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Question about importing eroge to Australia


Mr Nol

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Hi,

I'm planing on buying the hard copy  of Beat Blade Haruka (https://vndb.org/v284), Rewrite plus (https://vndb.org/v751) and this upcoming Kai 'soft game Walpugis series (https://vndb.org/v19663), and I would like to get some opinion from someone who have experience with importing eroge through Australia custom before, and that in your opinion would these game be classify as child porn and its equal illegal here?  Because it look like anything with flat boobs equal to child porn in here and that some people have been fined because of it. I really want to support the Japanese Visual novel industry.

 Wish I could live in Japan, 1 more year until I save enough money to study there ><

 

Thank you

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I had a similar issue with Norwegian laws a while back, and spoke to a lwayer about it.

Here is what I concluded: (here is the whole thread.)

Quote

So I just finished speaking to someone about this, and I figured I'd bump this thread in case someone else from Norway or a country with similar laws ask themselves the same question.

The very simple answer, which most people probably saw coming, is: don't buy physical games like this if you live in a country like Norway.

 

The chances of the games actually being discovered and instantly branded as illegal are very slim, however generally speaking, material such as Euhporia and BBH are indeed put under a category of illegal porn in Norway, and CAN lead to punishment, either in the form of fines or something more serious. The chance of games like this being treated the same way as actual, "real" illegal pornography is very small, but it is there, and if the more strict people in the justice system finds out, well... RIP.

Even digital versions of the games can be handled in the same way, though that is even less likely. Point is, actually importing games like these is pretty much playing with fire.

You probably wont get caught, but if you DO get caught, then it's your own ass on the line.

 

The actual law puts the illegal porn into two categories, nr.1 being an absolute no no, including sex with children, corpses and animals, and the other category is rape, voilence etc, which is more of a "you really shouldn't own or watch this, and we CAN punish you for it." 

There are "loopholes" I guess, which is roleplay, completely fictional material etc, but even then, the law itself is very vague, and doesn't specify whether it is talking about fictional material or not, and so once again it will come down to how strict the people who are handling your case are. Making a solid defense would be kind of hard, and it would be mostly based around exactly what the material is used for, (for example, the fact that it is in a game surrounded by real plot might make it a bit less serious.) 

 

Anyways, yeah, that's about it. I am at least glad that I have this sorted out, so I know exactly what is and isn't legal in Norway for the future.

You really should stick with digital VNs if you think physical editions might cause problems. Don't risk jail time for VNs, it's not worth it.

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Alright. Thank you very much for your explanation it really help me decide on what to do from now on. It really sad that we are being punish for some fictional stuff, the law kinda suck sometime, I guess all I can do is go to Japan after all.

Thank you again :)

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Australia is about as anal as it gets with respect to this. Derg's advice is spot on and applies to Australia as well. Basically if anything looks remotely loli, it's illegal by Australian laws, even if it says "thousand year old faeries" on the front cover. However they almost never open packaging unless there is a strong degree of suspicion for something much more harmful  and if the cover is relatively innocuous then they're never going to stick the DVD in and install it and check it out. Download versions theoretically they could come into your home and raid it if they're looking for something in particular but realistically this is out unless someone has been ratting you out for drug running/gun smuggling/terrorism/slave trading/child pornography rackets and the federal police here have too much more important stuff than waste their time on that. Nonetheless if it's illegal in Australia, you are treading a fine line. If they intercept what you buy at customs, at best they'll confiscate it, at worst you'll be branded a paedophile and have your activities watched and restricted for the rest of your natural life.

To sum it up: Go for boobs.

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Thank you for your opinion on this subject ittaku and Okarin, yeah it seem like Australia is such a nanny state and full of closed minded politician and people (not all) that don't understand what freedom of expression is.

And can anyone give me a good site that I can buy digital Japaneses eroge other than dlsite and localisation website?, I wanted to try getchu but I don't know if getchu also work or not.

 

Thank you for all your opinion on this, I think I might try going on vacation to Japan and buy some hard copy there and see if I can bring it here  or not, because normally they barely check your bag  at the airport custom from what I experienced 5 years ago. 

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40 minutes ago, Mr Nol said:

Thank you for your opinion on this subject ittaku and Okarin, yeah it seem like Australia is such a nanny state and full of closed minded politician and people (not all) that don't understand what freedom of expression is.

And can anyone give me a good site that I can buy digital Japaneses eroge other than dlsite and localisation website?, I wanted to try getchu but I don't know if getchu also work or not.

