The anti-piracy measures progress towards the creation of a comprehensive package

■The anti-piracy measures progress towards the creation of a comprehensive package  

This was the fourth session of the anti-piracy conference. The use of blocking in the U.K. and Germany, constitutional and copyright-law issues, technical issues, as well as measures apart from blocking such as filtering were discussed.

Blocking in the U.K. operates through court orders based on copyright law. In Germany, blocking orders can be made by the supreme court. I have been told that the Munich district court has made judgments to acknowledge blocking requests. The previous session of the conference featured an intense back-and-forth on the ineffectiveness of blocking and the pros and cons of introducing this system; however, even so, courts in the U.K. and Germany have issued judgments that blocking can be done.

Professor Ueno of Waseda University summarized the issue by saying that although the argument that blocking could not be recognized in Japan was strong, there was a school of thought that said it could be recognized based on current laws as well, and it was possible that blocking would be ruled acceptable if a court were to rule on the issue.

Professor Shishido of Tokyo University queried the pros and cons of blocking from a constitutional perspective, and said that the review of the effectiveness of filtering was insufficient.

The point was made that apart from blocking, there are various other ways to stop access, such as education, filtering, search suppression, and domain cessation. There were also calls to accelerate the process of turning restrictions on leech sites into law, as well as to illegalize the download of illegally electronically published items.

The opinion was expressed that this matter involved an inquiry into the balance between circulation and protection in an information society, and that there was a need for a place as well as for procedures to solve this issue. I think as well that this issue represents the place where IT policy and intellectual-property policy butt heads, and is a touchstone to work out this area of policy, which will grow more and more moving forward.

Based on the discussions up to this point, I believe that although there are still things to delve deeper into, the key issues have been put on the table. I also think that it is consensus that we should create a comprehensive package of measures. What direction we will set this package up in is a matter of sharing wisdom.