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People are asking about Japanese law on this, so I'll write what I know. I am not a lawyer, just a person who cares about copyright. Japan does not have fair u

by polm23 6y ago

People are asking about Japanese law on this, so I'll write what I know. I am not a lawyer, just a person who cares about copyright. Japan does not have fair use, instead it has a number of specific exceptions to copyright. For example, you can take photos of things semi-permanently installed in an outdoor area and use those photos for non-commercial purposes, even if you photographed a 2D artwork that might have copyright. You can read the copyright law in English here: https://www.cric.or.jp/english/clj/cl2.html#art32 https://www.cric.or.jp/english/clj/cl2.html#art32 The most generous exception in the law (except maybe the search engine one) is for "quotation", Article 32. For quotation you must use only as much of the work as is necessary for commentary, clearly separate it from your own content, clearly attribute it, and the quoted content must be subordinate to your own content. Regarding the last point, that means you can't just say "this is a nice painting" and post the image, you have to provide some commentary on it. (No, that's not clearly defined, so you'd need to work it out in court if there was a dispute.) In practice this doesn't matter much on social media, and things work out much like places where you have fair use, but sometimes people try to enforce all their rights. Usually the people they are upset at take down their posts, but I guess in this case that didn't happen. One really unfortunate side effect of this is that Japanese Wikpedia has very few images compared to other Wikipedias. Things that would be fine in an article, like book covers, are excluded because their Wikimedia file page would not have commentary and, so the thinking goes, would be infringement. (I remember reading the discussion that came to this conclusion on a Wikipedia discussion page years ago, but haven't been able to find it since.) This is why the Japanese article for Anpanman has a photo of a mural, for example, while the English article has a book cover. For moral rights (著作人格権), these actually also exist in many places besides the United States. Practically speaking, if you license a work for use it's pretty common to have a clause saying you will not exercise these rights, and if you're in a mutually beneficial relationship any concerns over how you're credited can usually be negotiated. In this particular case the use was completely unauthorized so that didn't happen. (I am still confused about why the poster didn't just remove the image when asked.)

anilakar 6y ago
What's the legal status of retweets? From a technical point of view, the user is not making any copies but only referring to another post, and it's Twitter who creates the preview. Furthermore, how has Twitter ever been able to operate in Japan in the first place, if they have not made any concessions by disabling features that are considered to be in violation of local legislation?
- polm23 6y ago
  I have never really thought about this before or heard it discussed, because usually only the behavior of the initial poster is at issue (since they can just delete the tweet and fix the whole problem). If you are unfamiliar with Twitter, you could consider a user's timeline like their "home page", since they control it, and an RT could be considered a form of "reposting", because you put it in places it had not been before. I don't think that's a reasonable line of thought, but it is consistent.
  - anilakar 6y ago
    > I don't think that's a reasonable line of thought, but it is consistent. I guess we can agree that this seems to apply to Japan in general :) > you could consider a user's timeline like their "home page", since they control it, and an RT could be considered a form of "reposting", because you put it in places it had not been before. Strongly disagree with this. I'm a seasoned user and I feel that I'm completely out of control regarding what I and others see. This might also be a cultural (wrt. internet and mobile computing) difference, but I don't consider a Twitter-like timeline to be human-generated content at all, apart from the content that the users have explicitly created themselves. I believe this is also why most of HN seems to have a backlash at the moment. FWIW, attribution rights are common everywhere, but they're an integral part of copyright, not something that can be applied separately as a secondary measure if ordinary copyright enforcement fails. I also believe that most users here are aware of the issues with the Japanese court system and face.
  - Thorrez 6y ago
    But if the original tweeter deletes it, the retweet is deleted too. So I don't consider a retweet to be a copy, but rather an alias to an image that exists on someone else's account.
polm23 6y ago
Ah, I found a Japanese article and the flow of what happened is clearer to me now. (Maybe I should have realized it from the English article but I didn't...) https://www3.nhk.or.jp/news/html/20200721/k10012526381000.html https://www3.nhk.or.jp/news/html/20200721/k10012526381000.ht... The photographer wants to email the retweeters. The reason isn't stated but he could send them a bill for use of his image and threaten to take them to court if they don't pay it. This is not something a reasonable person would do, but it is technically within his rights under the law. There are occasionally people online in Japan who send bills to people (mainly magazines) who quote them or use images on Twitter in ways they don't like.
thaumasiotes 6y ago
> One really unfortunate side effect of this is that Japanese Wikpedia has very few images compared to other Wikipedias. Things that would be fine in an article, like book covers, are excluded because their Wikimedia file page would not have commentary and, so the thinking goes, would be infringement. (I remember reading the discussion that came to this conclusion on a Wikipedia discussion page years ago, but haven't been able to find it since.) This is why the Japanese article for Anpanman has a photo of a mural, for example, while the English article has a book cover. Where would the violation occur if the Japanese article also showed the book cover? We've stipulated that the article poses no problem. But the Wikimedia file page already exists. Does that page violate Japanese law? Would it violate Japanese law more if a Japanese article legally displayed the same image? > Practically speaking, if you license a work for use it's pretty common to have a clause saying you will not exercise these [moral] rights Huh. I thought the idea of moral rights was that they were inalienable. If you can contractually waive them... that seems like a conceptual contradiction?

