A new fusion of content and media

■A new fusion of content and media

Content policy began in the 90s, and the Agency for Cultural Affairs, the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, and the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications handled it in a disorganized way, but an IP Division was established in 2003, leading to horizontal control.

In the 2010s, transformation to digital became a major talking point.

Our response was delayed compared to overseas, but in the past few years, the shift in the industry has become clear, and results are showing.

However, before we even noticed, overseas IT media has become a threat, in the form of piracy for manga, overseas distribution such as Netflix for anime, cloud-based games such as Google, and moving to platforms such as Spotify for music.

Also, countermeasures differ depending on the genre, such as anti-piracy measures for manga, development of new areas such as e-sports for games, and copyright processing rules for music.

National policies are also individual and small, and no comprehensive policy can be found. Measures across genres that collaborate with other fields are important.

As discussed in the Cool Japan Strategy, cooperation with other industries such as food, fashion, and tourism will also become important.

That is, “fusion” is an important issue. 

On the other hand, media policy entered the digital age in the 80s after a clash between computer policy from the Ministry of International Trade and Industry and communications policy from the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications, and the development of the Internet was a topic of discussion in the 90s, as was the development of terrestrial digital broadcasting in the 2000s.

After the reform and deregulation of the communications and broadcasting legal system in the Koizumi administration, “fusion” became an important theme.

Simultaneous distribution of television has finally recently become a reality, over 10 years behind other countries, and the Copyright Act has also been amended.

It looks as if it has been settled.

However, in this respect as well, before we knew it, in addition to the Big Four, Netflix and Disney came to pin down the world in the media market.

The fusion of communications and broadcasting had ended.

We have shifted to a theme of all-IP and all-cloud, and data and AI play the main role in business.

The majority of advertisements will be targeted advertisements made using data and AI, game consoles will become unnecessary due to the cloud, and broadcasting will be done over 5G.

I see no strategy that considers these comprehensively.

Overseas players will develop roll out data businesses in a borderless way, both for content and for media.

Chinese capital looks poised to make serious moves.

This capital is also being invested in Japanese content.

How will Japanese players deal with this? Sink or swim?

Previously, content and media, software and hardware were one and the same.

Equipment manufacturers made music records, and game console companies produced content as platform holders.

However, there have recently been many cases where the hardware and software industries are opposed to each other, whether it be for audio recording royalties or anti-piracy measures.

Fusion of the two is an issue as well.

Examining genres separately and individual policies such as copyright will no longer yield the best solution.

I want a perspective across both content and media.

We will need to fuse IP policy and IT policy and propose cultural industrial policy.