First Denmark, then Sweden, and now Italy.

I not sure what the legal reasoning behind it is, though it is overall not a difficult issue to understand.

What is a deceptive business practice here? To let someone on some web server to disseminate child pornography to a subscriber? Is Verizon's letting its customer accessing the site deceptive to the customer? Is it somehow a violation of the user agreement by the Verizon?

It is indeed a workaround for the issue of the secrecy of communication. I think this news is reported in the English-speaking blogosphere to be 4 ISPs started blocking, but it is 4 industry associations agreeing to start developing a guideline with the expectation that the actual program starts by the end of this year.

What it cannot prevent is 1) downloaders who do not upload anything (b/c that does not constitue copyright violation under the Japanese copyright law), 2) people who use file sharing sites, 3) people who are hiding behind proxies and other IP masks. I think 3) will make the biggest challenge for this program's effectiveness. But casual file sharers will go away, and that might be enough to destroy the eco-system of file circulation.

All the major mobile carriers in Japan have filtering in place to protect minors from being exposed to "harmful" material. That is one thing (not reported here). The other thing is the ongoing ministry study/advisory group discussion on policies on harmful and illegal contents online in general, though the focus has been mostly on mobile access. This is reported here, but not with good details. Then there are two proposals from two parties (LDP and DPJ) each aiming at introducing the bill this year. That deals with censoring harmful and illegal information from regular (PC-based) Internet access.