Storing Personal Music Online Is Illegal In Japan

An anonymous reader writes "A decision in Tokyo District Court could have implications in Japan for online services that let users store files, if any music files are involved. The court case pitted JASRAC, the Japanese organization that collects fees for public music performances, against Image City, whose MYUTA service lets users employ a central server to store songs from their own CDs, to play on their own phones. The Tokyo District Court handed down a ruling declaring Image City guilty of copyright infringement (Google translation). Despite the music being stored strictly for personal use, the ruling reasoned that the act of uploading music to a central server owned by a company is the equivalent of distributing music to that company. This has implications for other services such as Yahoo! Briefcase and Apple's .Mac, which could mean these companies are guilty of copyright infringement if any of their users in Japan store music in their accounts for personal use. Here are some additional details on JASRAC's activities and methods." Neither article talks about possible appeals, or about how strong a precedent this case sets in the Japanese legal system.

Comments

Not much of a "precedent", per se

[achurch]

This is still just a district court ruling, so it doesn't set any "precedent" in the sense of binding other courts. It may influence how other district courts consider similar cases, but then again it may not; my impression is courts at the same level generally act rather independently. (There was a pair of high-profile cases late last year on privacy rights vs. government databases, where two separate high courts came to completely opposite conclusions for essentially the same circumstances.)

IANAL, of course. I just live here.

For the curious, the decision itself (PDF, in Japanese) can be found here.