The Japanese government has made a formal request asking OpenAI to refrain from copyright infringement. This comes as a response to Sora 2’s ability to generate videos featuring the likenesses of copyrighted characters from anime and video games.
I fear that this does not cleanly apply to Japan because of their somewhat uniquely active doujinshi (fan work) culture. To give an idea of how big a deal doujinshi are, the largest western convention San Diego Comic Con only draws around 130,000 attendants. The largest Doujinshi convention Comiket drew 750,000 attendants before COVID. These works are explicitly distributed and redistributed for commercial profit (though admittedly usually not at any profitable scale).
Japan copyright law has explicit exceptions for doujinshi, having recognised the immense value to the industry. So many successful artists started by creating and selling doujinshi, which are usually explicitly derivative works of IP.
I fear that this does not cleanly apply to Japan because of their somewhat uniquely active doujinshi (fan work) culture. To give an idea of how big a deal doujinshi are, the largest western convention San Diego Comic Con only draws around 130,000 attendants. The largest Doujinshi convention Comiket drew 750,000 attendants before COVID. These works are explicitly distributed and redistributed for commercial profit (though admittedly usually not at any profitable scale).
Japan copyright law has explicit exceptions for doujinshi, having recognised the immense value to the industry. So many successful artists started by creating and selling doujinshi, which are usually explicitly derivative works of IP.
Doujinshi - Wikipedia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doujinshi