Japan to expand anti-online piracy law to encompass manga, magazines

[ahobaka]

New legislation passed in Japan will now criminalize the act of pirating manga, and hosting sites that leech content. This may be bad news for site operators and people who are living in Japan who may be prosecuted for pirating licensed material (e.g file sharers and people who are doing fan translation work inside Japan)

mainichi.jp/english/articles/20200310/p2g/00m/0na/096000c

TOKYO (Kyodo) -- The Japanese government approved Tuesday a bill to expand the nation's anti-online piracy law to encompass manga, magazines and academic texts.

The current law only applies to the illicit downloading of music and videos but following the revision of the copyright law, which the government aims to implement by Jan. 1 next year, those found guilty of obtaining the newly-included materials will face the same criminal charges.

The new bill includes some exceptions that allow downloading of copyrighted content after earlier-proposed changes drew fire.

Penalties for repeat offenders will be up to two years in jail or a maximum 2 million yen ($19,400) fine, or both.

The government aims to have the bill passed in the ongoing regular parliamentary session, while a rule to make illegal "leech websites," which provide users links to download so-called torrent files of pirated materials, will take effect on Oct. 1.

Those found to be operating a leech website will face penalties of up to five years in jail or a maximum 5 million yen fine, or both.

The revised proposal exempts "minor offenses" and "special instances" which do not impair the interests of copyright owners.

The Cultural Affairs Agency listed example cases such as downloads that are "limited to one frame from a ten plus page manga" and "saving a post about a poster advertising an event that was put on a social networking site without permission."

Furthermore, downloading fan fiction works and taking screenshots of non-copyrighted images will not be illegal.

 

[BzzBzz]

No one gives a fuck about Japan laws outside of Japan.

 

[justforthelulz]

 

[crazybars]

Do the people who write these laws. . . . . understand how the Internet works? There has never been a time where anyone has actually stopped piracy by going after people hosting links and file sharers. America over here has tried this, with Movies. Holly wood has thrown way more money into this effort.

You want to know how effective the United State's efforts have been? If I wanted to, I can get the entirety of the Disney + Catalogue on my hard drive within a month. If I use VPNs or don't care about getting caught,I would need a week.


On a more 1 to 1 comparison, the American Comic book industry has lobbied and received harsh laws against pirating Comics in their home country America. It's highly illegal to pirate or host pirated comics here, and has jail time and fines. I go to a Comic book appreciation group, nearly everyone pulls out a tablet or laptop with some Comic book pirate site open or the chapter files themselves. And keep in mind, I'm talking about American Comics, they don't have the foreign popularity they used to. The pirate host up-loaders must be mostly uploaded by Americans. . . . for other American Pirates. . . . in America . Yet 99.9% of the time, nothing happens to anyone. I will say, at least the Comic pirate sites are probably not hosted in the United States so yay. . . .???

"limited to one frame from a ten plus page manga". The revised proposal exempts "minor offenses" and "special instances" which do not impair the interests of copyright owners.

Oh, I have a good question for this clause Japan. How do you enforce something that vague. That would pretty much mean that Manga and Anime memes could technically be illegal. That is unenforceable.

 

[Ashleyneal]

So will this apply to people outside of japan

 

[draconeo]

One question: are translated mangas fan fiction or piracy (I really don't know....)?

On one hand, they are scans from the actual works of mangakas (in essence) and property of the owner of copyright; on the other hand, what is divulged is a fan-based work that consists in a group of people editing and changing certain elements such as language and sometimes the frames themselves (when editind sound effects for example).

I assume mangadex has some kind of defense against people posting licensed material, so it seems the biggest losers with this bill will be poor researchers without access to universities' or institutes' databases that are going to find it harder to get academic texts....

Crazybars is right regarding the power of this law and I think they made it vague on purpose simply because they might want to make an example out of someone, for example, a new megaupload or something similar, and have no pressure to enforce the law all the time (of course they have to protect the industry, but I suppose they have better things to do....).

 

[crazybars]

========= Post 1

@Ashleyneal

No. Only in Japan.

Honestly, you can just ignore this law even if you lived in Japan. A lot of similar laws don't have teeth because they can't actually catch the majority of Users downloading or uploading. (Unless you actually are running a pirate website or server etc. In that case, you gotta be really careful if you're actually doing that. . . . . etc. )

The hefty fines are there to scare you like a scarecrow, which is the actual purpose of these laws. They then go and prosecute barely a handful of people out of hundreds of millions per country, but that pretty much means your chance of getting sued is worse than getting hit by lightning.

===================================== Post 2

@draconeo

I went on the Japanese forum boards. Apparently not many people in Japan like the new piracy laws, the vagueness is just as appalling to them because the 1st version of the Bill pretty much made everything on the Japanese internet involving Anime and Manga in the country technically piracy. The first version of the bill was changed not because they had a change of heart, but because it was political suicide. They tried changing the bill later to win back voters, but the damage politically is probably already too severe for a few of the named politicians and parties to recover from.


It's pretty much turning into their own shit show version of the European Meme ban fiasco. Some politicians are likely to lose reelection over this bill passing and for proposing it etc. You know the drill, lobbying was done, an unpopular corporate law was passed, Politicians lose their jobs but the law might stick around etc.

 

[Ashleyneal]

Ahh thanks for clearing that up, sounds like a total mess

 

[Kaarme]

Based on myriad comments here on MD, many Americans think FBI has jurisdiction everywhere in the world, so it wouldn't be surprising if the same people thought Japanese laws apply as well everywhere in the world, as long as the subject is manga/anime.

 

[Holo]

We're hosted in Russia now, so as long as Putin is cool, we're good.

 

[Kaarme]

@Holo Really? I could foresee the doom of MD being yaoi/yuri in that case.

 

[421cookies]

Petition to switch MikuDex with Ride-On King

 

[LowSanity]

^

 

[negavamas]

Wasnt Russia going to cut themselves off the rest of the world by exclusively using a local internet or something like that?

 

[Aoitenshi]

Afaik the only place in the world where piracy is heavily condemned on Earth is Australia.
And I don't think it's going to happen anywhere else real soon, at least not in 10 years or so.

 

[Holo]

@kaarme

If that happened, we will separate the H into its own site. We are prepared and already own hentaidex.org for such an eventuality (hopefully won't be used any time soon)

 

[Fuko]

What would they do? send ninjas?

 

[DANDAN_THE_DANDAN]

So does this mean that I can be jailed for downloading a manga page to make a meme in Japan?

 

[draconeo]

I see all this as the same thing with VHS tapes (google it, younger ones....): by law you couldn't tape films and such (unless for your own private use, not for public access in any form), however the "crime" was so widespread the law had no consequence....

@crazybars, thanks for the explanation about the bill. The real question is the definition of piracy, hence the intended vagueness (you have to give some room to use the law when it suits you....). The Meme law from EU was different but similar to the description you gave meot eh law: agreed.

@Holo, perhaps it would be better to erase (or highlight, depending if it pleases Him) "the Ride-On King"

@Aoitenshi, I believe it's a question of balance between loss of revenue from scanlation and gains from data taken from user views and such: If the loss is significantly bigger than the gains, 10 years might turn to 5 or 7...

 

[justforthelulz]

Since theft has been viewed as an offense illegal of countries, the open vessels of any state have been allowed to hold onto a privateer transport, to bring it into port.
For more info about the law you can visit [REDACTED]

Ha, nice try bot.