【Research Center for the Legal System of Intellectual Property】

Activities

Fairness, Transparency, and Openness of a Council

RA Kazuhiro Ando

As it may be known, a council is "an advisory body that is appointed by a governmental body to reflect the opinions of academics and interested parties for policy-making" (Kojien, the fifth edition). The council submits a report to the governments, but in principal, the report has no binding obligation. The governments' decision is relied upon for accepting or rejecting the report in the policy. Needless to say, the report has a great effect on the decisions of policy-making. Accordingly, it is necessary to enhance the transparency and openness of the council.

It was not until recently that the Copyright Council of the Agency of Cultural Affairs of Japan finally took up a principle of openness, letting 20 to 30 bystanders to listen at the council meetings. Proceedings of the meetings are accessible in reports by an attendant bystander published immediately following the council meetings on the website. Detailed meeting minutes with the names of all the council members are also readily available. To this extent, a certain evaluation can be given of the effort made for the transparency and openness of the Copyright Council. It is hoped that the Copyright Council will facilitate further information disclosure.

In addition to transparency and openness, assuring fairness in selecting council members is another one of the difficulties the governmental body has been confronting in council operation. Selecting balanced members for the council is in ways more important than transparency and openness. Although a consumer group was consistently opposed to the legislation which bans import of music CDs made lawfully in other countries, there was no representative from a consumer group among the council members. The consumer group was only given an opportunity to state their opinions at the legislation sub-committee, and they could not participate in a discussion. It is freshly reminded that the legislation was severely criticized as a result of bias in favor of the right-holders.

It is desirable to have a good balance of right-holders and consumers among the council members. From this point on, further improvement of fairness, transparency and openness of the councils is hoped for.