Japanese DRM and East Asian piracy

In the April 2006 issue of the Texas Law Review (not yet available on the website), student Karla S. Lambert has an informative Note, Unflagging Television Piracy: How Piracy of Japanese Television Programming in East Asia Portends Failure for a U.S. Broadcast Flag. Though the title promises more than it delivers – there is simply no good evidence yet about how hard it is to work around Japan’s new DRM – Lambert tells a compelling story about the demand for Japanese cultural productions in East Asia and the unlikelihood that technical measures can stem that demand. Among other things, she discusses the cultural effects of copying specifically Japanese content in other cultures, where it is transformative in important ways (even if not in ways recognized by the fair use doctrine in US law). She also draws insightful comparisons between the response of Japanese television producers to VCD piracy and the response of manga and anime producers to doujinshi and fansubs.