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NEWS: 3 in Japan Arrested for Unauthorized K-ON! Car Stickers


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Kougeru



Joined: 13 May 2008
Posts: 5602
PostPosted: Fri May 11, 2012 11:11 pm Reply with quote
This actually makes sense....but wow..if they actually enforced this kinda stuff very often in the US I know quite a few sites that would be dead fast.
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Chagen46



Joined: 27 Jun 2010
Posts: 4377
PostPosted: Fri May 11, 2012 11:23 pm Reply with quote
This is just bullshit...this basically makes Itasha illegal...what the hell?
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Spotlesseden



Joined: 09 Sep 2004
Posts: 3514
Location: earth
PostPosted: Fri May 11, 2012 11:54 pm Reply with quote
Chagen46 wrote:
This is just bullshit...this basically makes Itasha illegal...what the hell?


If this is not illegal, then i will make k-on, anime, and American cartoon stickers right now. Pretty much free money. I don't have to hire art designer or paid loyalty. Just print and sell.
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Togame



Joined: 22 Jan 2010
Posts: 149
PostPosted: Sat May 12, 2012 12:00 am Reply with quote
Quote:
This is just bullshit...this basically makes Itasha illegal...what the hell?

I think the problem was that they sold them instead of just making them for their own use.
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TitanXL



Joined: 08 Jun 2010
Posts: 4036
PostPosted: Sat May 12, 2012 12:09 am Reply with quote
Togame wrote:
Quote:
This is just bullshit...this basically makes Itasha illegal...what the hell?

I think the problem was that they sold them instead of just making them for their own use.


Pretty much.

Personal use? No problem

Making 44 million yen? Well... little bit of a problem.
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configspace



Joined: 16 Aug 2008
Posts: 3717
PostPosted: Sat May 12, 2012 5:12 am Reply with quote
TitanXL wrote:
Togame wrote:
Quote:
This is just bullshit...this basically makes Itasha illegal...what the hell?

I think the problem was that they sold them instead of just making them for their own use.


Pretty much.

Personal use? No problem

Making 44 million yen? Well... little bit of a problem.

Not all of that is from illegally reproduced stuff though

Still, I wouldn't it past Japan to arrest people even for personal use, since driving around with an self-made or commissioned itasha amounts to some kind of public reproduction. They arrested a guy who bought a figure, modified it, then was auctioning it (just one). They even made a stink about scanning manga.

I think cases like these and all IP related should be civil cases, not criminal. The act itself doesn't cause damage or loss. The only way to know of a violation occurred is to be aware of the licensing contract. If for example, a company sells anime goods in a region they don't have permission to, I seriously doubt they would arrest the executives even though that amounts to the same thing.
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mangamuscle



Joined: 23 Apr 2006
Posts: 2658
Location: Mexico
PostPosted: Sat May 12, 2012 3:22 pm Reply with quote
If those arrested did not receive a cease & desist letter then this is just another case of the japanese goverment harrasing their citizens due to the orders of big corporations.
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KentaMaeba



Joined: 26 Oct 2010
Posts: 121
PostPosted: Sat May 12, 2012 5:13 pm Reply with quote
No one gave them the license to sell that kind of stuff. Arrest was perfectly justified. Now, if it sold during Comiket, well...
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mangamuscle



Joined: 23 Apr 2006
Posts: 2658
Location: Mexico
PostPosted: Sat May 12, 2012 9:45 pm Reply with quote
KentaMaeba wrote:
Arrest was legal but not justified.


There, corrected it for you.
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P€|\||§_|\/|ast@



Joined: 14 Feb 2006
Posts: 3498
Location: IN your nightmares
PostPosted: Sat May 12, 2012 10:37 pm Reply with quote
KentaMaeba wrote:
No one gave them the license to sell that kind of stuff. Arrest was perfectly justified. Now, if it sold during Comiket, well...
Although it's justified that those 3 were charged because they were making a significant profit off an unauthorized reproduction of existing work, I think this event does point to an increasing trend of strictness and oversight on copyright/IP violations in Japan recently. People aren't disproportionately blasé toward doujinshi compared to the 10,000 lb banhammer that occurred with this K-ON! incident, but I think the gap is narrowing. Nothing to be alarmed about quite yet though.
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potatochobit



Joined: 26 Aug 2009
Posts: 1373
Location: TEXAS
PostPosted: Sun May 13, 2012 1:35 am Reply with quote
it's a sad state of affairs
of course, profiting off copy right infringement is bad, but I put the blame on companies more

anyway, I washed my hands of all this long ago
I would not be surprised if someone received a C&D letter from an american licensing company in the mail
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zalas



Joined: 26 Jul 2006
Posts: 100
PostPosted: Sun May 13, 2012 1:40 am Reply with quote
Um... Japan has used strong measures against copyright infringement for a long time now, if the cases against file sharers are any indication.

