Opening a new round at the IP headquarters

 At the Intellectual Property Headquarter, a new round of talks has begun.

 The government has started to move as a whole. The Agency for Cultural Affairs has formed a working group to discuss cloud services. The IT office plans to reevaluate its direction on the use of big data. Each of these policies requires a large strategy.

 For example, for the copyright system we need a basic philosophy for handling all types of national intellectual property assets. Already, problems are arising between Google, the U.S., and Europe.

 Cloud services are also a fundamental problem. If the copyright protections are implemented perfectly but the service is difficult to use then we’ll have a situation in which businesses use American platforms instead. In other words, if problems are solved in a segmented manner then the entire project is likely to fail.

 It’s the same with big data. One has to compromise between the benefits of public use and the protection of personal information. It’s important to view everything as a whole when considering strategy.

 On the other hand, the expansion of Japanese content overseas is finally gaining momentum.

 The facilitation of legal distribution of broadcast programs and music over the net is finally taking place. At the same time, movie exports in 2012 fell 8% compared to the previous year. It is tricky to look at content on the whole.

 According to materials from the IP HQ, the content industry represents 11 trillion yen, and related industries represent 22 trillion yen (Net-related 13 trillion yen, advertising 2 trillion yen, hard media 5 trillion yen, character goods 2 trillion yen).

 Related industries double the scale. However, how does this affect the 64 trillion yen total export market? It’s is essential to not just develop content, but to expand other industries horizontally as well. It’s important to develop a strategy while looking at the big picture.

 This round of talks must include an evaluation of the government’s measures, while taking into account failures, and formulate new plans. At the same time, the debate on content policy must be cross-sector and cross-agency, without solely concentrating on content.

 Of course, before strategy, results in the real world must improve.