Document Type

Article

Disciplines

International Law

Abstract

While Japan's recent copyright reforms aim to curb online manga piracy and protect this integral form of intellectual property, they fail to account for the role of fan created translations in expanding global access to content. This comment therefore argues for a licensing framework that allows for regulated fan translations, balancing the economic rights of copyright owners with the demands of an international consumer base. In terms of Gross Domestic Product, Japan is the fourth largest economy in the world after the United States, China, and Germany.' While still a major economic player, this marks a steady decline in the economic growth Japan experienced in the late 1980s and early 1990s.' Since the height of Japan's economic power, one of their most stable and profitable sectors has been entertainment media, with anime and manga representing a major portion of their cultural economy.' However, beginning in 2013, the anime and manga industry saw a decline in sales which has been attributed to the increase of free content due to illegal sharing and downloading of content through the Internet. In response to this rise in pirated content, the Japanese government and publishing industry have made a concerted effort to combat this issue by passing amendments to their Copyright Act that established new penalties for sharing and downloading pirated videos and manga, as well as establishing a committee to prevent global copyright infringement of anime and manga - the "Manga Anime Guardians Project" ("MAGP").

This decline in sales comes at a time of huge growth in the overseas anime and manga market.6 The United States (U.S.) has especially contributed to this growth with gross sales of manga up by 7.24% in 2019 and manga representing approximately 25% of the graphic novel market in the U.S.? Despite this growth in sales in the overseas market, the anime and manga industry has yet to reap the full benefits of this growth of interest in the overseas market due to a lack of legal access to translated content. While licensing content to overseas distributors has increased in recent years, legal access to this media has not been able to keep up with the demands of non-Japanese fans, which has contributed to the current issues with illegal translations of anime and manga.

While fan-created content is a recognized part of the fandom subculture with a long history, especially in relation to the anime and manga industry, fan-made translations occupy difficult legal territory as these translations constitute copyright infringement in both Japan and the United States. 9 Interestingly, the fandom translation groups that have arisen due to this accessibility problem follow an informal code of ethics that justifies their behavior and positions themselves as contributing to the industry by promoting works that may have otherwise escaped a foreign-language audience.10 Japan's own robust market of fan-made manga "parodies"-known as doujinshi-poses an interesting cultural challenge as well, as it presents an environment in which the manga authors (mangakas) engage with, and even encourage, the sale of fan-made comics using their characters and settings." As such, the creators of these fan translations argue that they are simply continuing this culture of fan-made contributions to fandom.

Given the complex relationship between international law, the Japanese publishing industry, mangakas, and fans of anime and manga, the issue of fan-made translations is a problem that requires serious attention to meet the demands of all parties. While Japan's recent copyright reforms aim to curb piracy and protect their valuable intellectual property, they fail to account for the role of fan-driven translations in expanding global access to anime and manga in a culture that demands quality content as quickly as possible. As such, rather than relying solely on stricter enforcement, Japan should adopt a licensing framework that allows for regulated fan translations to strike the necessary balance.

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