While they fell into obscurity in Canada for several years, floppy disks are still used as a storage medium for information in Japan, although not long after a first step in this direction.
Floppy disks and other CD-ROMs have almost completely disappeared from the rest of the world since disc production stopped in 2011.
However, the Asian country has been fighting to stop their use since 2022 and took a first step by amending the ministerial decree on digital principles a few days ago.
According to the announcement from the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, 34 orders on the use of floppy disks and several orders on the use of CD-ROMs have been canceled or changed.
According to the ministry's statement on January 22, last December, the ministry announced the “Comprehensive regulatory review plan in accordance with digital principles”, which aims to review the “review roadmap of analogue regulation based on digital principles”, like us can read the document.
In Japanese law, many provisions still require the use of floppy disks and disks as recording media to bypass other services such as the cloud, which is not always permitted.
These new regulations are essentially aimed at the terms “flexible data carriers”, “CD-ROMs” or “electromagnetic recording media”.
The success of Japan's “war on floppy disks” policy may take several years to come, as these storage devices are still widely used in local governments.