Trembling Leaf has a link to an interview with Tokyo University professor Nobuhiro Nakayama. I have blogged before on his criticism of the quality of the debate at the Strategic Council on Intellectual Property.
The interview by Mainichi Shinbun is in Japanese. Some highlights:
"Strengthening of intellectual property is proceeding with viewing speed as important and without the necessary level of debate."
"The operating system Linux has been developed by sharing information. It is necessary to pay attention to the fact that in today's world there are areas where a policy of not to strengthening the protection of information contributes to the development of industry. If we don't understand the direction the world is moving in, we will end up repeating the mistake of building a great battleship Yamato when it was necessary to build aircraft carriers."
"On the question of international exhaustion of the rights for Japanese music CDs, the rightholders favor a prohibition on re-imports, but academics oppose it. This will probably end with a political decision in favor of the rightholders introducing that prohibition."
It is interesting to see a leading Japanese academic like Nakayama voice this kind of sceptical viewpoints in the discussion about "Making Japan an Intellectual-Property Based Nation".
Posted by Karl-Friedrich Lenz at March 12, 2004 08:48 PM | TrackBack