Link to the news: https://kotaku.com/the-japanese-government-could-change-cosplay-forever-1846123799 Excerpt: Currently, anyone in Japan is free to dress as their favorite characters. But it might not stay free for them to do so. The Japanese government is proposing big copyright law changes for those who make money from cosplaying—and possibly, even for those who don’t. (...) According to Kyodo News, Japanese copyright law is unclear but points out that cosplay done without a profit motive is not necessarily infringement. So, for many cosplayers in Japan, things will probably not change. However, Kyodo News adds that even uploading cosplay photos to social networking sites like Instagram could be considered copyright infringement. If so, the effects would be felt throughout the cosplay community.
Some of them are making money and even have a career on cosplaying. I think that is the problem. That and the greed. THE GREED.
I understand if it would only effect those who earn money on it since that's fair, they are earning money on something that they technically don't own, while I do hope that I doesn't effect the people who just do it for fun or people who don't use it to earn money... But you never know, government's have been know to be greedy fucks, who will hit anyone with the infringement hammer, no matter in what regard they used the cosplay in.
Nah, no need to worry. The Japanese government won't do anything that would hurt their bottomline. At most the law would mandate that unlicensed commercial cosplaying is illegal. Which means commercial cosplaying will need to either purchase a license from the copyright owners or to contribute a portion of their income to the copyright owners. Let's take for example Enako, who makes USD90,000 a month. If even 10% of that income (USD9,000) goes to the copyright owners, that could be another free anime for you people. Then again, this law probably won't affect her either, as she claimed to mostly cosplay original characters instead of copyrighted characters. Basically, the average cosplayers won't be affected, since they don't make money from the deed. Japanese copyright law hints that as long as it's not for commercial purposes, it's not copyright infringement. If you do make money from it, then it is copyright infringement. If you take pictures of you posing as Nami or Nier and then you sold it as a photobook, the new law would require you to have the license from the copyright owners to doing that. If you are hired by a cosplay organizer to cosplay a certain anime character at a cosplay event, the burden of licensing is not on you, but on the organizer.