chosaq

Japan Times article on recent net related legislative developments

2008-01-16T15:58:21Z

A quick pointer to a Japan Times article about some of the issues mentioned in my last entry. Chris Salzberg, of Global Voices and Gyaku.jp fame, was so nice to include a quote from a recent conversation we had about this issue :-)

The problem, however, is that everything on the Web is downloaded. Just to view a page, a browser must store its contents on the user’s computer. Since it is impossible to know beforehand whether downloaded content is legal or not, any page view would, under the proposed revision, place the user at risk of violating copyright law.

Andreas Bovens, a Tokyo-based Belgian who blogs on copyright issues in Japan at chosaq.net, sees a danger in this situation.

“It seems like the main targets of this proposed new legislation are Web sites offering unauthorized chaku-uta (ring tone) or music downloads,” he says. “The message they seem to want to bring across is that downloading from those sites is illegal.

“However, although the scope of this legislation seems small, its effect is huge. It affects basically everything that we do on the Net.”

Japan to outlaw downloading illegally reproduced content?

2008-01-04T03:11:02Z

The Private Music and Video Recording Subcommittee (私的録音録画小委員会) of Japan’s Agency for Cultural Affairs is pushing for a revision of Article 30 of the copyright law, which will outlaw downloading illegal copies of content. Under the current legislation, only uploading such copies is forbidden (earlier chosaq coverage).

The rationale behind this move is the same pro-regulation argument Japan’s content industry has been repeating over and over again. From a recent Nikkei BP article:

In the meeting, Hidetoshi Haeno, senior director of the Recording Industry Association of Japan (RIAJ), and Naotaka Katyou, a member of the Motion Picture Producers Association of Japan Inc, strongly supported the reexamination by saying the following comments.

“The business of record companies is stuck in a dead end. It’s spine-chilling.” “When a movie is uploaded to a video-sharing Website, they applaud it. They look like the people who acclaim Nezumi Kozou (a heroic thief like Robin Hood), but filmmakers are not evil governors or unscrupulous merchants.”

Also, Reijirou Koroku, the chairperson of the Japan Federation of Authors and Composers Associations (FCA), said, “In view of all the copyrights, they do not have enough protection yet. Right holders [have] been too silent until now.”

Several people have raised questions regarding this disturbing development. Ikeda Nobuo, for instance, has suggested that the RIAJ should substantiate its claim that filesharing is hurting the music industry more than it can benefit from it with actual data. He also points out that the proposed legislation will have an “atrophying effect” on society (translated quote taken from a Global Voices article):

It seems that, hearing of the “outlawing of downloads”, corporations fussy about compliance will block access to [services such as] YouTube from the office. As new business markets atrophy, new businesses will then also stop appearing.

Other commenters have pointed out issues with the “download” terminology: “[A] user cannot determine whether a file is illegal before they actually download it, and even once the file is downloaded, such identification remains difficult.” In addition, there is unclarity about whether the proposed legislation only targets “downloading” or also includes “streaming.”

Another problematic issue is the idea to give “legal” sites a “mark” indicating they are OK. The reverse effect of issuing such a mark is that all sites without mark are considered to be “illegal.” More in this ITMedia article.

My personal take on these developments… When I attended a public discussion on filesharing at the Ministry of Culture a couple of years ago, I remember certain committee members suggesting to outlaw not only illegal content uploads, but include downloads too—at the time, this proposal met quite a bit of resistance from other members in the committee (also see this 2005 ITMedia article). In the meantime, YouTube and other content publishing sites have bloomed and have further undermined the established players’ control—therefor, the content industry’s call to regulate these sites more has become louder and of course, Japan’s broken and industry-serving governmental institutions are listening to it…

A long overdue update

2007-12-19T21:23:39Z

Now that has taken a while!

More than 4 months without a single entry—luckily enough, my stats tool reminds me from time to time that people still find their way to this blog. Traffic hasn’t really gone down over the last four months, and old posts get unexpected pings and comments. Thanks for sticking around :-)

But more about me: I have quit my job at Keio University earlier this year and, since the Summer, I’m working for Opera Software in Tokyo (and quite a bit in Oslo, too)—my meishi reads “QA engineer”. If that comes as a surprise, note that I’ve been writing about and working with web standards for quite a while, and that I’m a big believer in the “one web” philosophy Opera adheres to.

A comment by Mark Pilgrim nicely summarizes what I like about Opera:

[…] Opera is an example of how to do commercial software correctly. Fanatical adherence to open standards, no lock-in, and impressive cross-platform support.

And for those of you who get confused about which opinions on this blog are mine and which are Opera’s: they’re all mine (cfr. the FYI section in the sidebar).

