Measures against piracy sites - measures other than blocking

■Measures against piracy sites - measures other than blocking         

I will note down the situation of the anti-piracy conference.

 Manga was the central issue, but the market structure varied depending on content type and genre. In 2016, electronic means occupied 35% of the market share for manga, while for anime the market structure was 19% transmission and 4% video. For music, 8% of the market share was transmission, while live music rose to 24%. In this situation, the question of how to deal with electronic piracy is the main topic.

 We shared the situation regarding measures apart from blocking, such as efforts to circulate legitimate versions, requests and lawsuits for removal, competition with overseas parties, as well as measures regarding advertising.

Although critics have said that publishers have not made enough effort, I have the impression that the victims are trying hard.

The Publishing and Publicity Center, comprising nine publishing organizations, launched a piracy working group in March that created a mark to identify legitimate versions, as well as a whitelist. The various publishers are moving forward with deletion requests for pirated versions, requests to cease the publishing of advertisements, as well as coordination with the police.

This year, the deletion rate following site-deletion requests from CODA (the Content Overseas Distribution Association) was 91%. However, participants also described the situation regarding the sites that did not respond; although they were discussing the matter with the Chinese government or the Brazilian police, no progress was being made.

 Three advertising organizations are working with CODA on measures against illegal or inappropriate site content. However, as a large number of players operate in the Internet advertising market, and programmatic advertising is becoming more widespread, it is fairly difficult to create measures that are effective.

 It was also said that the publishing industry is preparing to launch campaigns based on popular characters in order to educate middle and high school students. Collaboration with Google or LINE is moving forward too.

 As initiatives in the domains of music and film were moving ahead through the conference, I felt the importance of rolling out strategies in publishing too, using music and film as a reference. Initiatives regarding legitimate versions are important too, and it is also important that public education should move forward in sync with the Internet measures targeted at youth by the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications. What we need is a comprehensive package that includes all of these things.