I actually feel a little bit bad for the Japanese on this point. One can imagine them wanting to expand out of designing and manufacturing great value televisions and hi-fi components, coming to America to see how to do business here, and falling in with a pack of LA entertainment industry lawyers who steer them down the path to moral ruin.

I'm sure it didn't actually happen that way, but it's funny how it fits the observed behavior if you look at it a certain way. It's not like people would be any happier with them if they'd kept exactly the same set of business practices as goes on in Japan.