What Will Japan's Entry Into TPP Mean for Internet Users?

The Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement threatens the rights of Internet users in all its potential signatories, from Peru to Canada to the United States. This week as part of the 18th round of meetings in Kota Kinabulu, Malaysia, a new country, Japan, officially joins the negotiations. Japan is arriving late to the TPP table, but its participation already risks making Japanese law harsher while demolishing the hard-won victories of copyright reformers in the country.

Japan has its fair share of severe copyright laws. Those who upload unauthorized copyrighted content can face up to 10 years in prison or approximately $125,000 in fines. Last year, the Japanese government passed a copyright bill that created criminal penalties for downloading and simply viewing copyrighted materials. A charge for infringement can now result in a two-year prison sentence or close to a $25,000 fine. The same bill criminalized the circumvention of DRM, leading to approximately $30,000 in fines or a 3-year prison sentence for publishing anti-circumvention tools or methods that strip DRM off digital content.

In order to track which users are downloading “pirated” materials, the Recording Industry Association of Japan pressured ISPs to install spying technologies that will automatically block unauthorized uploads of copyrighted content. The national crackdown on digital piracy has continued this year as officials arrested 27 individuals for uploading unauthorized files.

On the brighter side, there have been some recent concerted efforts against severe copyright restrictions. In 2006, the U.S. requested Japan extend its copyright term lengths from 50 years after the life of the author to life plus 70 years. When the Japanese government bowed to this pressure, lawyers, academics, artists, and the anime community responded in an uproar. Copyright reform activists—including journalist and founder of the Japanese digital rights organization, MIAU, Daisuke Tsuda, copyright lawyer and professor Kensaku Fukui, and manga artist Ken Akamatsu—drove public resistance against the proposal, which led to it becoming so politically toxic that it was ultimately dropped.  

The TPP has been deeply unpopular with certain communities in Japan. There have been massive, ongoing protests in opposition to the agreement even before it formally joined as a negotiating partner. Most of the opposition comes from the agriculture and manufacturing sectors, which see TPP as a threat to their industries. The copyright issues in the TPP however, have mostly remained under the radar. Fortunately, that’s beginning to change.

ThinkTPPIP Symposium (Image source)

To raise more awareness about the threats TPP poses to Internet users, Japanese digital rights organization, the Movement for Internet Active Users (MIAU), organized a symposium on the potential impacts of TPP’s copyright chapter on Japanese law. There, they held a panel discussion on the impact of TPP on Japanese copyright law between aforementioned copyright reformers Daisuke Tsuda, Kensaku Fukui, and Ken Akamatsu, as well as a representative of Creative Commons Japan, Yuko Noguchi, and others. Thousands tuned in to watch the event, as the panelists discussed the TPP’s copyright provisions and the lack of transparency in the TPP process. The video of the symposium, in Japanese, is viewable here. This week MIAU submitted comments to the executive cabinet over these concerns.

For Internet users in Japan, there are three things in the TPP that threaten to change Japanese copyright law for the worse:

First, the TPP calls for lengthened copyright term protection that would run roughshod ove