 

Thank you for all your opinion on this, I think I might try going on vacation to Japan and buy some hard copy there and see if I can bring it here  or not, because normally they barely check your bag  at the airport custom from what I experienced 5 years ago. 

I wouldn't risk it to be honest. It's better to go digital.

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1 hour ago, Mr Nol said:

Thank you for all your opinion on this, I think I might try going on vacation to Japan and buy some hard copy there and see if I can bring it here  or not, because normally they barely check your bag  at the airport custom from what I experienced 5 years ago. 

I'm Australian myself. When I go on vacation in Japan I buy my titles, install them on the laptop and copy the iso images off the DVDs and then much to people's horror... throw the packaging and disks in the bin before I leave the country... and I don't even touch loli stuff. I don't trust any of this stuff to get past Australian customs.

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26 minutes ago, ittaku said:

I'm Australian myself. When I go on vacation in Japan I buy my titles, install them on the laptop and copy the iso images off the DVDs and then much to people's horror... throw the packaging and disks in the bin before I leave the country... and I don't even touch loli stuff. I don't trust any of this stuff to get past Australian customs.

 

I always knew you Aussies were fucking crazy.

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41 minutes ago, cenric said:

I purchased Tokeijikake no Ley Line -Asagiri ni Chiru Hana- from dl getchu and it worked just fine. That's all of my experience with them though.

   

Thank!, guess I will try out getchu then, I thought they don't sell outside Japan, but ok will try.

 

34 minutes ago, ittaku said:

I'm Australian myself. When I go on vacation in Japan I buy my titles, install them on the laptop and copy the iso images off the DVDs and then much to people's horror... throw the packaging and disks in the bin before I leave the country... and I don't even touch loli stuff. I don't trust any of this stuff to get past Australian customs.

 

That is really extreme haha, but I guess that would be my last resort as well.

1 hour ago, Kiriririri said:

Rewrite is All-Ages. No problem in importing that.

Yeah, I just hope that custom won't think is child porn because the character look really loli.

 

10 minutes ago, Ningen said:

 

I always knew you Aussies were fucking crazy.

Everything for the waifu.

 

 

 

Thank guys!

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I don't know Australia too much, but i got insterested in this. How do your laws work? Porn is okay, only if not considered troublesome [children, violence]? Or is it completely forbidden? Is it only for art/drawings or real-people porn too?

And, most important, is there really a risk to go to jail for a porn game? O:

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Well, I'm from Australia and I'll admit that it is the worst place to import things especially for 18+ games.

I wanted to order a special edition of Da Capo II and later a hard copy of Princess Evangile but I've changed my mind due to customs. I have other things to worry about than getting caught by a bunch of people with rubber gloves and be branded as a pedo on my records.

In all likelihood you won't get caught if you order one game. My friend works at customs and he tells me that most of the people working there would be too busy searching for other things such as drugs, illegal weapons, dangerous chemicals etc. However, if you do get caught then it's all over. Better not risk it all and just buy it digitally.

It sucks why Australia is so strict with these kinds of things. Most of the time they exaggerate more on the censorship part. Heck Gal Gun and Valkyrie Drive just got banned in Australia. Before that, it was Mortal Kombat for being too gory and Atelier Rorona Plus got an 18+ rating because of the costumes being too revealing.

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1 hour ago, jetpack003 said:

Well, I'm from Australia and I'll admit that it is the worst place to import things especially for 18+ games.

I wanted to order a special edition of Da Capo II and later a hard copy of Princess Evangile but I've changed my mind due to customs. I have other things to worry about than getting caught by a bunch of people with rubber gloves and be branded as a pedo on my records.

In all likelihood you won't get caught if you order one game. My friend works at customs and he tells me that most of the people working there would be too busy searching for other things such as drugs, illegal weapons, dangerous chemicals etc. However, if you do get caught then it's all over. Better not risk it all and just buy it digitally.

It sucks why Australia is so strict with these kinds of things. Most of the time they exaggerate more on the censorship part. Heck Gal Gun and Valkyrie Drive just got banned in Australia. Before that, it was Mortal Kombat for being too gory and Atelier Rorona Plus got an 18+ rating because of the costumes being too revealing.

Gee, it's like Australia is full of little children.

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7 hours ago, Silvz said:

I don't know Australia too much, but i got insterested in this. How do your laws work? Porn is okay, only if not considered troublesome [children, violence]? Or is it completely forbidden? Is it only for art/drawings or real-people porn too?

