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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.
If the data is encrypted, and they don't have the key, you haven't distributed anything to them.
Shifting copyright works? bad.
Animated tentical rape? ok.
How we know is more important than what we know.
So I rent an apartment, and I store some of my music CDs in there, and then the RIAA sues my landlord for copyright infringement?
If I rent storage space online for my own personal use, I can put anything I want in there, including backup copies of my legally owned music collection.
Anything less, and my fair use rights are being violated.
Online?
Er. Okay. What is "online" - does this mean on a server somewhere on the vast internet which you've purchased? Or would your personal computer - which is "online" - count?
"[..] 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." Uploading music to a central server. So when the user has a networked place to store files, would this qualify? Assuming you were the owner or a business which had one other employee, if you uploaded your music to your server for your business, would this be a violation?
So many questions.. so many loopholes.. such broad legal decisions.
That the US isn't the only country with a totally screwed legal system and idiots for judges!
What about online backup services? They're growing in popularity as bandwidth comes down in price. I have 200 gigs of music included in my encrypted remote backup set. Nobody can get at it but me, it is just random data as far as the host is concerned.
I can't imagine a nation as technically literate as Japan would essentially make it illegal for people to do remote backup (since 99.9% of people have SOME music on their hard drive, if only the windows startup sound or whatever other audio files come with your OS and applications).
Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
So if you upload it to your own server this decision wouldn't necessarily apply. This brings up some interesting ideas; suppose a server farm was operated as a co-op where all the users own shares of the server farm. Now, if they upload music to this server farm are they distributing it to someone else?
How about if someone you don't know downloads a copy of a song from your server while you're not watching - is this distribution?
The record companies are setting legal precedents right and left these days - but I wonder if they realize what kind of corner they're painting themselves into. The basic idea of the copyright owner being the one who decides who gets copies of his work for a limited time is sound. I don't think even a hardened pirate can honestly argue against this. But this simple idea has been blown up and perverted far beyond what it was intended to be by greedy businessmen. The push-back from the general public is getting stronger by the day and it's just a matter of time before these companies find themselves holding the short end of the stick.
Want to hasten that day? Inform others of what's going on, and defund the crooks by refusing to purchase their products. Take the money out and they'll fold up very quickly.
How to build a huge mp3 collection:
1. Launch company that stores users' music online
2. Users send you all their music
3. W00T! check out my huge crappy mp3 collection.
I haven't figured out where to put "Profit" in there. I guess that's because I'm Canadian.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
Will they try to prosecute across borders like the States does?
No, they'll send giant robots after us.
The analogy of encryption with a locked container is problematic in this case. If you encrypt something with a properly constructed one-time pad, for example, the ciphertext will be indistinguishable from a random set of bits. Is the plaintext "inside" the ciphertext somehow? Only if you say that all messages of the same length are inside the ciphertext.
Music on your keitai is big business: the cell phone providers have their own music download services, and on most phones, you do not have the ability to upload mp3s or the like yourself (there are certainly some exceptions, and I believe Vodaphone phones generally did allow you much more freedom in this regard. Vodaphone were very much the minor player in the market though.)
... as a copyright violation. With progressively higher-level manufacturing moving to China, there is strong support from the government to encourage industry to develop and invest in IP, with correspondingly strong IP laws.
Services like MYUTA threaten to undermine a very lucrative source of revenue, and the music industry is a very, very powerful lobby: Sony for example were able to have the law rewritten such that importing CDs of Japanese music that Japanese publishers had licensed to overseas companies for distribution would be illegal
I hate that logic. If I give you a safe without telling you its contents or combination, just the instruction to hold on to it until I ask for it back, should you be held accountable for its contents? I'd say no, although I'm sure some idiot in a courtroom would say otherwise. Either way, an encrypted file is even stronger cause for plausible denyability, as its designed to actively prevent anyone but authorized parties to access its contents.
How are sites slashdotted when nobody reads TFAs?
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.