by polm23 6y ago

anilakar 6y ago

What's the legal status of retweets? From a technical point of view, the user is not making any copies but only referring to another post, and it's Twitter who creates the preview. Furthermore, how has Twitter ever been able to operate in Japan in the first place, if they have not made any concessions by disabling features that are considered to be in violation of local legislation?

polm23 6y ago
I have never really thought about this before or heard it discussed, because usually only the behavior of the initial poster is at issue (since they can just delete the tweet and fix the whole problem). If you are unfamiliar with Twitter, you could consider a user's timeline like their "home page", since they control it, and an RT could be considered a form of "reposting", because you put it in places it had not been before. I don't think that's a reasonable line of thought, but it is consistent.
- anilakar 6y ago
  > I don't think that's a reasonable line of thought, but it is consistent. I guess we can agree that this seems to apply to Japan in general :) > you could consider a user's timeline like their "home page", since they control it, and an RT could be considered a form of "reposting", because you put it in places it had not been before. Strongly disagree with this. I'm a seasoned user and I feel that I'm completely out of control regarding what I and others see. This might also be a cultural (wrt. internet and mobile computing) difference, but I don't consider a Twitter-like timeline to be human-generated content at all, apart from the content that the users have explicitly created themselves. I believe this is also why most of HN seems to have a backlash at the moment. FWIW, attribution rights are common everywhere, but they're an integral part of copyright, not something that can be applied separately as a secondary measure if ordinary copyright enforcement fails. I also believe that most users here are aware of the issues with the Japanese court system and face.
- Thorrez 6y ago
  But if the original tweeter deletes it, the retweet is deleted too. So I don't consider a retweet to be a copy, but rather an alias to an image that exists on someone else's account.

polm23 6y ago

Ah, I found a Japanese article and the flow of what happened is clearer to me now. (Maybe I should have realized it from the English article but I didn't...) https://www3.nhk.or.jp/news/html/20200721/k10012526381000.html https://www3.nhk.or.jp/news/html/20200721/k10012526381000.ht... The photographer wants to email the retweeters. The reason isn't stated but he could send them a bill for use of his image and threaten to take them to court if they don't pay it. This is not something a reasonable person would do, but it is technically within his rights under the law. There are occasionally people online in Japan who send bills to people (mainly magazines) who quote them or use images on Twitter in ways they don't like.

thaumasiotes 6y ago

> One really unfortunate side effect of this is that Japanese Wikpedia has very few images compared to other Wikipedias. Things that would be fine in an article, like book covers, are excluded because their Wikimedia file page would not have commentary and, so the thinking goes, would be infringement. (I remember reading the discussion that came to this conclusion on a Wikipedia discussion page years ago, but haven't been able to find it since.) This is why the Japanese article for Anpanman has a photo of a mural, for example, while the English article has a book cover. Where would the violation occur if the Japanese article also showed the book cover? We've stipulated that the article poses no problem. But the Wikimedia file page already exists. Does that page violate Japanese law? Would it violate Japanese law more if a Japanese article legally displayed the same image? > Practically speaking, if you license a work for use it's pretty common to have a clause saying you will not exercise these [moral] rights Huh. I thought the idea of moral rights was that they were inalienable. If you can contractually waive them... that seems like a conceptual contradiction?