November 4, 2011
Missed It: Potential Copyright Implications Of Japan Joining TPP
Brigid Alverson
had a nice write-up here about worries that Japan's potential joining of the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP) would bring with it changes to copyright law that could endanger the thriving
doujinshi market. That's the market for fan-created works featuring licensed characters, perhaps most prominently displayed through the massive Comiket shows that feature that kind of work being sold to fans. The specific mechanism worried after by Alverson and
hobby business news and analysis site ICv2.com is that the uniform laws would allow for police to prosecute for copyright infringement without the person being infringed filing a complaint. As it stands right now, Japanese publishers and creators make allowances for the
doujinshi market as an expression of fan interests and excitement, and a place for new artists to develop. As Alverson points out, there are limits to this patience which has been expressed in the past in actions against material that sells too well or apes the professionally published versions of a work too closely.
This may be the dumbest question in the world, but is there any reason to think that this kind of police crackdown would happen? Putting aside the issue of whether or not this would become a priority for any individual police department, I'm not quite getting how US policies are all that different as practiced except in direction of emphasis. While comics with characters have been discouraged in the past in cases like the Air Pirates, certainly character portraiture and sold fan art featuring copyrighted characters is tolerated by US publishers at North American conventions and on-line in much the same way, it seems to me, that outright comics are tolerated by the Japanese publishers. I also can't recall Josh Simmons being sued for his Batman comic or anything like that in terms of more recent comics featuring copyrighted characters with the kind of print runs that
doujinshi enjoy. If the US policy is such that its adoption by Japan all by itself risks police prosecution of copyright infringement, why doesn't this already happen in the US?
Here's an article about some of Japan's more general issues with joining the TPP, which should come to head in a summit this month in Hawaii.
posted 3:25 am PST |
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