Copyright System Needs Action before Discussion

 ■Copyright System Needs Action before Discussion

In the previous round of The Basic Policy Subcommittee of the Copyright Council for Cultural Affairs, the subcommittee made great progress in revising the Copyright Act to take measures against piracy, including countermeasures against leech sites and making it illegal to download infringing content. Furthermore, in response to the informatization of education, it allowed schools to use copyrighted works without a license.

We are now in the middle of the next round.

The following highly challenging topics are being discussed this term:

- Facilitating the processing of rights related to the simultaneous distribution of broadcast programs on the Internet.

- Review of the compensation system for private sound and visual recordings

- Ideal copyright measures that can adapt to the digital era.

I made two comments at the beginning:

One was on the informatization of education, and the other was on the broadcasting network distribution.

The former had already been dealt with.

Meanwhile, the broadcasting network distribution was a matter for the future.

1. About the informatization of education.

It has been ten years since we started the movement to give one PC per child. Japan used to be a developing country here, with one PC for every five children. Last year's supplementary budget and coronavirus emergency measures provided a little over 400 billion yen, so we expect to achieve the goal all at once this year. At the same time, the compensation system became a set, which made the scale balanced to pen up a new outlook.

As I said at the IP Headquarters meeting, I would like to express my gratitude to the government and other related parties involved in the revision of the system, and especially to the right holders, led by Commissioner Seo, as someone in the position to promote the informatization of education.

However, the main topic was what to do with the measures next year and beyond. Therefore, I look forward to the coordination of the parties concerned.

2 Internet distribution of Broadcasting

I participated in the 2004 review of compensation for private sound and video recordings and was also involved in the organization of digital broadcasting in 2008.

There was a very fierce conflict of interest, several ministers appeared, and there were lawsuits. Still, the issue has not been resolved. That is the kind of issue this is.

On the other hand, the term "convergence of communications and broadcasting" appeared in official documents in 1992 in a report by the Telecommunications Council. It’s a topic that has been around for almost 30 years.

It has been 30 years since Japan's copyright system became uniquely designed to function only within Japan, but the discussion on the system review only started in the past one to two years.

There were numerous times this should have been discussed but was skipped:

- When the right to make transmission available was established (1997)

- When the Act on Broadcast on Telecommunications Services was established (2001)

- When the telecommunication broadcasting law was reorganized (2010).

To quickly sort out these problems, the private sector stakeholders need to be prepared and take action with a considerable amount of commitment.

The reality is that even if a third party makes theoretical organizations, it will not be put into motion.

Solving this problem is an important issue that Japan, which has lagged behind in digitalization, and cannot afford to wait. I believe that we should keep pace with overseas systems.

However, I hope to see the stakeholder groups gather their opinions and make concessions to move this forward.

Moreover, this case is also linked to the legal systems of telecommunications and broadcasting.

It should be noted that one of the reasons for the problem is that the copyright system and the telecommunication and broadcasting legal system had been discussed as separate entities.