One of the most interesting article I've read for a long time was Japan, Ink: Inside the Manga Industries. Looking at the title you might think it's an article about mangas, but actually it might be glimpse into the future of copyright law. In Japan fan-produced mangas (called Dojinshi) are extremely popular. Usually characters from a "regular industry manga" are taken and a new story involving them is written and then sold.
You might now expect that the copyright holder of this characters will sue the hell out of them, but they don't. Basically there consists a kind of mutual agreement calld anmoku no ryokai. The dojinshi creators publish only a limited number of editions, so the industry isn't at risk of losing to much and hence lets them publish. There's also a large number of benefits the manga industry gets: a free customer care program, a pool of new talents and cheap market research program (just look what characters are popular in the dojinshis and you'll now what goes on in the manga scene).
Another point is, that the current copyright law is designed for a read-only culture, but as it seems now, we are shifting to a read-and-write culture (think Web 2.0) and there are some issues concerning copyright which have to be solved. So the final question is, whether the Japanese model might be the future of copyright law?
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