CATDOLL: TPP agreement reached, famous cartoonists give advice on how to deal with a world without fan fiction

There have been a lot of news about the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP). In fact, Japanese citizens have always had various concerns, and for the anime industry, "non-personal prosecution" has always been their biggest concern. However, the 12 TPP signatories reached an agreement yesterday (October 5). In the summary of the agreement released by the Japanese government, non-personal prosecution is still listed, but there is an additional vague note "except for cases where there is no significant impact on the profitability of the original work." Now that the agreement has been reached, cartoonist Ken Akamatsu, who has been calling on the Japanese government to carefully consider the TPP, gave advice on Twitter on how to deal with non-personal prosecution, and said that there is still time to respond before the country improves the law.

He said: "If you pay attention to the point that 'it will not affect the rights of the original work', then I think COSPLAY is safe. Some clubs that face a small deficit problem should also be safe. Although comic-level clubs with a lot of profits are more dangerous, I hope they can find loopholes through domestic laws. However, doujin malls are not allowed. Many things on NICONICO animation will be completely deleted. Pixiv will also make some changes because of this."

Ken Akamatsu had previously been opposed to the criminalization of non-personal prosecution. After learning that the TPP signatories had reached an agreement, Ken Akamatsu had to soften his attitude. He tweeted: "Since the TPP signatories have reached an agreement, the criminalization of non-personal prosecution has probably been smoothly included in the final agreement. After hearing this news, my personal opinion has changed. If it is to combat online piracy, all you have to do is use the right to non-personal prosecution correctly. The most important thing is the revision of Japan's domestic laws. The Congress will probably start to revise Japan's domestic laws next year. If someone reports and investigates doujinshi and secondary creations sold at Comiket, the doujinshi authors probably have no chance of winning legally, so it is necessary to set up an AT force field version of the protection barrier for the Japanese doujinshi community."

"If the copyright holder allows and protects secondary creation, it will be a barrier. Fortunately, both the ruling and opposition parties in Japan recognize the concept of protecting doujinshi exhibitions. This is different from the previous amendment to the Child Protection Law when the ruling and opposition parties were at loggerheads, so there is still time to do something." Previously, some Japanese lawmakers who are more familiar with ACG culture were worried that if the Japanese government copied the TPP treaty without modifying it, it would very likely cause the Japanese doujinshi community to fall into an endless legal civil war, thus completely destroying the Japanese doujinshi creation environment. As long as the Japanese parliament does not modify the bill, there is still a glimmer of hope."

The simple explanation of "non-private prosecution crime" is that as long as the prosecutor's office and the police find that a certain person or group is infringing copyright, they can directly arrest the infringer without the report of the copyright owner. At present, copyright protection in Japan uses private prosecution, which means that the police and prosecutors can intervene only after the copyright owner reports. For fan creation, as long as the official ACG work does not report the majority of fan creators, there is no legal risk. But now fan creation will become very risky. As long as the public security, procuratorate and courts believe that the fan community has infringed, they can take legal action.