The Japanese government has put forward a bill that prohibits citizens of the country from downloading any files from the network that they do not have the right to use, including photos and texts.
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What happened
On on copyright in Japan, downloading unlicensed music or movies can result in a fine of two million yen (about $25) or jail time.
In February of this year, the country's Agency for Cultural Affairs decided to expand the list of file types prohibited for downloading. Organization include any copyrighted content, including computer games, software, and photographs and digital art. At the same time, the law forbade making and publishing screenshots of unlicensed content.
The initiative also included block sites that distribute links to resources with unlicensed content (according to experts, there are more than 200 of them in Japan).
On March XNUMX, these amendments were to be considered by the Japanese Parliament, but under public pressure, the authors decided to postpone the adoption of the bill indefinitely. Further, we will tell you who supported and who opposed the new initiative.
Who is for and who is against
The Japanese publishers of manga and comics were the most active in supporting the amendments to the law. According to them, sites that distribute this type of literature illegally cause the industry a large financial loss. One of these resources was blocked a year ago - the loss of publishers from its activities experts 300 billion yen ($2,5 billion).
But many have criticized the government's proposal. In February, a group of scientists and lawyers "an emergency statement", in which she called the possible punishments too harsh, and the wording was vague. The proposal of politicians the authors of the document “Internet atrophy” and warned that the new law would negatively impact culture and education in Japan.
Official statement against the amendments and the Japan Cartoonists Association. The organization condemned the fact that ordinary users can be punished for a relatively harmless act. Representatives of the association even proposed several adjustments, for example, to consider as infringers only those who publish unlicensed content not for the first time, and whose activities lead to large losses for copyright holders.
Even the content makers themselves, whose rights were planned to be protected by politicians, did not agree with the amendments. By comic book authors, the law will lead to the disappearance of fan art and the fan community.
Due to criticism, the bill in its current form was decided to be frozen. However, politicians will continue to work on the text of the document, taking into account the wishes of experts, in order to exclude all potential "gray areas" from it.
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Similar bills
It's not just Japan's politicians who are pushing for changes to copyright laws. Since the spring of 2018, the European Parliament has been considering a new directive that obliges media platforms to introduce special filters to identify unlicensed content when uploading to the site (similar to the Content ID system on YouTube).
This bill has also been criticized. Experts point to the vagueness of the wording and the complexity of implementing technologies that would be able to distinguish content uploaded by the author from content uploaded by someone else. However, the directive most European governments.
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Another case is Australia. Legislative changes be submitted by the Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC). It was presented that content authors are forced to spend a lot of time and effort searching for and monitoring the illegal distribution of their work. Therefore, ACCC proposes to shift this task to media platforms. It is not yet known whether the initiative will be approved by the government, but the document has already been criticized for its unified approach to different platforms.
New bill and the Singapore Ministry of Justice. One suggestion is to assign a "non-transferable" right that would allow content makers to claim attribution even if the licenses were sold to someone else. Also, the ministry proposed to completely rewrite the text of the copyright law and make it more understandable for people without legal education. These measures are expected to make the law more transparent and help content creators get fair pay for their work.
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Source: habr.com
