Here we go again. We’ve been discussing the iterative changes in Japanese copyright law for some time now. Those changes have been largely targeted rather than sweeping, though those targeted changes are arguably extreme in nature. First and foremost was moving copyright infringement largely out of the realm of civil law and into a criminal offense. While that is bad enough on its own, the Japanese government also demonstrated plainly that at least part of the impetus for these changes to copyright law were designed specifically to bend the knee to the country’s manga and anime industry. Those changes were especially worrisome, given they went beyond criminalizing direct infringement to also make it illegal to “infringe” in all kinds of indirect ways, such as sites that merely link to potentially infringing content, or individuals or sites that share “spoilers” for anime and manga content. That last bit is what led to one man being sentenced to 2 years in prison for engaging in “let’s play” and spoiler content in uploads to YouTube.