[research] Copyright reflects "the degree of cultural development" of a country?

[unjapanologist]

The protection and people's awareness of copyright are said to reflect the degree of cultural development of the country, and therefore, copyright systems should be understood by a wide range of people.

That's how the Copyright Research Information Center, a Japanese government-authorized "public service corporation", starts out its introduction to copyright for beginners. The Japanese version of that sentence is:

著作権に対する理解と保護の度合いは、その国の文化のバロメーターといわれています。それだけに、著作権とは何か、なぜ大切なのかをもっと知ることが必要です。

...Which literally translates as:

The degree of understanding and protection of copyright is said to be a barometer for a country's culture. For that reason, it is necessary to know more about what copyright is and why it is important.

It's a statement that still makes me boggle every time I need to visit CRIC's site to check something about Japanese copyright law. Of course, one could argue that it would indeed be a sign of "development" (whatever that means) for a country to have proportional, reality-based, and effective copyright legislation that verifiably does what copyright was intended to do, namely to promote the creation of culture. However, given how much the rest of CRIC's site goes on about how people should respect copyright more, I think they mean that "cultural development" (or in the Japanese version, simply "culture") should be measured by the degree to which people obey current copyright legislation. The way CRIC is trying to shape discourse around copyright here is pretty amazing. Copyright is not just a law, or a "moral right", but an indicator of the worth of a whole country's culture? Whoa, there.

I was reminded of CRIC's wording again after starting on William Patry's Moral Panics and the Copyright Wars, which deals with how participants in copyright-related battles use language to shape people's perception of the issues at hand and of the "other side": pirates, parasites, enemies, dinosaurs, and so on. "Pirates" is universally used, for instance, but it's an incredibly loaded word that does much to shape discourses around any sort of copying or sharing of media.

Judging by how fic is often described in the media, I get the feeling we have a bit of a discourse problem too :/ Hmmm, I wonder if we'd get any interesting results if we took a bunch of those "as others see us" news articles and ran them through a word cloud generator. *note to self*

Comments

[foxinthestars]

I suppose that in current international politics, tight copyright is a way to prove that you're part of the "advanced country/culture" club, but having it presented so uncritically as a barometer is, yes, pretty stunning. Meekly acquiescing to a culture as one-sided as possible is an important sign of maturity!

(I've been thinking lately that one of my favorite things about fanfic is how it teaches us, even if in a small way, that received possibilities are not the only possibilities, and copyright law is just one of many real-world areas that could benefit from that attitude.)

I may have to check out the William Patry book, too.

[unjapanologist]

in current international politics, tight copyright is a way to prove that you're part of the "advanced country/culture" club

Yeah. And no wonder, if you listen to all that "counterfeiting/piracy in China is causing job losses in the US/Europe" rhetoric. People make it sound like it's a sign of aggressive barbarism if a country doesn't prioritize IP protection above everything else (including the rights of its citizens).

I haven't finished the Patry book, but I'd recommend it so far. You could build a fort in your back yard with all the books that have been written about how current copyright legislation is ineffective and harmful, but the discourse angle he's taking is really interesting. It doesn't just deal with rhetorical tricks in discourse about copyright, but also in related discourses like moral rights of authors that come up a lot in discussions about fanwork. There's a section on the "these characters are our children" arguments that fic-averse authors like Anne Rice like to trot out, for instance.