If the price of civil liberty is eternal vigilance, then so be it. The onus will must lay on the civil populace. By literal denotation, democracy is “rule by the people.” Hence rights and responsibilities also lie on the general people to ensure those liberties are not whittle away.

Unfortunately, the very same democratic rules also suffer from “majority-minority dichotomy”, where at the expense of minority rights, the policies rule the majority. Somehow the Swiss model of democracy is increasingly deafened by all sorts of populism models of democracy. Not to mentioned the increasingly restriction of civil liberties from formerly democratic institutions (guess which country I’m inferring to).

So in short, all of us must play a part in ensuring a lively debate. Because, when they come for you,

“And then . . . they came for me . . . And by that time there was no one left to speak up.”

Where I live this is what happens all the time since 911. It was just yesterday that our parliament passed a law that forces our internet service and cellular phone providers to storage every connection data for at least 6 months. Currently this law restricts the access to this data to authorities investigating against people that are suspected of severe crimes or terrorism.

That public outcry was rather quiet and the mass media largely ignored this topic. Obviously, the majority of people didn’t care because they are neither criminals nor terrorists, but I guess it just takes a few cruel crimes that are heavily exploited by the mass media (+politicians) or a little bit of lobbying on the part of the content industry to widen the access to the data.

Something similar happened around 2002 when some attention wh.. err I mean politicians wanted the police to be able to spy on everyone’s banking account to find terrorists and criminals. Back then the public outcry was pretty quiet, too. Nowadays pretty much every government agency has an easy access to everyone’s banking account.

When it comes to censorship and civil liberties it’s better to fight the beginnings instead of waiting until it’s too late. But this is easier told than done when everyone around you simply doesn’t care and/or ignorantly trusts their leaders.

One part of me is laughing so hard tears are starting to fall since how much more stupid can the humans get? The answer? Infinity.

This third part of me is telling me that this is just the usual shit since we´ve had movies, we´ve had extra much that videogames bring fourth violence and now it´s time for anime.
The only thing that´s missing now is that someone kills a politicial here in Sweden and says he/she was under the Hinimazawa(or how it´s spelled from Higurashi) syndrome…

So my best solution for this? Keep your eyes on what happends, but do nothing since then it´s like adding fuel on a fire, it only burns stronger and longer.

And then again, when will people learn that anime/videogames are fiction? Why not stop everything then? Books like Harry Potter since it brings our children to think they can fly with a broom and thus go into suicide mode when they try to fly.
The show must go on…

Saying that it will all blow over is being far to optimistic. IIRC it was one of the US presidents that said that the price of liberty is eternal vigilance. What if it doesn’t blow over? It’s always the small liberties that go first, with politicians and media saying that it was for the good of us all.

The thing that concerns me the most is the small chipping away of everyone’s rights until there is nothing left for anyone.

Take the Death Note manga in China for instance. Writing a name in a black note book won’t really kill someone but when you know WHY they are doing it, the damage is already done. I think it can get even worse if a person becomes depressed or emotionally unstable and these ideas unconsciously etched into the back of their minds suddenly floats to the surface as their next course of action.

On the other hand, if you completely rid the world of this fictional material, entertainment would be too generic and dang boring. So no, don’t ban creative work because they can be influential.

fix’ed ~desu”

Sombre is correct English.
Somber is correct American English.