Japan Decides Fair Use Is A Good Thing

from the and-we-agree dept

Fri, May 30th 2008 3:29am — Mike Masnick

The entertainment industry in the US has been conducting a worldwide campaign to diminish the concept of "fair use" -- even to the point of accusing other countries that have US-style fair use systems of allowing piracy. However, the campaign appears to have failed in Japan, which does not currently have a "fair use" exception in its copyright law. However, as sent in by Petrea Mitchell, Japan is now adding the concept of fair use to its copyright law, and doing so following the US's own concept of fair use. Does this mean that Japan will soon be added to the bogus watch list of foreign countries that don't respect copyright?

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Filed Under: copyright, fair use, japan

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Big Frankie on the wawa pedal., 30 May 2008 @ 5:50am

Not US Industry's Cup of Tea ... Too Bad
So, Japan is coming up with laws that are the best for its citizens rather than what is best for US industries.

Hmmmmm, I guess they just don't understand that the US industry is the only thing in the world that counts (at least according to US lobbyists and corporate greed pigs).

At least the Japanese got it right, seems like something the US can't do ... get it right for its own people.
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Evil Mike, 30 May 2008 @ 7:28am

Good.
I'm glad to see a country with a long rich history of not tearing itself apart with stupid laws is doing well in this regard.

Then again, no surprise.
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itanshi, 30 May 2008 @ 8:10am

Re: Good.
Tell that to the hacker arrested in Japan and tried for copyright infringement. Or tell that to the owner of Wini P2P program that was arrested without a law cited. Japan is behind on laws on some subjects, so its good they catch up.

Also its good to note that they are major advocates of fair use more so than we (US) are given Comic Market twice a year. 400K to 500K attendance each with many selling doujinshi (community magazines) which are basically fanzines or derivative works of given medias without license. These are seen as breeding grounds and some of the great names in the industry such as CLAMP and Gainax came from this.
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Ben, 30 May 2008 @ 10:17am

Re: Not US Industry's Cup of Tea ... Too Bad
Well, since the US is one of the few countries that is not producing the pirate crap (fake tees, DVDS, etc) I think that they must have something going for them!
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Wayne, 30 May 2008 @ 1:47pm

Oh ya US not making fake! must be on Crack?
Don't kid yourself US has lots of Pirating going on. Most just know where to download it themself so they don't need to buy it. Haven't you seen the news. That one lady getting charged for sharing what 11 songs and got fined to the tune of 1/4 million $. US firms just greedy like most of us i won't pay 20$ a cd for 1 ok song and 14 others i wouldn't listen to. I think it's time the entertainment industry got with the times. To all those bands out there how about trying to put on a concert. No more millions for those few records do some real work. I'm glad i live in canada. Ya it's great you can download movies before we get them in theatre here. I wonder how much that move cost the movie industry.
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