Ever the advocate for freedom of expression (particularly of the ‘risqué’ variety), Drakengard and NieR series creator Yoko Taro has admitted to feeling more than a little uncomfortable with the potential threat to free speech posed by credit card companies’ growing refusal to process payments for adult content.
Taro spoke out against this rising phenomena on November 5th via his personal Twitter account, his mind ostensibly turned to the subject thanks to the recent news that the publicly accessible out-of-print manga archive Manga Library Z would be shutting down after various credit card companies dropped them as a client due to their hosting of various erotic comics.
“Credit card payment companies are refusing to accept legitimate adult content payments,” wrote the eccentric video game director, as machine translated by DeepL. “Regulations beyond the law have been in place in publishing and other fields, but the fact that a payment processor, which is involved in the entire distribution infrastructure, can do so at its own discretion seems to me to be a different level of danger. If they have control of the clearing house, they can even use it to control speech in other countries.”
Proceeding to head off those bad faith critics who would dismiss his concerns as being rooted in nothing more than perversion, Taro would affirm in a follow-up tweet that his personal position was actually borne out of fear that such power structures could eventually have very real consequences for peoples worldwide.
“I get the sense that this is not just a matter of adult regulation or freedom of expression,” he affirmed, “but a security hole for democracy as a whole.”
As noted above, though Taro does not specify what specific events or persons prompted his tweets, given their timing, it’s almost certain that the aforementioned shuttering of Manga Library Z was at the forefront of his mind when he wrote them.
Per a recap of the situation provided by Manga Library Z founder and Love Hina mangaka Ken Akamatsu, “The direct cause of the site shutdown this time was that the payment agency notified us that it was terminating the entire payment service, including payment methods other than credit card payment.”
“All credit card companies, including JCB, suddenly became unusable, and all other payment methods (except BitCash) also became unavailable,” he said. “In addition, even the payment for the month that had already passed was withheld, and since the premium membership fee for that period (and future ones) was no longer coming in at all, we found ourselves in a situation where we could not even pay for the server. The Manga Library Z management staff discussed the situation, and came to the conclusion that ‘It is impossible to operate the site solely on BitCash earnings’, ‘Even if we find an alternative payment agency, the same phenomenon may occur again’, and ‘We do not want to survive by deleting only some of the works.”
“We decided to shut down the site,” the mangaka continued. “We deeply apologize that the period between the notification and the withholding of payment was so short that we had to ‘bow down to the company that provides the payment service.’ However, this time, we were able to obtain accurate information (only the parties concerned can provide) such as ‘On what basis the company declared the suspension of payment services’, ‘How much penalty will be imposed and how long it will last’, [and] ‘What specific measures were taken to avoid the suspension; etc.’ We believe that we will be able to conduct a more legitimate investigation and conduct a hearing.”
“In the past, Love Hina was banned by Apple’s e-book application and later restored,” he added. “We still cite that experience frequently as a ‘concrete experience example’ for ‘protecting freedom of expression’ and use it effectively to this day. In recent years, unprecedented ‘strong conditions’ and ‘strong penalties’ have been issued by payment services, and if these are left unchecked, the situation will surely become a problem not only for e-books but for the Japanese content industry as a whole.”