What about my research on copyright+tech in Japan? Things obviously have slowed down a bit over the last couple of months, but I hope to start posting more regularly again from now on. Plenty of things to talk about. Stay tuned :-)

On YouTube JP and the Japanese entertainment biz

2007-08-07T00:43:07Z

Very interesting news last week: YouTube Japan has officially launched, incl. six partnerships with major Japanese tech and content producers. From Japan Economy News & Blog:

Included in those business partnerships are satellite broadcaster Sky PerfecTV, social networking giant Mixi, Yoshimoto Kogyo, animator GDH, and Casio. Casio intends to build cameras specially-made for creating content that can be uploaded directly to You Tube [sic].

This is a killer move for Mixi, and a very interesting step in thus far rather undiscovered terrain for Casio. (Lesson for Sony: increasing compatibility is also an option if you want a piece of the video sharing cake; you don’t have to buy or create a complete video sharing site for that.)

But of course, not everybody’s happy. A coalition of Japanese television, music and film companies has expressed its anger about YouTube’s undertakings and even asked to “reset the service.”

Of course the industry’s anger with anything disruptive is nothing new. A quick roundup about its stance with regard to YouTube:

2006-10: JASRAC demands YouTube to take down 30,000 allegedly infringing clips; YouTube complies. It is the first time YouTube takes down so many videos in one swoop.
2006-12: JASRAC sends a letter to YouTube asking it, among other things, to proactively check for infringements and show copyright warnings in Japanese.
2007-01: JASRAC announces it wants a centralized “portal site” for rights information, so as to easily identify the author(s) of a work and facilitate licensing. Although this sounds good in theory, such a system would obviously strengthen JASRAC’s case for a first-ask-then-upload model. As cherry on the cake, JASRAC demands 20 years of extra protection for copyrighted works in exchange for being so benevolent (cfr. its announced “portal site”).
2007-02: YouTube shows Japanese copyright warnings to Japanese YouTube users.
2007-08: a few months after a Japanese YouTube UI was released, YouTube Japan officially launches.

So, who’s gonna win this fight? My bet is on the companies that have signed a deal with YouTube, or otherwise not discourage sharing of the media they produce.

Scribd now blocks DRMed PDF uploads

2007-07-27T03:43:46Z

Remember my recent post about Scribd accepting DRMed PDF uploads and converting them to a range of formats, among which unencumbered PDF? Well, it seems like this feature now belongs to the past (hat tip to C2162 and Josh for the heads-up).

If you try to upload a DRMed PDF file now, you bump into the following warning:

Scribd’s conversion system determined that you uploaded a PDF that is encrypted and protected by password security. Unfortunately, due to legal restrictions, Scribd is unable to accept password-protected PDFs. If you own the rights to the document you uploaded, we’d love it if you could upload a non-encrypted version of the same document!

If you believe this message to be in error, or have any other questions, please send us an email at support@scribd.com Thanks!

It’s worth noting here that Scribd’s uploader does not only refuse to convert the DRMed PDF to other formats, it also interferes with (and ultimately blocks) the upload itself, something that Scribd is legally not required to do, as far as I know. This behavior is different from Gmail’s, which dealt with a similar loophole last year: Gmail’s View as HTML functionality is now crippled when used with DRMed PDF files, but sending or saving such PDFs is of course still possible.

Sony’s eyeVio failing to gain traction?

2007-07-26T02:12:35Z

On April 26, Sony unveiled eyeVio, a Japanese video sharing site with a rather unusual two-sided approach to copyright issues.

First of all, eyeVio’s upload wizard has support for Creative Commons licenses—a rather unexpected architectural feature, and possibly Sony’s first ever CC implementation. Good.

With regard to the issue of copyright infringements, the Reuters article covering the eyeVio launch points out that “[u]nlike YouTube […] Sony said it would closely monitor content on the service.” This means that Sony editors will pro-actively delete all videos that look like non-authorized uploads of copyrighted clips—a strategy that is completely different from YouTube’s more laid-back approach of only taking action when a c&d has been issued.

With this unusual copyright approach, it seems like Sony wants to profile itself as the “clean” alternative to YouTube:

[Sony’s] model would appeal to companies looking to release content and to protect their image, said Sony spokesman Takeshi Honma.
“We believe there’s a need for a clean and safe place where companies can place their advertisements,” Honma said.

By choosing for this careful strategy, eyeVio takes on the burden of monitoring all content that users upload—a tedious and error-prone task—, whereas for YouTube sticking to the c&d mechanism seems to shield it from liability (for now); more important however is the fact that, by deploying this overzealous copyright policy, eyeVio deprives itself of exactly that what makes YouTube such a great service for both users and the content industry. Tim Wu, in an October 2006 Slate article:

The notice-and-takedown system gives content owners the twin advantages of exposure and control. When stuff is on YouTube, the owners have an option. They can leave it posted there, if they want people to see it, and build buzz. But they can also snap their fingers and bring it all down. And for someone who is juggling her desire for publicity against her need for control, that’s ultimately a nice arrangement.

