International Law

Legalizing Google

By Karl-Friedrich Lenz

I reported January last year about plans to change Japanese copyright law and legalize wholesale copying of the Web by search engines.

Those plans have not yet produced any change. As of today, Google is still perfectly illegal in Japan.

Today’s Asahi Shimbun has an article about the latest development in that question (in Japanese).

The Central Commission on Intellectual Property, chaired by Prime Minister Fukuda, has released records of their latest meeting on May 8th.

According to those records and the article in Asahi Shimbun, they plan to legalize search engines by introducing a new exception for fair use, as in American law. However, that will take until next year to materialize.

I still don’t see any need to legalize opt-out search; opt-in works just fine, as it does in every other context of copyright law.

Full post as published by Lenz Blog on May 26, 2008 (boomark / email).