Japanese copyright law has an interesting idea here. The author of a copyrighted piece has a few "moral rights", and one of those rights is the right of "author

Japanese copyright law has an interesting idea here. The author of a copyrighted piece has a few "moral rights", and one of those rights is the right of "authorship", which is specifically the choice of how their name is connected to the piece (i.e. whether their real name is used, a pseudonym is used, etc). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_law_of_Japan#Author's_rights https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_law_of_Japan#Author'... In Japan, the law might have protected Scott. I think the japanese law makes a bit of sense. The NYT article was about the pseudonym, "Scott Alexander", not about the real person. Scott has consistently represented the blog as being authored by that pseudonym. The NYT piece was only about the blog and that pseudonym, not about him as a person, so it seems like it's pretty meaningless to bring up his real name in the first place.