Man who “lied about contracts to get women to perform in porn” and repeated the violation about 70 times “False Dates” “Meaning.”
He repeatedly made false contracts.”
Just after 8:00 a.m. on May 14 at the Takinogawa Police Station of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department. The suspect, Tsunekazu Shibata, 52, of Moriya City, Ibaraki Prefecture, was wearing red framed glasses and walking with a downcast look on his face.
The “AV Appearance Victims Prevention and Relief Law (New AV Law)” was enacted in June 2010, and will soon be in effect for four years. Shibata was arrested on suspicion of violating the law.
In 2012, Shibata entered into two AV performance contracts with women in their thirties, and entered false creation dates and contract dates in the contracts. He is also suspected of not providing sufficient explanation about the contracts. During interrogation, the suspect admitted to the charges, “I fudged (the dates) so that I could release the videos immediately after shooting them.
The police are also investigating a woman in her 20s who accompanied him on the shoot.
The police are also investigating a woman in her twenties who was accompanying the shoot. Despite the woman’s request that her identity not be revealed during the filming, the video was distributed on the Internet in a form that made it possible to identify her.
The Miyagi Prefectural Police Sendai Higashi Police Station arrested an unemployed man (58) on April 13 for violating the same law. The man is suspected of failing to deliver a contract or written explanation to three women, all of whom were in their teens at the time, whom he had cast in adult videos between 1949 and 1956. The man also solicited women through social networking sites. The adult videos he produced were sold on the Internet, and he is said to have sold at least 40 million yen.
The new AV law established a new regulation known as the “1-4 rule. The reason Shibata faked the date of the video so that he could release it immediately after shooting it was probably to get around this rule.
The “1-4 rule” requires that a one-month period be allowed between the signing of a contract with a performer and the shooting of the video, and a four-month period between the shooting of the video and its release to the public. If a performer signs a contract but then decides that he or she does not want to appear in the film or does not want the film to be shown in public, the performer can cancel his or her contract or cancel the sale of the film. Furthermore, for one year from the date of publication of the work, the performer can unconditionally cancel the contract and stop the publication of the work.
Under the new AV law, producers are required to explain the contents of the contract to the performers and give them a written contract when they sign the contract.
Decisions were made without listening to the voices of those in the field.
The New AV Law was designed to prevent damage from pornography, so from the perspective of first-time pornographers, it appears to be a reasonable rule. However, many in the industry say that the new law is not in line with the reality of the situation, and that the premise of the new law is that pornography is evil.
For small makers and agencies, this means that they have no sales during the five months it takes from the signing of the contract to the release of the film. For small makers and offices, cash flow has become quite difficult. There is also the loss incurred by cancelled shoots or cancelled sales. In particular, if a performer cancels on the day of a shoot, the 1-4 rule means that a substitute cannot be hired on short notice and the shoot itself must be canceled. The number of productions has decreased due to the increased risk of productions being overshadowed.
In addition, the contract requires an explanation of the procedures and laws for each production, and it takes an enormous amount of time and effort just to explain the details of the contract to each performer in person. This may be necessary for newcomers and others who are unfamiliar with the process, but the same explanation must be repeated each time to veteran actresses who have performed dozens of times. The amount of effort required for this is four to five times greater than before.
The reason why many people say that the new AV law is not in line with the actual situation in the field is due in part to the process of its enactment. The new AV law was passed at an unprecedented speed, taking less than three months from the launch of the project team at the Diet in April 2010 to its enactment on June 23, 2010. Another problem is that there were no hearings at all with performers or manufacturers in the process of drafting the bill.
Nevertheless, serious manufacturers are making efforts to comply with the law by issuing contracts and explaining their contents. However, the regulations in the current law are so strict that they are impractical, and there are many earnest voices calling for a review that would relax various regulations, such as the 1-4 rule, for the sake of the survival of the industry.
However, the problem in this case is not limited to mere “false declaration of dates. Despite the fact that the woman had requested anonymity, the fact that the video was distributed in a manner that made it possible to identify her personally suggests a lack of awareness of the protection of performers.
The law is so strict that some in the field have called it an “industry cripple,” but not a few producers are making efforts to comply with the law. It is necessary to punish those producers who break the law by cutting in between. However, it is also necessary to reexamine the new AV law, which shows no sign of being reviewed, despite the fact that it clearly states that it will be reviewed within two years of its enforcement.
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PHOTO: Shinji Hasuo
