Manga: Japan tightens penalties against piracy
That of the government is a battle without neighborhood waged for many years now and aimed at obscuring all those sites that take profits from publishing houses. The new law will go into effect next year and was approved at the end of last week after parliament met to modify copyright law in Japan: the law extends the government's power to punish anyone who knowingly unloads manga illegally . This applies to anyone who is pirating the manga or just illegally uploading it. The approved measure will come into force on January 1st.
The new law has also been drawn up so that "leech" sites can also be punished, ie those sites that collect links to pirated manga and share them with users through a hyperlink. Although not actually the site that hosts pirated manga, they still act as a source for such illegal.
Finally, the new law will allow fans to download only "parts" of manga, such as photos which, however, do not reproduce the entire page and in any case the definition does not include fan art of any kind.
The most important aspect is obviously the one related to penalties: for those who download copyrighted content the maximum penalty is two years in prison or a fine of 2 million yen. Site owners can face a more severe sentence with prison sentences of up to five years and additional fines.
Neither in Italy nor in other countries of the world do such specific laws exist to protect comics, a demonstration once again of how fundamental the comics and animation industry is in the Japanese economy and culture.
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