Furthermore, as Touhou creator ZUN had put it, derivative works such as doujinshi definitely constitute copyright infringement, but Comiket and the likes work out because the rights holders don't pursue such cases. In general, as long as distribution is limited in scope, the aim wasn't to make money and the work doesn't cause "harm" to a third party, rights holders in Japan turn a blind eye.

Another recent example was Tda's 3D model of Hatsune Miku. He made a high quality 3D model and bundled it with his illustration book at Comiket for 500 JPY. However, when he decided to sell the model for 500 JPY via MelonBooks's online distribution service, Crypton, the entity who holds the rights to Hatsune Miku's character design, was not very happy about it because all of a sudden the distribution radius increased and it was not clear that the aim wasn't to make money (since digital downloads incur no variable costs, i.e. you don't need to pay for making a disc per copy).

This current case sounds like unlicensed replication of images. For example, if someone downloaded images from Pixiv and then made wallscrolls and other merchandise from it and proceeded to sell them at a profit, then the rights holders have every right to crack down on him/her. At this point it isn't even about "sharing" but more like "making money off of someone else's hard work."

EDIT: Oh, and cease and desist letters are simply ways to notify a party that what they are doing is undesired. I don't think they are required for you to file a copyright claim. However, it might save other parties money and time if the recipient complies. The reason there are DMCA takedown notices in the US is because it's a way to shield service providers from infringement caused by their users.
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Goggen



Joined: 08 Feb 2011
Posts: 88
PostPosted: Sun May 13, 2012 8:18 am Reply with quote
potatochobit wrote:
of course, profiting off copy right infringement is bad, but I put the blame on companies more

You put the blame for copyright infringement on the companies? How does that work?
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Apollo-kun



Joined: 11 Feb 2010
Posts: 1213
Location: City 7, Macross 7
PostPosted: Sun May 13, 2012 8:25 am Reply with quote
Fan comics in which the protagonists being violated sexually and turned into nothing but meaningless vessels for lust? Sure, that's cool, it's generating interest!

Bumper stickers that are just ways of showing fandom to the masses and are more likely to be seen by more people? FORGET THAT, you're going to JAIL.

Yeah, seriously, their priorities are screwed up. Honestly, from some of the sick K-On! doujins that scrape the bottom of morality's barrel that I've run into, I'd rather them crack down on that demographic than people who want to ride around with fan-made bumper stickers. I'm a huge otaku, but anime studios and their rights' holders have historically had the most idiotic and objective approach to copyright violators. There's something blatantly wrong when you can sell a comic with a character getting tortured and raped, yet you can't make an innocent bumper sticker. For shame.
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TarsTarkas



Joined: 20 Dec 2007
Posts: 5959
Location: Virginia, United States
PostPosted: Sun May 13, 2012 9:09 am Reply with quote
Apollo-kun wrote:
Fan comics in which the protagonists being violated sexually and turned into nothing but meaningless vessels for lust? Sure, that's cool, it's generating interest!

Bumper stickers that are just ways of showing fandom to the masses and are more likely to be seen by more people? FORGET THAT, you're going to JAIL.

Yeah, seriously, their priorities are screwed up. Honestly, from some of the sick K-On! doujins that scrape the bottom of morality's barrel that I've run into, I'd rather them crack down on that demographic than people who want to ride around with fan-made bumper stickers. I'm a huge otaku, but anime studios and their rights' holders have historically had the most idiotic and objective approach to copyright violators. There's something blatantly wrong when you can sell a comic with a character getting tortured and raped, yet you can't make an innocent bumper sticker. For shame.


Really, don't know why some of you don't understand that this was for profit. They were making a profit, it was an illegal business. If they were doing it for free and passing it out to the masses, well that is a whole different thing.
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