Operators Of Another ‘Spoiler Website’ Arrested In Japan

Copyright

from the spoilers-aren't-a-crime dept

Here we go again. Late last year we talked about how revisions Japan made to copyright law within the country, predominantly as a gift to the manga and anime industries, was resulting in some absurd arrests. Specifically, the law was amended to pull copyright issues from the civil realm and into a criminal offense, which is combined with copyright law in Japan being overly protective to begin with. That’s how you get examples such as I linked to above, in which the operators of three sites that are considered “spoiler sites” — meaning that they include very little in the way of directly copied materials, but instead have content such as plot and character summaries. In America, such content is not copyright infringement. In Japan, however, it seems it is, which is very silly.

But it keeps happening. Six individuals operating another spoiler site in Japan have been referred to prosecutors for copyright infringement this past week, though there seems to be some accusation that copyrighted still images of films were on the site along with the spoilers.

A company operating a website that provided detailed spoilers and images of films has been referred to the Sendai District Public Prosecutors Office on suspicion of violating the Copyright Act. Five men and women, including the company manager, were also referred; the Miyagi Prefectural Police Headquarters and the Minamisanriku Police Station handled the investigation. Content Overseas Distribution Association (CODA), a major Japanese anti-piracy organization, reports that there are “very few precedents for a corporation being referred to the prosecutor’s office on suspicion of violating the Copyright Act, making this an extremely rare case.“

The website posted detailed content of films, such as Godzilla Minus One and four other movies copyrighted by Toho, Shin Kamen Rider and two others by Toei, Kubi and one other by KADOKAWA, and Shin Ultraman by Tsuburaya Productions. The site reportedly listed over 8,000 films, describing the names of characters, lines, actions, and scenes.

Now the details of what the “images” are that are referenced actually consist of. If they are still images of copyrighted films or, say, promotional posters or title cards, I suppose that could be copyright infringement in the barest sense of the term. While potentially technically infringing, it would be monumentally silly to turn that sort of thing into a crime. Who would be the victim of that crime? Is CODA and the content creators really suggesting that represents some danger to them?

The answer is generally no. CODA’s commentary on this whole thing makes it clear that it’s the spoiler aspect of the sites that it’s concerned about, not any images.

CODA described these types of sites as malicious, as they allow “visitors to understand the full story of the movie, reducing their willingness to pay a fair price for the content, and may even lead to people not seeing the official movie.” CODA adds that these summaries go beyond the scope of legitimate quotations.

In no sane world should spoilers for content be considered copyright infringement. That should be reserved typically for the direct copying of protected content. Or, at the very least, to content that serves as a replacement for the copyrighted content. While CODA claims that’s the case here, anyone with a couple of brain cells to rub together would have to be very skeptical of that claim.

I knew all about the twist ending in The Sixth Sense back in the day. I still went and saw the movie? Why? Because I heard from the same people that “spoiled” the twist for me that it was also an excellent movie. In fact, there is at least some chance that I went and saw the film because of the conversation that spoiled the twist. Why is CODA so sure that same isn’t occurring with sites like these?

But the basic point here is that turning this sort of thing into a criminal offense is plainly silly.

Filed Under: coda, copyright, criminal copyright, japan, spoilers