Via GamePolitics.com, a disturbing story in two parts.
Brazil has banned the game Bully from its shelves. At first glance, it would seem semi-logical, as Bully comes from the makers of the Grand Theft Auto series. It’s a nasty little piece of reactionary pie, though, because the slightest bit of research into what the game actually entails would show that the game is the exact opposite of what people believe it is. The game is about a new kid at a New England prep school who is confronted by groups of bullies, each increasingly tougher to deal with, and he must overcome the odds.
Soooooo, why ban it?
“The aggravating factor is that everything in the game takes place inside a school,” Bastos said. “That is not acceptable.”
Le sigh. This proves that politics and video games don’t mix in more countries than mine, I guess. Can we take comfort in that?
Part two, and icing on the cake as far as I’m really concerned, from the same article: Brazil has also banned wordpress.com, for reasons that look like nothing more than a blog (or a few, of several hundred thousand on wordpress.com) said things critical of Brazil’s government, its politicians, or its practices. The blog that gamepolitics links to had a few more damning things to say about his fellow countrymen, as well:
Unfortunately brazilians dont know the meaning of freedom. They think that freedom is only carnival and sex on TV… Probably millions of brazilians dont even care about the block of wordpress.com… Probably they’ll keep watching lame and idiotic televisions shows like Big Brother and novelas while drinking their beers illuding theirselves that they are free. And the government will keep shutting the mouth of anyone who dare’s to show the sad truth about our panis et circencis politics…
It seems pretty serious, that’s the last time this particular person has blogged, and time was taken to post in English (the blog is in Portuguese, primarily).
Brazil joins China, Turkey, Thailand, and most of the Middle East in banning, presumably as a national rule, a website based solely on content that the governments of said countries don’t like.
Those of you whining that the US has eroded all of your rights, light a candle to $diety that that has not, nor will it, happen here.
Hello. I’m the owner of the blog Terramel
First of all, thanks for posting about what I wrote. I spent more than a week without posting nothing new to my blog, but that have nothing to do with the block. Wordpress.com is not yet banned here in Brazil. I dont know what’s happening about it right now because I was a little away from the internet the last week (I spent the whole week tuning installing Ubuntu in my mom’s computer and configuring it for her ;D)…
Now I’m back. I just posted an article about using command dd to record CDs and DVDs (it’s in portuguese). If I have more time I’ll write more posts in english about the block. I just need to read a little more!
Well. Thank you for linking to my blog
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Leonardo Ribeiro Rodrigues da Rocha (aka Terramel)
Sorry, just one more comment
What I said about freedom of speech here in Brazil is because I’m very pissed with the politicians of Brazil.. They want to ban Wordpress.com and the game Bully, they also have banned the selling of the games Counter Strike and Everquest, they had youtube shut down for an entire day because of a brazilian model who had sex on the beach (Daniela Cicarelli), they had a project for controlling information of internet users and record their IPs. Oh, I forgot, a politician of one of the poorest states of Brazil, the state of Piauí, had a project aproved to formally ask to a television network why one contester of the reality show Big Brother Brasil lost… This is ridiculous -.-
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Terramel