Greetings from the Representative Director

Bringing Japanese content to the world.
Anti-piracy measures are the first step.

The Content Overseas Distribution Association (CODA) was established in 2002 in response to the Japanese government’s “declaration of intellectual property-based nation” with the support of the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry and the Agency for Cultural Affairs, bringing together content holders of music, movies, animation, TV programs, video games, and others. Its goal is to promote overseas development of Japanese content and take anti-piracy measures.

CODA’s anti-piracy measures, joint enforcement (right exercise), began in January 2005 with the exposure of pirate stores in Hong Kong. Since then, local authorities have exposed 17,414 cases, confiscated 6.99 million pirated copies, and arrested 3,829 persons related to Japanese content targeting mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. As a result of these achievements, pirated copies of Japanese content are no longer sold openly on the streets in East Asia.

On the other hand, with the advance of digitization and networking and the global spread of smartphones, online pirate sites are now a significant problem. Such infringements spread on an instantaneous, individual basis without borders. The concern is that they will permeate and spread without guilt among the younger generation. Many international services with anonymity and confidentiality are available, which enable the operation of pirate sites. Solving the problem of pirate sites is only going to get more difficult. Under these circumstances, CODA launched the Cross-Border Enforcement Project (CBEP) in April 2021 with the support of the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry to strengthen international enforcement procedures. In cooperation with ethical hackers who are experts in cyber security, we have started digital forensics and online profiling surveys, etc., to identify malicious pirate site operators. Although we are still in the early stages of our activities, we hope to establish effective, efficient, and practical anti-piracy site measures. We are committed to achieving outstanding results in the near future.
In addition to direct measures such as the operation of the “CODA Automatic Monitoring and Deletion Center,” we will implement the following actions as peripheral measures: filtering of infringing sites in cooperation with security software companies; requests to suppress the display of search results in cooperation with Google; requests to suppress the placement of advertisements in cooperation with online ad-serving companies, etc.; and freezing of accounts of infringing sites in cooperation with financial institutions and credit card companies, etc.

In addition, with ASEAN countries experiencing remarkable economic development, we will also conduct support activities such as holding seminars and educational events for general consumers in cooperation with local government agencies and related organizations. These activities aim at raising consumer awareness that infringement of intellectual property rights, including copyright infringement, is “wrong” and “must not be done.”

In the 5G era, protecting intellectual property is becoming increasingly difficult. We will promote various projects to resolve the problem of international pirate sites by bringing together the wisdom of the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, Agency for Cultural Affairs, Intellectual Property Strategy Promotion Bureau, National Police Agency, Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, Ministry of Foreign Affairs and diplomatic missions abroad, and other related organizations and companies in Japan and abroad.
We appreciate your continued support and understanding.