The Japanese government finally issued a formal statement on the 18th of October asking the United States to help stop the unauthorized reproduction and distribution of Japanese animation online. Stating that the illegal distribution of these copyrighted materials is damaging the creative industries of Japan. The main target in these attacks are video-sharing sites like youtube, and peer-to-peer file-sharing networks like bit torrent; however, once again Japan fails to notice that sneaky-ninja known as IRC (eat that!).

What  does this mean for us? Well, nothing I suspect. America has its own problems when it comes to people downloading movies and music, with no solution in site; they have their hands full. Of  course Japan will still be sending out requests to remove unauthorized material from YouTube, like they have been doing for a while now. But I highly doubt they will hamper Fansub production.

What Japan needs to do is work with the fansubbers and find some other way to help promote their product instead of trying to shut them down. Yes, it might not be legal, but this is the way distribution has evolved; work with it, not against it. But nice try Japan.

[Via ANN]