Last week, the Japanese government issued an official request for the United States to help stop unauthorised distribution of Japanese animation via the internet, as part of an overall statement on market competition policy.

Japan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs claim that the trading of anime online is increasingly damaging to the creative industries in Japan, and say that the costs and difficult procedures for pursuing infringement cases against peer-to-peer networks are roadblocks to controlling copyrighted materials.

• Source: Anime News Network

This whole issue makes me feel very conflicted. On one hand, the disgusting attitude of fansubbers who see anime piracy as a right they’ve somehow been granted makes me want to see a harsh legal crackdown on the entire subculture, but on the other hand modern copyright law is a horrific mess that does little to help consumers or the actual artists, in favour of supporting the money men.

Still, disagreement with the law is no reason to go around breaking it and claiming there’s a fictional grey area that makes it okay.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 24th, 2007 at 10:07 am by aniki and is filed under News, Editorials. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.