Japanese Government Puts Restrictive Copyright Amendments On Hold Over 'Internet Atrophy' Worries
from the delay-delay-delay dept
Call me surprised. We have been recently discussing a proposal in Japan to alter copyright law in the country to criminalize every single instance of copyright infringement, rather than saving any of that for the civil courts. The bonkers proposal would take the current law, in which all instances of copyright infringement on movies and music carry criminal penalties and expand that to essentially all copyright infringement everywhere. This would include screenshots, posting lyrics to songs, and the like. Shortly after all of this was announced, a large group of Japanese academics wrote an open statement to the government indicating their concern that allowing the new law to move forward would result in an extreme chilling effect on internet usage in the country. At the time, I said it was a litmus test for whether the government would take any objection to the law seriously, tame as it was. It was also likely clear that I wasn't optimistic.
Well, surprise, the government has actually put the proposal on hold out of a concern for the very chilling effects those academics raised.
The planned copyright amendments were set to be submitted to the Diet on March 8, 2019 but according to local sources, Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP or Jimintō) put the brakes on the proposals the day before they were due to be submitted.
Reports suggest that the party had such serious concerns over the scope of the law that its implementation might mean that “use of the Internet would be atrophied.”
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe reportedly held a telephone call with Keisya Furuya, the former National Public Safety Commissioner and chairman of the bipartisan MANGA (Manga-Animation-Game) parliamentary group on March 6, 2019. According to AnimeNewsNetwork, this led to the decision to remove the proposals from the agenda.
And so the law now goes back to the Ministry of Culture, Sports, Science and Technology for further discussion. The ultimate fate of the law is yet to be decided, of course, but this should be encouraging for the pessimists among us (Hi!) that tend to believe these restrictive laws in favor of content companies always get railroaded through no matter the people's protest. In this case, at least, it seems that protest worked.
Part of that may be because, again, those objecting to the law did so on only the mildest grounds.
Scholars and other experts are suggesting that the best route is to only criminalize actions that cause real financial damage to content owners.
The general consensus among the academics is that making infringement criminally punishable may be acceptable, but only when full copyright works – such as movies, music, manga publications, and books – are exploited in their entirety.
Which, you know, okay. That's probably still too onerous, but at least it's a step back from the truly insane route Japan was on.
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blue proven wrong, again? I'm shocked, I tell you! Shocked!
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To those who say you can't sue the gun manufacturers over mass shooting, someone forgot to tell that to the Connecticut Supreme Court:
https://www.npr.org/2019/03/14/703439924/lawsuit-by-sandy-hook-victims-against-gun-manufacturer-all owed-to-move-forward
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AC's Connecticut post is not relevant to this article about Japan.
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Has to do with platform liability and the gunmaker-immunity analogy.
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And Shiva Ayyadurai still didn't invent email. Next!
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So, nothing to do with the article you're commenting on then?
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You might want to read that article you linked to. 1) it's not relevant to the TD topic at hand, and 2) it doesn't say what you think it does.
The Connecticut Supreme Court DID NOT say it was ok to sue gun manufacturers over mass shootings. It said the federal protection laws for manufacturers do not apply in this specific instance and remanded it to the lower court to determine if Remington engaged in, and this is crucial, "truly unethical and irresponsible marketing practices promoting criminal conduct". In other words, by marketing and selling the gun were they deliberately promoting people buying it and going and shooting up other people. Since the lower court dismissed in the first place, they are likely to do so again.
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You expected Jhon Smith to be honest? Really?
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Looks like the Diet bit off more than it could swallow.
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Cultural differences
Because of the value that the Japanese place on unity and consensus, there are two cultural factors in play that probably led to this retraction: a) unless you're REALLY pissed about something, you don't raise "concerns" in public. and b) if an important group of citizens raises a concern in public, you'd better pay attention or you could take the blame for the resulting loss of unity. Going public carries a lot of risk,because if you go public and the public thinks your concerns are trivial or self-serving, you take a bit hit to credibility on a "boy who cried wolf"/career ending level.
An open letter from a group of academics in Japan is probably equivalent to the email flood from John Oliver's LWT minions to the FCC, and the ruling party in the Japanese diet is significantly more accountable to public opinion than Ajit Pai is in the US.
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Smarter than the EU?...Apparently?
It seems the Japanese Government has more common sense than the European Union, which has none. Don’t let new Copyright laws threaten your freedom of self expression or freedom of speech.
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They needed Einstein to tell them what should be friggin obvious.
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