[KineJapan] Copyright in Japan, Again

[Mark Roberts]

With the LDP victory in the election this past Sunday, Japan is now closer to entering the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP).

As many of you are aware, the TPP will have very significant effects on different sectors of the Japanese economy, including cinema.

The TPP negotiations are taking place in secret, though representatives of over 600 corporations have private access. Chapters of the text on IP and copyright have been leaked, and groups like the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) have published materials to clarify the impact. EFF believes that revisions to copyright law will also impact fair use.

What Will Japan's Entry Into TPP Mean for Internet Users?
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/07/what-will-japans-entry-tpp-mean-internet-users

New Leaked TPP Text Puts Fair Use at Risk
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/08/new-leaked-tpp-puts-fair-use-risk

Excerpt:

[T]here are three things in the TPP that threaten to change Japanese copyright law for the worse:

First, the TPP calls for lengthened copyright term protection that would run roughshod over previous Japanese rejection of such extensions. Just as the U.S. attempted to do previously, the agreement would extend copyright terms from 50 years after the life of the author to 70 years after the life of the author. For copyright terms based on the creation date, TPP would also extend it another 25 years to 95 years, or up to 120 for corporate owned works.

Second, it bans parallel importation, meaning it would require authorization from the copyright owner to import goods even if those goods were purchased legally in another country. This would greatly impact the sale and availability of content, such as DVDs or software, if the copyright owner decides they’d like monopoly control of distribution across national borders.

Finally and most crucially, TPP threatens to upend a principle in Japanese law called shinkokuzai, whereby crimes are not prosecuted without a formal complaint from the victim. In addition, TPP would impose statutory penalties for infringement even if there’s no proof of actual harm. This could lead to an even greater crackdown on file sharing and online, fan-generated comics that are core to the anime community.

The combination of all of these new restrictions has lead Ken Akamatsu to describe the TPP as “destroy[ing]” the market of self-published transformative anime works, and diminishing the manga industry as a whole. The long fight such communities faced in battled local copyright proposals would be undermined by changes being enforced undemocratically through the secret trade agreement.

Opinions?

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Mark Roberts
Research Fellow, UTCP
http://utcp.c.u-tokyo.ac.jp/members/data/mark_roberts/index_en.php

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