Ah, still censorship in Japan

[Abe-Nornes]

Speaking of Adobe.....

There is an interesting route around the censorship problem for
representations circulating on the internet. A piece of shareware called
FLMASK (or MOZKILLER for the Mac) has been written to create the famous
mosaic over any image one is editing. One the receiving end, the
_spectator_ plugs the image back into the same software and IS ABLE TO
DE-MOSAIC THE CENSORSHIP.  This allowed porn providers to follow the letter
of the law while circumventing it completely. Sites using this software
announce it to their readers/lookers.

This came to my attention last spring, when friends joked about it while
complaining in disgust about how the creator of FLMASK was arrested by
police, who also confiscated all his gear. If the site is still there, you
can read about this (in Japanese) at www.bekkoame.or.jp/~sumomo/arrest.htm.
 I believe this site also has links to download sites.

There is also an article (a slight one) in weekly ASCII '97 (June 2), and
it looks like a rensai.

Because it's basically used by pornographers who would circulate their
images one way or another, it's ultimately not _that_ interesting.
[Although I did censor a racy photo of my puppy on my homepage if you want
to see an example!: 
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~amnornes/Porno.html?17,7

On a more serious note, it appears that internet yellow pages providers in
Japan have self-censored themselves. I spent a considerable time searching
for this software (or any mention of it) last spring, and nothing came up.
It didn't make sense. I finally tried the American Yahoo and there were
thousands of entries,  for download sites, for information on the arrest,
and for adult sites using it. I think we can easily conclude that the
internet providers in Japan are censoring themselves.

Markus