TOKYO, March 20, 2019—An apparent tripping of the bureaucrats advising Shinzo Abe’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party has sparked loud opposition from within the party, forcing it to postpone submitting legislation to the present Diet (parliament) to make it illegal to download literally anything on-line. (see Feb. 14, 2019 article.)
The embarrassing incident for Abe, who increasingly speaks and acts like Donald Trump as he vies for another term as LDP chief and continue as prime minister even longer than 6 years he served, occurred as an open standoff between members of the LDP committee on education and intellectual properties and the party’s general affairs committee on March 13.
If the bill was submitted as it was, plain vanilla copying – or downloading – by individuals of internet content, even if they are not copyrighted, such as videos, magazines, photos and academic papers, was set to become illegal.
Miwa Okajima, an official of the Ministry of Education, Cultural Affairs and Sports, March 20 told The Prospect that it was ‘regrettable’ that the bill submission to the Diet fell through. She said the ministry now has no clear schedule as to whether/when it would re-submit the bill to the next Diet session expected to be convened this fall.
Okajima agreed that the bill’s language was ‘too complicated and confusing’ to understand, in other words, it was written in such heavy bureaucrat language that LDP lawmakers had difficulty understanding how to read it.
For the Abe cabinet, withdrawing a bill was a rare case as his LDP majority has been bulldozing just about any bills and policies with total disregard of opposition parties. The latest incident seems to show cracks in the LDP unity and a potential for revolt against his increasingly autocratic attitudes.
The bill was said to have been drafted on behalf of the comic book industry that has been appealing to Abe to ban pirate downloading comics on-line.
Toshio Aritake