Welcome to Prison

I was in Tokyo when they made watching YouTube a crime. Two to ten years in prison, or a fine around 100,000 euros. Just for clicking play on something unlicensed. The Recording Industry Association of Japan had pushed it through, and it had that quality of satire that somehow became actual law.

The technical part was the perfect stupidity. Every video you stream gets cached to your computer. That’s technically a download. Watching any unlicensed video is now a felony. Fan uploads, trailers, covers, memes—doesn’t matter. And if you’re Japanese, the law applies even if you leave the country.

Most people didn’t know it had happened. I asked around and only a few had heard. Those who had seemed paralyzed by it tried talking about it online, tried organizing, then just gave up. There was something eerie about a law this extreme passing without real resistance, like everyone could see the stupidity but nobody had any way to stop it.

This is how these things work. One country does something extreme and survives, and suddenly it’s a template elsewhere. The record companies see Japan made it work and start pushing the same law in other places. The precedent is set. The craziness becomes normal through repetition.

I don’t know what I thought would happen differently. The law was already passed by the time I got there. But watching it happen quietly, the way people just absorbed it—that part stayed with me.