Japanese Supreme Court Rules TV Forwarding Illegal

eldavojohn writes "If you use anything like a Slingbox in Japan, you may be dismayed to find out that a Japanese maker of a similar service has been successfully sued by Japan Broadcasting Corp. and five Tokyo-based local TV broadcasting firms under copyright violations for empowering users to do similar things. TV forwarding or place shifting is recording and/or moving your normal TV signal from its intended living room box to your home computer or anywhere on the internet. Turns out that Japan's Supreme Court overruled lower court decisions confirming fears that to even facilitate this functionality is a copyright infringement on the work that is being transferred."

Comments

Wait...what?

[Pojut]

Maybe I'm missing something here, but how could it possibly be illegal to "shift" a TV broadcast from one room to another? Are they pissed you aren't buying another TV Provider's box? Are they pissed about the possibility of the stream ending up online? What's going on here?

I see what they're saying, but it doesn't make any sense. Insert the sound of an adult talking in a Peanuts cartoon here.