Toranoana, which mainly sells doujinshi and other works by individual creators, has received reports from users claiming that their consignment sales have been suspended.
The attached email from Toranoana states, "We have been notified by the payment company that your circle's work is child sexual abuse content (CSAM) and have requested that sales be suspended and the online shopping page be removed." The company says it responded in accordance with its terms and conditions.
Creator Momonomi, leader of the doujin circle Momonomi Plus, posted on KaX on the 29th that Toranoana, the company that sells her works, has suspended the online shopping page.
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The post also includes an email that appears to have been sent from Toranoana. The email states the background of the response: "Recently, the payment company notified us that the following work by your circle falls under child sexual abuse material (CSAM), and requested that we stop selling it and remove the mail order page." The payment company's request was processed according to the company's terms and conditions.
In response to this report, the creator community has been paying attention to the payment company's "CSAM" judgment. CSAM (Child Sexual Abuse Material) is simply a general term for child sexual abuse content. Many organizations, including Google, define it as "photos, videos, and computer-generated images of minors engaged in explicit sexual acts."
The work in question is adult content with age restrictions, but as far as the archive page and other sources are concerned, it is not a record, but a fictional creation made of illustrations. Therefore, some users who saw this report questioned the content of the payment company's request, saying, "It doesn't fall under CSAM," and there are various opinions flying around, such as pointing out the possibility of a "miscommunication of the request content" by Toranoana.
The payment providers here are thought to refer to international credit card brands, with VISA at the forefront. In the last six months, a succession of services that handle user-created content have been forced to suspend transactions, leaving the major download sales companies DLsite and Niconico (monthly membership fee) in a tough situation where they can only use domestic brands such as JCB.
FANZA Doujin, a similar service to Toranoana, suddenly announced in mid-June that it would suspend VISA transactions. In addition to the ongoing topicality, the timing coincides with the upcoming large-scale sales events such as Comiket, raising concerns about the growing impact on other individual creators.