In the game players earn points for acts of sexual violence, including following girls on commuter trains, raping virgins and their mothers, and then forcing them to have abortions. US online retailers Amazon and eBay in February last year took RapeLay off their websites, but the game's Yokohama-based maker Illusion brushed off the protests, saying the game was made for the domestic market and abided by laws in Japan. But attempts by women's rights groups such as Equality Now to ban the game have only created a black market for it online, with dozens of websites offering it as a free download. There is also a number of similar games available in Japan, many depicting young girls, under the "hentai" genre. Sexual assault victims' rights advocate Nina Funnell is against online censorship but said: "These games are quite vile and for victims out there it's quite distressing to come across these games or even just be aware that they exist and there's a culture of rape tolerance and acceptance."



Willis said she "absolutely" believes the forthcoming internet filtering regime is necessary and should block sites that offer access to the game. "While I don't think that playing games causes people to go out and do things, what it can do for those who may already have that preclusion is further break down social barriers to them taking that action," she said. Colin Jacobs, spokesman for the online users' lobby group Electronic Frontiers Australia, said on the surface a game like RapeLay might seem like a good argument for internet censorship but in reality trying to filter it would not work. "Those who want to will be able to get around the filter, and the content will be quickly copied from site to site," he said. "Games like this will only ever represent a tiny minority, and the proper response is largely parental, to make sure kids aren't getting their hands on them."

Similarly, Greens communications spokesman Scott Ludlam said: "If people want to pass it on, as soon as you block a URL it's going to pop up in three other places." Willis conceded that people who are tech-savvy and determined to get access to the game will be able to regardless of internet filters, but that didn't mean the filters would not help. "My father use to have this saying that a lock only stops an honest person ... [but] if we have a filter that will stop a large majority of people from getting access to the game," she said. In June last year, Japanese industry group Ethics Organisation of Computer Software instituted a ban on all "sexual torture software" because it "deviates extremely from social norms". But the ban is a form of self regulation and not enforceable in courts. Japan, which has in the past come under fire for being a major producer of child porn, banned the production and distribution of sexual materials involving those aged under 18 in 1999. However, the law didn't criminalise possession of such content and did not cover animated content, such as computer games.

A Japan Committee for UNICEF spokeswoman told the AFP last year that the Japanese loophole hindered international efforts to crack down on child porn. "In this globalised world, connected via the internet, even one loophole could jeopardise all the regulations," she said. "The world trend is to try to ban even the accessing and looking at websites of virtual images." CNN reported this week that a national Japanese law that would make possession of real and virtual images of child porn illegal was under discussion, but no serious legislation has moved forward in Japan's parliament. The broadcaster repeatedly attempted to obtain comment about the RapeLay game from the Japanese government over several weeks, but had no luck in getting anyone to comment on camera or provide a written statement.