“Tokyo police may soon bring charges against tabloid newspapers and men’s magazines that run ads for illegal sex services, Mainichi Shimbun reported Monday. Publications that run such ads may be charged with abetting a violation of the adult entertainment business law, according to a directive of the Metropolitan Police Department. After cracking down on adult entertainment districts in recent months, Tokyo police apparently have opened a second front, with publishers their prime target. Some publishers are furious, however. ‘There’s no way we can tell if an advertiser is legal or not,’ said an advertising executive for a sports newspaper. Sex ads provide a vital source of income for some Japanese publications.” —Washington Times (US)

Recently Google informed PervScan that it could not longer run ads on its AdWords program. PervScan had been advertising itself as a sex blog via Google AdWords for over a year, and suddenly Google decided to pull the plug. It cited PervScan for featuring rape, bestiality, incest, etc., etc. Of course, this was ironic because (a) PervScan does not particularly advocate perverse behavior, and often PervScan’s analyses point out the folly and danger of such activity; (b) PervScan features no imagery whatsoever and thus it would be difficult to call the site “pornographic”; (c) all of the stories featured on PervScan come from readily available public news sources; (d) many of these stories are in fact found via Google’s own news service. In effect, Google is punishing PervScan for republishing stories that can be found via its own service. Weird.

PervScan protested Google’s decision but in the final analysis the decision was theirs. If they don’t want ads from PervScan, they aren’t obliged to accept them. What can you do? Move on.

And that, no doubt, is precisely what will happen if the Tokyo cops crack down on sex-related ads in the local rags. It may have a punishing effect on some of the newspapers — seventy percent of one publisher’s revenue came from sex-related advertising — but it will have absolutely no effect on the sex trade. Why? Because they’ll just move on. They’ll advertise elsewhere. Internet, text messaging, word of mouth — it’s not like there are a lack of opportunities to get the word out.

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