Japanese manga artist Shuho Sato is to allow anyone to use and adapt his work for commercial or noncommercial purposes without having to pay royalties. Doesn’t that sound great!
The award-winning author of Say Hello to Black Jack — who has sold more than 10 million copies of his manga (and therefore benefited from existing copyright law) — is interested in finding alternatives to the traditional model of intellectual property rights.
From Sept. 15, anyone in the world will be free to novelize, translate, televise, create merchandise or apps or adapt the original work without risk of being sued. Actually Sato is not making his work copyright-free; rather, he has pledged not to enforce the copyright.
The move occurs at the same time as the launch of an exhibition of his manga comics at Pixiv Zingaro. In it, he will exhibit around 70 of his original drawings for Say Hello to Black Jack. Visitors will be able to use a photocopier to copy any of these pages and do as they like with them.
