On 15 February 2023, CODA and the Oita Prefectural College of Arts and Culture held a ceremony to mark the start of the “Digital Content Protection Project”, an Industry-academia collaboration for the protection of intellectual property, which was attended by local officials and several media representatives.
The ‘Digital Content Protection Project’ is a project in which students voluntarily patrol and report information on illegal uploads to CODA, which will be used by CODA to fight illegal uploads and piracy, as well as to exchange information on CODA activities and college research in the fight against piracy. There will also be an exchange of information on the respective anti-piracy measures from the perspective of CODA activities and college research. In the future, we will also consider reporting and consulting with the Oita Prefectural Police in the case of malicious illegal upload information, which means this project will be an industry-government-academic collaboration for intellectual property protection we expect.
At the ceremony, in a video message from CODA Representative Director Takero Goto, he expressed his gratitude for the opportunity to work on the protection of Japanese content in collaboration with the Oita Prefectural College of Arts and Culture, and expressed his hopes for industry-academic collaboration in protecting Japanese intellectual property.
Associate Professor Noda Yoshikuni, Department of Information and Communication, Oita Prefectural College of Arts and Culture, gave a speech that “This is a very meaningful project in which students, who will be responsible for the digital society of the future, will work and think about the topic of copyright infringement on their own. By collaborating with CODA, we gain deeper insights into the industry and the realities of infringements, which we could previously only imagine from literature. This allows us to tailor our activities to specific needs, such as identifying targets and reporting methods, enabling us to make a meaningful contribution to society.”
CODA Director of Project Management, Mr. Yuguchi, presented a letter of commission for the project to the students of the Noda Laboratory. In response, the students expressed their dedication to the importance of protecting intellectual property, affirming that they would apply their university studies to ‘protect the content they love.
After the ceremony, actual cyber-patrol activities by the students were introduced, and CODA staff introduced CODA’s efforts against illegal content and tips for detecting illegal uploaded videos, deepening understanding of each other’s activities.
For the past ten years, the Department of Information and Communication, Oita Prefectural College of Arts and Culture has been working under commission from the Oita Prefectural Police as the ‘Mejiron Oita Watching Party’ to report to the police harmful information that could trigger crimes and incidents, such as illegal drug trafficking. In addition, the Noda Laboratory, which specialises in information literacy and intellectual property education, has been working on a government-academic collaboration project for some time, and in September 2022, the Laboratory produced an awareness-raising video for high school students on piracy among young people in collaboration with Oita Prefecture as part of the Oita Prefecture Regional Collaboration Platform Promotion Project. The awareness-raising video produced there led to an exchange of views with CODA staff in October 2022, which led to the launch of a new project as an industry-academia collaboration with CODA.
Today, with the development of digital networks, the illegal uploading of animation and manga has become a serious social problem year after year. With the launch of this new project, CODA will share information and study effective solutions for the protection of intellectual property through industry-academia collaboration.
(translated by automatic translation system)