A legislator’s proposal that the Ministry of Culture promote cosplay might lead to copyright disputes between fans and creators, Taipei Comic Artist Union president and prolific manga artist Chung Meng-shun (鍾孟舜) said on Wednesday.
Chung made the comments on Facebook in response to Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Lu Hsiu-yen’s (盧秀燕) impromptu motion in the legislature on Tuesday that the Ministry of Culture establish an office to promote cosplay.
Lu said the government was being “negligent and lazy” for failing to promote cosplay as a cultural and artistic activity, and proposed that a subsidy program be established under a new government office.
Photo: Chan Shih-hung, Taipei Times
However, Chung said that the lawmaker had overlooked the potential intellectual property concerns which could arise if the government gives official recognition to cosplay and joins the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), adding that the proposal could “wreak havoc with the anime and manga industry.”
Chung said cosplay activities are “legally controversial,” as they are potential breaches of intellectual property laws and that Japanese copyright holders had so far been reluctant to press charges because they had been benefiting from the publicity their franchises receive from cosplay events.
Chung said that if Taiwan joins the TPP, the government would be obliged to prosecute copyright violators, including those involved in cosplay, even in the absence of copyright complaints filed by the holders and that official acknowledgment of cosplay would exacerbate the legal risks of cosplay by removing any ambiguity.
“I thank legislators and government officials for caring about manga and anime culture, but the government must not lead the charge to ignore intellectual property rights and, as things stand now, the government is doing cosplay a favor by not doing anything,” Chung said.
The government should decriminalize cosplay events before considering subsidies, Chung said, adding that the Japanese government is mulling passing a law to protect those involved in cosplay from frivolous intellectual property litigation in anticipation of joining the TPP.
He said it would be more prudent to allow nongovernmental organizations to sponsor cosplay events.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
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