Both the United States and Japan have been plagued by widespread file-sharing of copyrighted works. Each country, however, has historically attempted to deal with illegal file-sharing from different angles, and these divergent approaches to enforcing copyright persist today. Thus, the ensuing discussion will attempt to explain why the United States and Japan, though similarly situated with respect to unsuccessful copyright enforcement against file-sharers, are responding to the underlying problem in radically different ways.

This Note is organized as follows: Part I will describe the efforts to combat piracy in each country and provide a snapshot of the copyright laws in the United States and Japan that are relevant to file-sharing. Part II will then trace the emergence of new enforcement strategies in both countries: the recent resurgence of file-sharing lawsuits in the United States and aggressive criminal prosecution in Japan. Part III will provide a side-by-side comparison of the legal landscapes affecting file-sharing in the United States and Japan.

This Note will aim to provide the reader with a comparative study of copyright enforcement against file-sharers in the United States and Japan. Given the current enforcement methods used by each country, the Note will attempt to show that, even with the recent rise of new enforcement mechanisms, neither country is likely to experience a reduction in piracy using its present strategy. Therefore, the Note will conclude by examining possible alternative enforcement strategies in conjunction with the changing dynamic between copyright holders and the consumers of their works.