And, most important, is there really a risk to go to jail for a porn game? O:

Yes, as many have said our custom will look at the cover and decide if it safe or not, but if you are really unlucky and get some stubborn old guy or feminism than they will certainly check the content on the disc out. Yes, violence against children or look-alike children in any form of medium is count as child abuse here and if you get caught importing these stuff you will get fined  and pedo will be in your record and if worst come to worst is a Jail time :) thb Canada, Germany and Norway have it worst on this subject.

This is what written on the website about our import rule  from http://www.border.gov.au/Busi/Impo/Proh

 

Description:

Includes publications, films, computer games and any other goods that describe, depict, express or otherwise deal with matters of sex, drug misuse or addiction, crime cruelty, violence, terrorist acts or revolting or abhorrent phenomena in such a way that they offend against the standards of morality, decency and propriety generally accepted by reasonable adults.

 

HACK, you can't even use DMM to download hentai game digitally unless you use VPN of a third party (like me) to buy game from there, it such a pain in the ass how some sensitive the higher up here is. 

1 hour ago, VLOCKUP said:

Gee, it's like Australia is full of little children.

Our politician still live in the 50's or so they said, yes haha it really is full of man child here lot of sjw.

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1 hour ago, Mr Nol said:

Canada, Germany and Norway have it worst on this subject

There are no problems with importing eroge in Germany. German laws clearly state that every work of fiction, regardless how deviant it might be, is legal ... simply because it's fiction.

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Quote from Australian law National Classification Code (link https://www.legislation.gov.au/Details/F2013C00006 ).

Note the section that says "appears to be". This means even young looking adults of any age, even if they're beyond their teens can't be depicted. If they want to be bastardy about it, pretty much all Eroge falls into this category since 2D artwork tends to make all characters look young and most Eroge is set in high school which is underage in Australia.

Refused classification are Publications that:

(a) describe, depict, express or otherwise deal with matters of sex, drug misuse or addiction, crime, cruelty, violence or revolting or abhorrent phenomena in such a way that they offend against the standards of morality, decency and propriety generally accepted by reasonable adults to the extent that they should not be classified; or

(b) describe or depict in a way that is likely to cause offence to a reasonable adult, a person who is, or appears to be, a child under 18 (whether the person is engaged in sexual activity or not); or

(c)  promote, incite or instruct in matters of crime or violence

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On 24/08/2016 at 8:10 PM, Tyrosyn said:

There are no problems with importing eroge in Germany. German laws clearly state that every work of fiction, regardless how deviant it might be, is legal ... simply because it's fiction.

Wow that good to here I thought German law were really strict, why can't other Europe country be like German seriously. 

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On 24.8.2016 at 0:10 PM, Tyrosyn said:

There are no problems with importing eroge in Germany. German laws clearly state that every work of fiction, regardless how deviant it might be, is legal ... simply because it's fiction.

You should be a bit careful with this statement.

According to StGB 184a you can end up in prison for up to three years if you're distributing porn containing violence. And according to the juristic interpretation in Wikipedia, this includes fictional content:

Quote

Es kommt für § 184a StGB nicht darauf an, ob ein tatsächliches oder ein fiktives Geschehen dargestellt wird.

It's allowed to 'own' it however in contrast to child porn which is defined in StGB 184b. But 184b shouldn't affect eroge much because of its manga art since it explicitly restricts it to 'real' or 'realistic looking' media.

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(3) Wer es unternimmt, sich den Besitz an einer kinderpornographischen Schrift, die ein tatsächliches oder wirklichkeitsnahes Geschehen wiedergibt, zu verschaffen, oder wer eine solche Schrift besitzt, wird mit Freiheitsstrafe bis zu drei Jahren oder mit Geldstrafe bestraft.

The BPjM also doesn't just have a list of harmful media for young people (< 18) in list 'A', it also has a list of prohibted media in list 'B' which isn't allowed to be distributed by the criminal code for everyone. You can find some more information about that here.

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Die Tatsache, dass diese Liste von der Bundesprüfstelle für jugendgefährdende Medien geführt wird, lässt vermuten, dass Sie auf der Liste nur Werke finden können, die jugendgefährdend sind, während Bücher die aufgrund des Strafgesetzbuchs verboten sind, dort nicht verzeichnet sind. Dem ist aber nicht so:

Die Liste B enthält Werke, die nach Ansicht der BPjM einem absoluten Verbreitungsverbot nach dem Strafgesetz unterliegen. Dazu gehören Gewaltpornografie, Tierpornografie und Kinderpornografie. Aber auch Werke, die Verletzungen der Menschenwürde zum Beispiel Gewaltverherrlichung beinhalten, sind auf dieser Liste, ebenso die Verwendung von verfassungswidrigen Kennzeichen oder Volksverhetzung.

