Think about Copyright Reform in Other Countries on the 50th Anniversary of Japanese Copyright Law

Abstract

The Japanese Copyright Law celebrates its 50th anniversary in 2020. The biggest change surrounding Copyright Law in the last 50 years is development of digitalization. Digital archives made steady progress in developed countries. In 2004, Google announced its book search project Google Books. Google Books digitalized books provided by libraries and publishes and made them searchable. In 2005, Europe launched Europeana. Europeana is a web portal created by the European Union (EU) containing digitalised museum collections of more than 3,000 institutions across Europe. To make orphan works easier to use, EU enacted the Orphan Works Directive in 2008 and the Digital Single Market （DSM）Copyright Directive in 2019. DSM Copyright Directive introduced extended collective licensing(ESL) system. In Google Books copyright infringement law suits, the US federal courts accepted Google's fair use defense. In 2015, the US Copyright Office published report on orphan works, but did not introduce ECL after receiving public comments that orphan woks problem could be solved by fair use. South Korea tackles orphan works problem actively and started copyright reform including ECL. This presentation suggests measures for Japan to accelerate her snail's pace copyright reform.