#os-tan

i really want this figure dude ... (reference below the cut)

Okotowari-tan (ｵｺﾄﾜﾘたん)

the anti-netrunner mascot, she's an anthromorphication/gijinka mascot of a web banner seen on the homepage of many moe, tech and otaku culture related websites in the 2000s. her design above was first posted at 9:47 pm on the 7th of February, 2004. the original warning banner might have originated from a Futaba Channel and otaku-kei related news site called nomatako. the design is by Hirai Yukio.

loosely translates to " NETRUNNER IS FORBIDDEN, Bukkonukichuu*(mass image scraping losers basically) go home, users from Netrun please get out"

the bow tying her ponytail is a sprouting plant with 2 leaves, probably to symbolize the css theme used on Futaba Channel

the mouse probably symbolises users of image scrapers right clicking and the 🚫 t-shirt represents the web banner above

Okotowari translates to "I refuse" or "no thank you' (common in shift-jis ASCII art like this⤵)

bukkonukki is internet slang for users of mass image ripping/data scraping tools, coming from 'bukkonuku' meaning to exfilterate or covertly extract files and images en masse. it was associated with Winny, a p2p client that was very controversial and resulted in many long legal battles due to Japan's notoriously harsh anti-piracy laws. at the time NetRunner magazine, a tech magazine published by Softbank was criticised by anons online on BBS sites like 2ch and Futaba channel for including having CDs and tutorials relating to promoting using it for piracy, much like other P2P clients like limewire or kazaa it was also known for being used to spread a lot of malware and leaked classified government documents. the programmer who made Winny didn't condone it being used like that but unfortunately was unfairly punished for countless years by Japan's legal system and passed away in 2015

much like mass AI data scraping these days, bukkonuki also contributed to a lot of fanart theft as well as DDOSing websites and taking servers offline or inaccessible for extended periods due to the sudden influx of requests.

back in the early 2000s these banners were usually used as a way of saying 'do not steal my data without written permission/ do not reupload my content to p2p clients'.

another reason NetRunner magazine was under fire and mass boycott campaigns may have been because back then internet culture and memes were seen as something cherished that should never be utilised by corporations for profit motives, and the heart of the culture behind OS-tans and similar parody gijinkas were usually based around criticism against corporations like Microsoft. gatekeeping/ the desire to protect internet memes and gijinka mascots like that from corporate greed (and tourists/outsiders) was a pretty widespread sentiment back then, and probably seen as necessary due to how harshly capitalism (like that one time the huge toy company Takara attempted to trademark Giko Neko which deserves a whole seperate dedicated post) and copyright related lawsuits had unfairly impacted internet based fandoms (and opensource & freeware devs like Isamu Kaneko) in the past, like with the Ukagaka/nise-Haruna lawsuits.

(just speculation, based on the limited web archives available )