Naturally, it's a grey area with a lot of room for interpretation and Germany is certainly one of the more liberal countries if it comes to eroge, but throwing out a statement that all fiction is legal in Germany is clearly wrong.

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7 hours ago, Mr Nol said:

Wow that good to here I thought German law were really strict, why can't other Europe country be like German seriously. 

Well the Finnish law pretty much states that all fictional porn is okay as long as it's not based on real-life events. :sachi: 

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13 hours ago, Ningen said:

It's only bad if there are nazi symbols :Kappa:

Nazi symbols are fine in art, sadly video games are still not recognized as art in Germany. However, Nazi symbols are not illegal per se, you're just not allowed to sell products with swastikas in public.
That means for example: A German shop isn't allowed to sell Dies Irae in public. But I'm allowed to buy it. The shop is also allowed to sell me the product as long as the game itself is not showcased in the shop.

8 hours ago, Zenophilious said:

Actually, they regularly censor violence, too.  Have you guys really never heard of L4D2?

Violence is historically the only thing that is censored in Germany. You guys might have heard of the Criminal Girls 2 and Valkyrie Drive debacle that happened recently and even we Germans are dumbfounded by it because it's so out of the ordinary. Most fanservice games got a 12+ rating in recent years even though they usually get a PEGI16 or M rating in EU and USA. Time will tell what happened there, I speculate some personal or political agenda is at work here.

It's important to notice though, that "Germany" does not censor games. Publisher censor games so they can sell them to teens in Germany. Because Germany takes youth protection very seriously, which is not a bad thing. It goes like this:
- Rating boards would rate a violent game with an 18+ label
- Publisher wants more copies sold so he targets the 12+/16+ audience
- Publisher censors the game to get the desired lower rating

There are essentially no video games in Germany that are illegal. If you hear about a game being "banned" it essentially means it's 18+. Every adult in Germany can buy every game he wants. Even uncensored versions from other countries. It's just that some games aren't allowed to be publicly sold, like I mentioned above. But that doesn't mean they are illegal. No work of art is illegal in Germany as long as it's fiction.
Censored games are the result of greedy publishers, not of German laws.

8 hours ago, ChaosRaven said:

You should be a bit careful with this statement.

No, I think it's important that someone tells the truth so that other people don't believe half-truths.

8 hours ago, ChaosRaven said:

According to StGB 184a you can end up in prison for up to three years if you're distributing porn containing violence.

We were speaking of importing stuff. "Distributing" is something entirely else.

8 hours ago, ChaosRaven said:

But 184b shouldn't affect eroge much because of its manga art since it explicitly restricts it to 'real' or 'realistic looking' media.

The term "wirklichkeitsnah" (realistic looking) is something which often spawns arguments between Germans who discuss this topic. There is always someone who argues "If a Manga looks too realistic, it's child porn".
This however is NOT true. The meaning of "wirklichkeitsnah" is not a matter of interpretation. It's used for cases where a real abuse is filtered through a form of art. For example, an artist who uses a real child as a model. And it's safe for the customer to assume, that everything that is legally sold in Japan was produced without abusing a child.
The BKA (German law enforcement agency) explicitly stated in an interview in regards to hentai, lolicon and such that these forms of entertainment never satisfy the condition of "wirklichkeitsnah". To use another example, even the most disgusting toddlercon eroguro doujinshi is legal in Germany. Because it's fiction.

8 hours ago, ChaosRaven said:

The BPjM also doesn't just have a list of harmful media for young people (< 18) in list 'A', it also has a list of prohibted media in list 'B' which isn't allowed to be distributed by the criminal code for everyone.

Being on the index doesn't mean that it's illegal. It only means it's liable to corrupt the young. Like I said many times in this post, not being allowed to be distributed does not mean that the product is illegal or that it's illegal to buy or own it.

If you are/know German, try to look at this: Liste verbotener Medien in der BRD
You will see that only a very small percentage of this list is actually illegal, and always for a good reason. Good reasons are for example (child/animal) abuse, glorification of violence (which is not justified as an element of art) or simple legal issues like not being authorized.
There are no illegal video games and only three illegal movies (two of them show real animal abuse, the third is actually due to a mistake in evaluating the content and wouldn't even stand a chance in court... @XReaper knows what I'm talking about, but that is another matter altogether)

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