In other words, by preemptively nuking all non-authorized but nevertheless buzz generating content uploads, eyeVio might might very well shoot itself in the foot: users and marketers stay away from such a site.

And it seems like that is exactly what is happening… A quick look at this week’s popular video ranking reveals that the most popular clip has been viewed 157 times so far. Not quite a success, and dwarfed by the views on the Grouper.com media sharing site Sony bought a while ago. Alexa’s daily pageviews numbers (partial as they are) seem to confirm this observation: although traffic peeked at launch, two months later, the number of eyeVio visitors has dropped dramatically.

I seriously doubt eyeVio will be around for a very long time…

Update: since last week, Grouper has become Crackle.

On the Japanese government’s alleged Linux plans

2007-05-13T21:59:45Z

Last week, the Seeking Alpha blog pointed to the news that “a consortium of major IT firms including IBM, NEC and Oracle plan to sell servers and systems running Linux in Japan, following a measure by the government to promote use of the open-source OS within agencies from July.” In the comments (and also on the Mozilla in Asia blog), Gen Kanai expresses his doubts about this development and links to my 2005 post about the ever recurring Japan-switches-to-Linux stories. (thanks, Gen!)

Reading a rehash of the same news on LinuxWorld today, I am pretty sure this is indeed another Linux non-story. The following paragraph proves the government’s so called “plans” are just chit chat:

The details are light in terms of what types of Linux systems Oracle, IBM, HP, et al will produce for the Japanese government. What is interesting about the initial news is the absence of any major Linux operating system distributor as part of the announcement.

Of course, the reason why there is no vendor yet is because the deal will probably never happen. Microsoft will simply give in to the government’s pressure and offer its software at a lower price point. And be sure then that Japan’s Linux plans will be put in the fridge for another while.

Previous coverage:

2005-10-15: Japanese government eyeing Linux? Quick deconstruction of a non-story.
2006-12-26: FFWD 2007
2007-03-08: That Linux story again

Circumvent PDF DRM… with Scribd!

2007-07-27T03:52:39Z

About a year ago, I wrote about how Gmail’s “View as HTML” functionality allowed you to get around secure PDF files’ print and copy-paste restrictions. Four weeks later, Google released an update (or downgrade, if you will) of its Gmail service, and the loophole was fixed.

However, when trying out Scribd today—a site with the noble goal to “create the world’s largest open library of documents” and even touted by some as the “YouTube of documents”—it seems that a similar feature/bug is also present in Scribd’s online document converter.

As a little test, I uploaded this secure PDF document to Scribd, and as you can see, all text extraction limitations are gone: HTML view, plain text view and even unencumbered PDF view!

I’m very curious to see whether the Scribd folks are going to cripple their service, or leave it as is…

N.B. This only works with PDF files with text extraction and printing usage restrictions, not with PDFs that prompt for a password when you try to open them.

Update: as pointed out by C2162 and Josh in the comments, Scribd has altered its service so that this doesn’t work anymore.

In the news

2007-04-20T20:20:40Z

Quick comments on a couple of recent events and articles:

私的録音録画小委員会、「私的複製」の範囲見直しを議論

Stating that their “right of making transmittable” is not enough, Japanese rights groups now also ask for new legislation that would make it illegal to download content from sites that make such content available without permission. In order to clarify which sites are legit and which ones are not, the rights groups propose… a label system. Oh yeah.

文化審・法制小委が始動、デジタルコンテンツの著作権特別法など議論

This looks like an attempt by the Japanese Ministry of Culture to bring some fresh thinking into the copyright debate, but I’m afraid the committee’s focus is too wide, while its proposals are drastic (registration system for online content with blanket licensing) and careful (stronger punishments for infringements) at the same time. I don’t think this is going anywhere.

Higher digital music prices not a good deal

The fact that EMI is going to start selling unprotected music files through iTMS is definitely big news, but I’m not so sure the associated price increase is a good thing. Brian Garrity has a great analysis of EMI’s move and what exactly is at stake.

Teruten’s braindead DRM

2007-03-27T11:21:54Z

Yesterday, Japanese DRM manufacturer Teruten announced that, in May of this year, it will start offering a DRM service aimed at protecting online content. Personal blogs will be able to use Teruten’s “WebShell” DRM for free; for company websites the cost will be 500 Yen per page per month. (!)

The Teruten website’s frontpage links to a test page where you can see the DRM in action. According to the instructions, you have to install an ActiveX control, after which you can view the page, but not view its source, copy or save images, nor print. Or at least, that’s how it’s supposed to work — in Internet Explorer. If you view the page in Firefox, you get a dialog screen saying “ActiveX loading is failed” and that’s it. Opera gives a more unexpected result: it does render the page completely, and ignores the ActiveX control’s crippling commands. I was able to save the page’s images and print without any problem…

My advice for Japanese companies and bloggers who are afraid their website content will be “stolen” if they don’t “protect” it: don’t have a website.