J films on video w/ E subtitles

[Aaron Gerow]

Markus may have had his problems with a credit card (which seems odd, 
given that tourists use credit cards all the time), but at least he was 
able to buy some DVDs.

As I have reported before, I had problems last time purchasing DVDs in 
Japan for my university because the companies, it seems, are blocking 
sales of DVDs to such institutions.

I was able to talk to a representative of one company today and, while he 
was quite polite and understanding, amazed to find out the problem is 
even worse than I thought. He was saying that technically universities 
shouldn't be able to buy VHS tapes either! According to him, it was all a 
question of rights. DVDs and videos are sold for home use only, and to 
buy them for public use in a library involves other rights. The company 
only has the rights to sell them for home not public use. When I asked 
who has those rights, he said say the original producers (who in some 
cases can be multiple companies), but no one has made any arrangement to 
facilitate sales to universities and/or their libraries. (If I wanted to 
buy the tape/DVD for the university, I'd then have to get permission from 
each of the multiple producers of every single tape/DVD I want!) The 
argument, which I heard, is that sales to universities cut into rental 
video/DVD sales, so they're not interesting in facilitating such sales.

Some Japanese companies do have special rates for library purchase (as 
some US companies do), but in general this is only for clearly 
educational products, and not for regular commercial films. Only a few 
DVDs and videos are sold for home and public use.

Thus technically all of you who are buying DVDs and videos in Japan for 
university use, unless you are buying at a special institutional rate 
(which is only available on a small number of items), are doing so 
illegally because you have not paid the money to those who own the rights 
for public use.

The result, of course, is abominable. Namely that unless the Japanese 
industry can get its act together and coordinate sales of videos/DVDs of 
commercial films to libraries, no university can legally purchase them 
and film studies in Japan will remain stillborn.

Aaron Gerow
Associate Professor
International Student Center
Yokohama National University
79-1 Tokiwadai
Hodogaya-ku, Yokohama 240-8501
JAPAN
E-mail: gerow at ynu.ac.jp
Phone: 81-45-339-3170
Fax: 81-45-339-3171