A 39-year-old website administrator located in Tokyo, Japan was recently charged with violating the Copyright Act for posting “spoiler articles” containing written summaries of movie and anime plots. As reported by Asahi Shimbun, on April 16, the Tokyo District Court sentenced the man to one year and six months of prison with a suspended sentence of 4 years, and a penalty of 1 million yen (approximately $6.3k USD). The criminal complaint against the website administrator was filed back in late 2024 by Kadokawa Corporation and TOHO, the copyright holders of the works summarized on the website (source: Content Overseas Distribution Association, hereafter CODA)The problematic articles in question include a full summary of 2023 film Godzilla Minus One (owned by Toho) and the third season of the Overlord anime (owned by Kadokawa), which aired back in 2018. According to the prosecution, the Godzilla article was over 3,000 characters in length, explaining the plot of the film in detail from beginning to end, while the Overlord summary piece also included character names, transcribed dialogue, action, scenes, plot twists and several screenshots from the anime. Consequently, Kadokawa and Toho argued that this style of article constituted an “adaptation” of the original works, and could thus be considered copyright infringement.
It's not even the same medium?
>>50901418should have used a vpn and hosted it overseas like the Chinese do
>>50901503>charged with violating the Copyright Act for posting “spoiler articles” containing written summaries of movie and anime plots.Lol>Consequently, Kadokawa and Toho argued that this style of article constituted an “adaptation” of the original works, and could thus be considered copyright infringement.Lmao even
kadokawa is so lame.
>>50901418Could you fuck off with this thread?I searched for a article source and a reddit thread came up, which linked a twitter postIf true, it's unironically a horrible precedent as the guy is being thrown in jail for the equivalent of a wikipedia summary or a synopsis of the plot, which is all over the internet.But I don't approve of OP posting such a thread without a proper source.
>>50903956Not the OP but herehttps://coda-cj.jp/news/2124/https://www.asahi.com/articles/ASV4J26KYV4JUTIL016M.html
was it really that little that landed him in prison for over a year? the japanese legal system can be so backwards and retarded sometimes
>>50907424He was part of a group running a monetized site that hosted transcripts of series, not just some NEET reviewer.
