Over the past several months, a debate over a website hosting free (pirated) manga (Japanese comic) content, Mangamura ("Manga Village") and similar sites. This debate moved beyond tweets and other online punches to pressures to close the website, and after a governmental comment that blocking pirated content sites was permissible in some cases on April 13, a sharp exchange has spread on whether this is constitutional, proper, beneficial to culture and business, and so forth.
For example, Shinji Terada nuances the discussion by noting that this question of balancing freedom with legality is not limited to Japan; other countries' stances on what may be blocked online vary. Japanese policy has tended in favor of freedom of expression for websites owners and managers, allowing them to make available material even if it is illegal. This was illustrated by the three years debate took before sites displaying child pornography were deemed removable. Yet overseas, such questionable material is frequently deemed blockable. Japan's stance is relatively rare.
Meanwhile, Ichiro Yamamoto argues that this debate reflects poorly not so much on the copyright infringers as on the Japanese government and manga industry for their sluggish approaches to address issues of digitalization and readers' wishes for digital content. He argues that the national "promotion" and "displays" of Japanese manga and other arts has been trivial appearances at international events, without a substantial support infrastructure for the writers whose work is touted so sporadically. Both readers and writers have been ignored by the government, he feels, even if piracy should be pushed back.
Presumably, this debate will continue and hopefully sharpen thinking on IP, privacy, and freedom of speech on the Web. Meanwhile, for intellectual property issues, this highlights on the one hand how Japanese policy making in IP law and regulations is slow to adapt in some ways. On the other hand, international investors and artists may be able to find opportunities to spread their cultural contributions to Japan via the Internet in ways that are stalled domestically for the time being.
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