The Government of Japan has recently announced a revision of the law relating to the use of “physical media formats” for the submission of documents, including those relating to the alcohol business, mining, and the regulation of airplanes, among other businesses. This initiative marks the official abandonment of the use of floppy disks and CD-ROMs by the Japanese Government.
In August 2022, Japan’s Minister of Digital Transformation, Taro Tanaka, announced the start of the “War on Floppy Disks”. Prior to the recent law change, approximately 1,900 government programs required the use of outdated disk formats, including floppy disks, CDs, and MiniDiscs, for citizens and businesses to submit documents. Taro Tanaka announced his intention to amend the regulations to support online submissions and cloud-based data storage, requirements that date back decades.
Japanese website PC Watch reports that Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) announced on January 22 that it had changed 34 regulations to eliminate the requirement to use floppy disks. The changes cover a variety of areas, including mining, energy and weapons manufacturing regulations.
The METI announcement noted that the Japanese government has a number of regulations that explicitly require the use of specific recording media, such as floppy disks, in application and notification methods, and that these situations hindered the online implementation of the program.
U.S. missile launch control systems also use floppy disks
Nonetheless, Japan is not the only entity still relying on flexible disks. For example, industries such as embroidery, medical devices, avionics, and plastic molding still rely on flexible discs. Even in 2019, the U.S. Air Force uses 8-inch floppy disks in its missile launch control system. Pesky, who heads the U.S. website Floppydisk.com, said the rule change in Japan would not jeopardize their business.
The company’s Japanese customers are mainly hobbyists who continue to use floppy disk drives or music devices main revenue comes from blank floppy disk sales. Pesky said in 2022 that he expects the company to be in business until at least 2026.
