Japanese bookstores are set to launch a national campaign to stop so-called “digital shoplifting” by customers using the lastest camera-equipped mobile phones. The Japanese Magazine Publishers Association says the practice is “information theft” and it wants it stopped.
It is the kind of thing that most Japanese young women wouldn’t think twice about doing. The Japanese use their phones for much more than just calling. They might spot a new hairstyle or a new dress in a glossy fashion magazine and they want to know what their friends think — so they take a quick snap with their mobile phone camera and send everybody a picture.
which suggests that the Japanese are applying their cultural skill at appropriation at the micro- as well as macro-scale, busily setting nude media free from its embedded context…