One issue that has affected the rerelease of older games in Japan are harsh copyright laws that would come into play if there was any possible dispute over possible copyright ownership. To republish a work, the publisher must have an agreement with the copyright owner, which for these older games may involve individuals that that died or moved to different fields and are difficult to track down. A new proposed law in 2021 would create a central repository for copyright management for such works across all media where the copyright owner is unclear and take responsibility for managing future rights issues.