Japan Criminalizes Unauthorized Downloads, Making DVD Backups -- And Maybe Watching YouTube

There's a fairly constant pattern in the world of copyright enforcement. The media companies claim that piracy is "destroying" their industries, although they never offer any independent evidence to back this up. They "demand" that governments "do something" -- by which they mean introduce harsher penalties for unauthorized downloads. Because of the hypnotic effect that musicians and artists seem to have on politicians, governments happily oblige, even though there is no evidence that such laws will help artists. After the laws come in to force, online sharing may dip for a while, but soon returns to previous levels, so the media companies start whining again, and demand yet tougher penalties. 

On Techdirt.