With the Internet age advancing rapidly in Japan and elsewhere around the globe, it may seem a rather belated move -- but perhaps better late than never.

After years of intense deliberations, Japan is ready to join a key international treaty adopted in 1996 by the Geneva-based World Intellectual Property Organization to protect intellectual property rights for performances and musical recordings, according to government sources.

The government will submit the WIPO Performances and Phonograms Treaty to a 150-day ordinary Diet session convening in late January for ratification, together with necessary amendments to the Copyright Law, the sources said.

In June 2000, Japan joined the WIPO Copyright Treaty, another key WIPO treaty adopted at the same time as the WIPO Performances and Phonograms Treaty.

The two WIPO treaties were adopted to cope with the increasingly serious global issue of copyright infringement amid growing transactions of works on the Internet without national boundaries. Recently, problems involving new software such as that used by Napster of the United States to support the exchange of music and films have also emerged.

Under the WIPO Performances and Phonograms Treaty, performers, such as actors, singers, musicians and dancers, and producers of phonograms -- such as musical recordings -- will be granted the same key exclusive rights as ordinary copyright owners.

Among these exclusive rights are to authorize the reproduction of their performances and distribution and commercial rental of the original or copies of their performances to the public.

Concerning amendments to the Copyright Law, a senior official at the Agency for Cultural Affairs said, "We will revise the law to make it possible for us to fulfill all obligations of the WIPO Performances and Phonograms Treaty, although the revisions will not go beyond the treaty obligations."

The WIPO Performances and Phonograms Treaty basically defines phonograms as the "fixation" or embodiment of sounds of a performance other than in the form of a fixation incorporated in a cinematographic or other audiovisual work.

Five years after adopting the WIPO Copyright Treaty and WIPO Performances and Phonograms Treaty, the WIPO is now considering a new treaty protecting intellectual property rights for audiovisual performances and other new treaties.