Features
Japan Sales Still Slow
According to Japan’s public broadcaster, NHK, a year after a tough anti-piracy law went into effect, music sales in Japan show no sign of improvement.
Over the past eight months, sales of recorded music has decreased.
Whether this decrease has anything to do with the law, which sets harsh penalties for anyone who downloads music illegally, is difficult to gauge.
In any case, the Association of Copyrights for Computer Softward reports that the number of Japanese PCs using file-sharing services has decreased in the past year by 40 percent.
Sales of music did increase by about 5 percent in the four months after the law went into effect, but in the next six months sales decreased by 7 percent over the previous year.
Moreover, legal digital distribution of music declined by 24 percent over the previous year.