Japan to ban internet users for file sharing

Hasn't anyone thought that the reason why japanese don't use file sharing programs that are popular in the US because of the language barrier? I mean, the people who look for anime or japanese music using programs in Japanese can basically be counted on one hand, so would you expect anything else from the Japanese who are, even though they like to claim the opposite, hardly be called fluent when it comes to english. I can read anything I want in English, but I still to download my manga in french if possible, it's basically a matter of preference. I laugh at Americans who claim that they are more international just because they visit websites from other countries in English. You don't see an American making an effort to understand a french or a german site, so why would you expect a Japanese to use english networks when they can get everything they want from sites in their own language?

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Originally Posted by Bradylama

Because English is the International Language?

Because using international filesharing networks vastly expands the pool of resources that are available to them?

The vast majority of people in the world are ok with using English as the basic language for international communication.

Though I'm also willing to bet, that since nerds are already so despised and marginalized in Japan, they're already used to insulating themselves from the larger community.

Even if English is the international language, that doesn't mean that everyone speaks it, or is fluent enough to use it on a daily basis. I think it's pretty obvious to anyone who has talked to Japanese who have never lived abroad DO NOT speak English. Most of them can read a bit, but they can't understand what you're saying, nor can they give you a clear response. I was at a conference where the Japanese ambassadors to Belgium and France spoke, and they were just HORRIBLE. If highlevel government officials don't speak enough English, what the hell can you expect from your average Japanese guy or girl? Most Japanese are only interested in japanese dubbed foreign media, or in japanese media, and those are generally not found that easily using English file sharing networks, so why go through all the trouble of using a network in a foreign language, when you can just as easily find it in Japanese networks? It is not that they are deliberately isolating themselves from other networks because they consider them inferior, it's just that they generally don't seem to have a need for them.

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Maybe me using French in one of my previous posts was a bad example, Japanese are a different case because they are simply awful at foreign languages, even someone from the Netherlands or France can speak better English than your average Japanese. How many Japanese players are there in your Western RPGs? For those who play MMORPGs like Phantasy Star or FFXI, how many Japanese players do you encounter on international servers? Just look at the number of Japanese members on any average forum compared to other foreigners, I can only think of ONE person on these forums, and she seems to have lived most, if not all of her life in the states. Japanese just like to stay in their own group, which from my experience seems to be largely because of the language barrier.

As I said in my previous post, Japanese hardly care for a lot of the stuff that we use file sharing networks for (movies, tv shows, music), unless they can somehow find it in their own language. How many dubbed movies can you find on your average torrent network, or in the various soulseek groups? The number is hardly worth going through all the trouble for, so why not use networks in your own language. I also use specialized sites when I want to download Dutch or French TV shows or movies, since they simply can't be found in their original version on so-called international networks.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Originally Posted by Bradylama

I couldn't give a fuck about some Nipponjin gobbledy-gook that I can't read.

The point is that the Japanese using their own networks outside of the wider filesharing networks can't be explained away with a language barrier, because for some reason, the Russians, using a cyrillic alphabet are perfectly fine with using international filesharing networks.

I'm not saying that the language barrier is the only reason why Japanese tend to stick to their own networks (I even gave others, like not finding the stuff they want on international filesharing networks), but it is an important factor to consider. I don't know anything about Russian, so I won't comment on that, but it just happens to be easier for Europeans to browse English websites, because of linguistic similarities, than it is for the Japanese, who's closest linguistic link to the West is Turcic.

Sorry for dragging you into this Shorty, you're the only member I could think of who had a link to Japan, aside from the otaku.

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