No, no, not another “kid with a Death Note in school” story– an editorial on Shanghai Daily about the Chinese government’s recent ban on the sale of all horror and supernatural films. (Wait, seriously? Does that mean Harry Potter is banned too? WTF?) The article makes mention of last year’s Death Note ban.

If it seems random, I do remember a Chinese friend telling me that there’s a belief that when the population gets interested in ghost stories, it means the current regime is about to fall or something like that…but it still seems a little absurd, doesn’t it?

Still, the “sale” of horror/supernatural flicks doesn’t appear to include the download of such films, since one interviewee says that “we’ll just download our movies from the Internet.” Good times.

Apparently China is using cute anime-style SD cops to alert citizens that Big Brother is watching them surf the ‘net, according to CNet (though the news is making the rounds).

Which leaves me thinkin’, maybe Dubya should just borrow Pikachu or Doraemon to make warrantless wiretapping more palatable to U.S. citizens.

Wow, for once an anime-viewing site gets taken down not for copyright but for TRAUMATIZING THE YOUTH, or rather, for promoting “death fantasies.”

The Shanghai Daily reports that officials shut down the site dofor.cn because it allowed to “allowed users to watch or post videos based on the banned Japanese novel” Death Note. (Well, there IS a Death Note novel, it’s true, though I think the focus is more on the anime/manga…) From the article:

“‘This is the first Website we have caught to spread ‘Death Note.’ We welcome reports about other Shanghai-based Websites involved in spreading such works,’ [Shanghai Culture Inspection General Team official] Yang said.”