Starting today, the Japanese government is going to fingerprint all visitors. As can be seen in the brochure, a print of each index finger will be taken, like the USA's procedure. It seems to me that the most fitting protest would be for annoyed travellers to wear one-fingered gloves or plasters of an agreed colour on their index fingers while in countries that do this.

There is a petition against this that you may wish to sign. However, if you do, you should probably misspell your name to thwart possible attempts by the Japanese government to use this petition as the basis of a trouble makers list.

When the USA started this, Brazil reacted by fingerprinting USA citizens when they enter Brazil. There is information about the USA's system and some links and information about Japan's similar system and Brazil's reaction on the Wikipedia article: USA-VISIT. Brazil has a large community of 2nd and 3rd generation Japanese immigrants, so maybe they will react against Japan's system too. And it's worth noting that Japan's system is actually even worse than the USA's.

The BBC has a good article about the jusifications. It seems some minister said this was necessary because one of his friend's friends is in Al-Qaeda. Then, realising that was a stupid thing to say, he gave a bungled retraction. More information can be found on the Re-entry Japan blog.

This is a pity because I have some friends in Japan (some are Japanese, some are European, some are Filipino) that I would like to see again, but this new procedure discourages me from going there.

If everyone accepts Japan doing this, is the EU next? The Reuters article I linked to at the top says that the UK is already considering something similar.

Groklaw has just published an interview with Ashley Highfield, the BBC's Future Media and Technology Director - the department responsible for the development of the DRM'd iPlayer software:

• Groklaw interview: Ashley Highfield on iPlayer

On the positive side, he says:

...the long-term alternative solution is a world beyond DRM and how we can work together, particularly with our rights holders, to get to a world beyond DRM.

On the worrying side, he says that free software DRM is probably the interim solution. Free software DRM? That doesn't make sense. DRM is used to impose restrictions on how the software can be used, and software is only free software if the user is free to use it for any purpose. I guess they're still in the research phase regarding that idea.

Another worrying tidbit is that he says it is necessary that the copyright holders be...

...assured that the content would be available free within the UK but not freely copying available outside the UK.

I'm not sure how they can prevent that without taking control over the computers of everyone who watches the content. Maybe an alternative solution would be for the big customers of this content to agree to continue paying as much as they do and to abandon attempts to prevent people's computers from copying or redistributing the data.

Some of his later comments are positive again later when asked about this supposed free software DRM:

But even that, as I think you'd agree, is not the solution. The solution is actually to find a solution to DRM, to move beyond DRM in the long run.

So, this story's only beginning. Interesting interview.

I did a bit of research about "free software DRM" while discussing this with Sean Daly, so I'll put some notes on this in my blog later today.