Futaba Channel

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This article is about Futaba Channel. See 2channel for the article on "ni-channeru."

Futaba Channel

URL	2chan.net
Commercial?	No
Type of site	Imageboard/TextBBS
Registration	No
Owner	Unknown
Created by	Unknown
Launched	August 30, 2001
Revenue	none
Current status	Active

Futaba Channel (ふたば(双葉)☆ちゃんねる, Futaba Channeru, lit. "Double Leaf Channel, Two Leaf Channel"^?), or Futaba for short, is an internet forum in Japan. It is considered one of Japan's most popular imageboards dealing in otaku and underground culture. Futaba Channel was set up on August 30, 2001, as a refuge for 2channel users when 2channel was in danger of shutting down.

1 Concept
2 Futaba culture
3 Movement against Netrunner
4 References
5 See also
6 External links

[edit] Concept

Futaba Channel consists of about 60 imageboards (three of which are oekaki boards) and about 40 message boards, with topics ranging from daily personal problems to junk food, sports, ramen, and pornography. There is also a place to upload general non-image files. Futaba is powered by a custom script based on GazouBBS. The Futaba script is open source and is used to run many Japanese imageboards.

[edit] Futaba culture

The boards are, like many Asian forums, anonymous, with an optional tripcode system also in place.

Users are generally expected to lurk before posting, in order to understand the culture they are entering. Anonymity is considered a good thing; users who go out of their way to identify themselves are often ridiculed.

Futaba has spawned a number of strange visual gags and characters; the OS-tans would be one such meme that has spread to western internet culture. Some of the characters that appear on Futaba Channel have entered the real world in the form of various real-life goods, such as figures, dolls or images printed on pillows. Such items are mainly produced by Japanese dōjin artists and groups.

Internet users outside of Japan are not allowed to post on Futaba Channel, to try to save on both bandwidth and avoid foreign DDoS attacks. Other imageboards have been created outside of Japan based on the Futaba style of imageboard, most notably in the United States, China, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Russia. The largest English-speaking Futaba clone is 4chan.

Non-Japanese Internet users sometimes refer to Futaba Channel as 2chan, due to the address of the site. It is frequently unclear whether this is intended to mean Futaba Channel or 2channel, and sometimes it even refers to both, as if they were a single website. To eliminate confusion, the names Futaba and 2channel are often used.

[edit] Movement against Netrunner

Example of an anti-Netrunner banner

The controversy involving Netrunner, a monthly computer magazine in Japan, began when the magazine introduced an image board browsing software named Berry in an issue.^{[citation needed]} The software was responsible for creating a surge of traffic to Futaba Channel, as well as many inexperienced users who knew nothing about the rules and decorum of the image board. This had the effect of troubling, but not entirely angering, the regular Futaba Channel users.^{[citation needed]}

However, the May 2004 issue of Netrunner was bundled with a set of trading cards, depicting many of the original characters from Futaba Channel artists including ME-tan. As this was done without permission from the artists, many people became angry with Netrunner and the designer of ME-tan announced that they would never grant permission to use any of its work to anyone related to Netrunner.^[1] This has led to the appearance of a number of different banners to appear on artist websites against the magazine.