“Japan and China Sign a Memorandum of Copyright Cooperation to Combat Online Piracy”

The “Cultural Products Overseas Circulation Promotion Agency” (CODA), which is responsible for exporting Japanese domestic products to overseas markets, signed a memorandum of copyright cooperation with the “China Copyright Association” today (27th), hoping to jointly combat piracy.

In late March this year, the Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary of the Japanese Cabinet expressed concern about piracy when he was asked about issues related to China’s crackdown on illegal websites at a press conference. “Internet piracy has caused very serious damage to Japan.”

According to CODA data, in 2019, online piracy caused Japan’s losses to be about 330 billion to 430 billion yen, but by 2022 it has expanded fivefold to about 2 trillion yen. In addition to the areas of animation and manga that suffered the most, the damage suffered by games has also begun to grow rapidly.

The cooperation between China and Japan has actually started this year. On March 28, the Jiangsu Provincial Public Security Bureau copied a pirated comic website “B9GOOD” and arrested several people. This website mainly provides pirated content in Japanese. Visited the website from Japan. The website accounted for 95%. This is also the first case in which CODA has successfully initiated criminal proceedings in China.

In addition to signing a memorandum of understanding with China today, CODA also signed a memorandum of understanding with copyright protection organizations in South Korea and the United States. According to a person in the Japanese government, Chinese animation has also begun to be exported to Japan in recent years, so copyright protection has also become an issue in China. Under the trend of globalization, relevant people in the Japanese animation industry also emphasized that “Japan alone cannot deal with (piracy).”