Stanford Center for Internet and Society

In this entry, I will explain about the second category of issues listed as topics in the Japanese Copyright Reform by the Copyright Council. (See, for details, this article)

The following may not appear as surprising to those who are familiar with the U.S. copyright regulations. However, because regulations in Japan are far less restrictive compared to that of the U.S., these topics are very important. I will add some comments about these topics imply in terms of expansion of regulations.

(2) Issues Related to Digitization

前回から、少し時間が空いてしまってすみません。
しばらく、論文の資料など集めるため、日本に戻っていました。
プラス、英語のエントリーを何とか先に…と思っていたのですが、

On January 24, 2005, Copyright Council at the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology released a list of issues to be discussed in the Japanese Copyright Reform (the document can be found here, but only in Japanese.)

Below is a brief summary of issues listed in this document, as well as concrete topics that the council started to discuss in the current committees.
There are four categories on the list, which are:

(1) Basic Issues
(2) Issues related to Digitization
(3) Issues related to Copyright Contracts and Exploitation of Copyrighted Work

文化庁が発表した「著作権法に関する今後の検討課題」のうち、まずは２．デジタル対応の（１）デジタル化時代に対応した権利制限の見直しについてみてみましょう。

文化庁は、著作権法の改正に向けて、本格的に動き出しましたね。
先日、文化庁の吉川課長にお目にかかりましたら、「向こう3年間で本格的に著作権法を変えていきます。」とおっしゃっておられました。

中山教授が、8日の記事で、知的財産国家戦略の議論が、結論を急ぎすぎており、学会や消費者の意見をも考慮した充分な検討を欠いていると指摘されています。

The Japanese government announced on March 5th that they would amend the copyright law to add two new rights to rights holders.
1) a right to control the import of music sound recordings which were produced legitimately under the license of the right holders
2) a right to control the rental of books (which was established in 1984 but was suspended until now)

There is a huge outcry re creating "importing" rights for sound recordings. Under the proposed amendment, right holders will enjoy the right of controlling imports for the first several years (not longer than 7 years). Currently, the neighboring right holders of sound recordings are enjoying the power to maintain retail prices under antitrust law (i.e. antitrust law is exempted for rights holders to maintain retail prices for certain copyrighted works). This antitrust policy has already been accused for its legitimacy. Still, creating a right to control the import of discs that are produced overseas (with a legal licenses), giving a second chance to charge royalties to these sound recordings that flows into the Japanese market would certainly effect the market in Japan. The parallel import issues regarding patents and trademarks are decided in the favor of importers (i.e. right holders cannot stop parallel imports of goods that are legitimately created overseas, because the right holders have already enjoyed the first chance of getting royalties, and don’t need a second chance to get money.) I cannot see why sound recording industries should have an exceptional privilege in this parallel import issues. Prof. Nakayama, one of the prominent scholars in this field, pointed out in an article that, such “double price protection” by copyright law and antitrust law cannot be found anywhere else in the world. He criticized that the government was rushing toward the harmful expansion of copyright without legitimate discussion with consumers and scholars.

報道によると、政府は、音楽CDの輸入権と書籍の貸与権を新たに導入することを3月4日に決定し、5日に閣議決定することになりました。

この方針は、昨今の知的財産国家戦略の一環として、今年の1月に文化審議会の著作権分科会報告書（概要）で提言されたことに基づき、2月中旬に法律改正案が発表され、明日の閣議決定、という運びです。（これが、著作権法改正のメインのパターンなので、一応ご紹介しました。）