Problems with DVD

[wlt4@mindspring.com]

>I believe that the US and Japan have had a long >tradition of no Copywrite compliance.  In other >words, as long as an american company or a >company with american holdings doesn't own the >copywrite there is no agreement with Japan not >to reproduce the materials.  Japan likewise, >doesn't respect American copywrite laws unless a >Japanese company has some ties with the company >that owns the writes to the work in question.  

This isn't true, or at least not exactly.  Both Japan and the US are signatories to the Berne Convention which means that each country grants a properly copyrighted work from the other country the same copyright protection it does to its own citizens/companies.  In other words, if a film is copyrighted in Japan then in the US it gets the same protection that a US film would get (and the other way around: a copyrighted US film gets in Japan the same protection a Japanese film would get).  So somebody in the US who duplicates a copyrighted Japanese work has violated copyright just as if they had duplicated a US film.  It's irrelevant whether the companies or copyright holders have any connection to the other country.  Fansubbed anime is a very clear copyright violation, though in practice hardly anybody cares.

The full text of Berne is available from several sources; one such is http://www.cerebalaw.com/berne.htm