have to use VPN for Dlsite as well but so be it. Is there an extension that translates FANZA and Dlsite all the time? Google Translate keeps shitting itself where it doesn't translate it at times or stops the translation after it translated the page.

You must be registered to see the links

in Firefox works for me. You can select multiple translator engines in it. I use this over firefox's own translator because it is slow af.

 

[Artumis]

My point being that DLsite should have announced that this was going to happen. So that people could plan accordingly and get VPNs ready to be able to use the site or so they at least know that games are being hidden from them in the first place. A list of tags that it was going to affect would also be nice, because from what I can tell it's a lot of them, somewhere between 25-30% of their games are being hidden, that's just games, I haven't looked at what it was when you add manga, animations, voice, and so on.

I had this thought too, but then I had to stop and wonder if that was even a legally viable option for DLsite. If the purpose was to appease payment processors, then notifying everyone of what they were doing and the workaround for it would negate any "good faith" attempt of meeting (presumably) contractual obligations. This would also explain why pages appear as an "Error" rather than "Unavailable in your region" or similar messaging that would indicate to users that the content is available somehow.

I also presume that the same payment processors function within Japan as abroad, so the entire move is more or less the same as another website deciding to hide more questionable content behind the infamous "sad panda". Non-Japanese companies get a façade of a slightly cleaner content, savvy users can still see and purchase all content, and DLsite doesn't actually have to remove or ban any content where it wouldn't have before.

Essentially, since they seem to still view it as beneficial, it's probably best to not do anything that would make payment processors drop their support completely. The "big" question I have to wonder is how, if at all, this is going to impact their English language support. From what I can tell, a reasonable amount of titles with an "Official English Patch" (generally AI MTL) were hit with this whole shadow ban. If they continue to produce these, then it's clear that their intent is for users to figure out how to bypass the region block.

 

[moemi02]

the most hilarious (fucked up) (*sorry for my vulgar language*) it's there is no problem for CC companies about "Femdom" on shota , shota, futa on shota , anything gay with shota or boy in uniform (renamed i don't remember since school uniform were also banned) old hag on poor little boy in general but JK, loli, school uniform (mostly young girls) and petite (even legal one) are a big nono for the big financial dady ....... time are hard when you let money shark rule "your" world with their own fantasy >.>

 

[YuckYuck220]

Doesn't seem like this is going to get any better to be honest. Texas just essentially banned Lolicon, something that was deemed unconstitutional to ban 20 years ago is now illegal in Texas, and I'm sure it won't stop there. It states specifically AI generated csm which would make sense considering people use actual material to produce that and I doubt anyone would be against it because it's something that should be stopped, but the part that concerns me is how broad the terms they're using are. All manga and anime fall into the cartoon/animation umbrella.

This is definitely going to reinforce CC companies in their retraction from Japanese retailers.

SB 20 ruling:

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SB 20:

 

[RosesInBlue]

Texas just essentially banned Lolicon, something that was deemed unconstitutional to ban 20 years ago is now illegal in Texas, and I'm sure it won't stop there.

This is an obscenity law, something that was already in place with federal law through the PROTECT Act of 2003. Possession of large amounts of 2D art depicting sexual acts involving characters that appear to be minors have caused US citizens additional charges in possession of CSM cases. It was ultimately deemed to not be unconstitutional after the PROTECT Act addressed the previously questioned details regarding constitutionality around this sort of ban.
The difference is that the Miller Test is not directly implemented under Texas' SB 20, making it easier to charge someone with the same felony.

 

[VergilSparda6630]

Man this sucks, not even japanese sites are safe from this stupid puritanism... is there a possibility that they'll be able to revert this in the future?

 

[Azaleadev]

I hope this won't reach a point in the future where all R-18 content is forbidden from the internet, and people can no longer dream of creating anything.

 

[RosesInBlue]

I hope this won't reach a point in the future where all R-18 content is forbidden from the internet, and people can no longer dream of creating anything.

At the most extreme, sites that want to sell porn might have to accept that users won't be able to pay using credit cards or PayPal and we'll have to use something like bitcash for all our R18 purchases.

 

[YuckYuck220]

This is an obscenity law, something that was already in place with federal law through the PROTECT Act of 2003. Possession of large amounts of 2D art depicting sexual acts involving characters that appear to be minors have caused US citizens additional charges in possession of CSM cases. It was ultimately deemed to not be unconstitutional after the PROTECT Act addressed the previously questioned details regarding constitutionality around this sort of ban.
The difference is that the Miller Test is not directly implemented under Texas' SB 20, making it easier to charge someone with the same felony.

Okay I understand it now, thanks for clarifying. I fell for all the fear mongering. Since that bill has been passed, it's blown up on Twitter and tons of people are also misunderstanding it which is funny and also slightly concerning.

 

[PervyJetro]

Another way to access DLsite games that are blocked outside Japan is to install a browser extension "URBAN VPN" its free. Change region to Japan and you can access all Dlsite games again.

 

[RosesInBlue]

Another way to access DLsite games that are blocked outside Japan is to install a browser extension "URBAN VPN" its free. Change region to Japan and you can access all Dlsite games again.

Why that one specifically? Did it just happen to be the first one you found?
It doesn't seem like the best product:

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Proton VPN is a well known and solid free option.
Here's a link that skips past the "Are you sure you don't want the Premium version?" stuff:

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If you want the best and most trusted, Mullvad costs 5 Euro per month (which ignores inflation, the pricing never increases). They also have a 14-day money back guarantee if you don't pay with cash or crypto.

You must be registered to see the links

 

[entomology1233]

Credit card companies should focus on real porn companies. You know, the industry with actual claims of human trafficking and victims?

I honestly wouldn't mind if real porn was banned. There's too much grey area of consent, abuse and preying on "Barely legal 18" year olds into a life that leads to a high suicide rate and drug abuse.

 

[Zabon]

I had this thought too, but then I had to stop and wonder if that was even a legally viable option for DLsite. If the purpose was to appease payment processors, then notifying everyone of what they were doing and the workaround for it would negate any "good faith" attempt of meeting (presumably) contractual obligations.

You may be right, however I don't believe that the payment processors intend to come back to DLsite or other eroge sites at all. First of all, the content is still there, meaning the site IS still in violation of what the PP's want them to do. The fact that you can also get to those pages via a vpn also means that if the PP's came back, then you'd be able to purchase that content which they don't want you to be able to. So for as long as DLsite or any other similar site has that content on it, PP's will not work with them. PP's have already stopped working with DLsite completely, long ago now. That's why DLsite had changed the tags, it was an effort to appease the PP's to come back despite keeping the same content on the website, which didn't work. So this is once again them trying to appease them, while still keeping the content on the site. Ultimately however it's still easy to access, which I'm sure PP's will not like.

I feel like DLsite going to fold in some way eventually, because this move seems like a clear act of desperation. It really is going to get to the point where there will be no legal method to obtain content that is legal but that which payment processors don't want you to have.