Sunday, June 17, 2012

Downloading illegal contents are subject to punishment

On June 15, amendment to the Copyright Act was approved at the The House of Representatives, and is expected to pass the Diet soon.

Downloading illegal contents had been illegal from before, but there was no punishment.

By this amendment, an act of downloading the illegal contents such as illegally uploaded music files shall be punishable by imprisonment with work for a term not more than two years or by a fine of not more than two million Yen.

The amendment also made ripping a copy-protected DVD beyond the scope of reproduction for private use.

Punishment for ripping has not been introduced yet, while providing software to rip copy-protected DVDs became punishable.


Edit (June 22):

This change will be effective from October 1, 2012.

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