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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."
Are they pissed you aren't buying another TV Provider's box?
This is the same country that, due to special interest groups, made it illegal to rent video games or consoles while leaving it perfectly legal to do the same with other types of media including dvds and music cds. This includes "selling" those video games for a week or two with the agreed upon idea of "buying it back" a week later for 10 dollars less than the original price.
So yeah, that's probably why they're doing it.
why do lawyers believe they can stop the march of technological progress?
well, its either that or do real work.
which would *you* pick?
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
You fool! This is Japanese TV we're talking about!
Think about it: No more Japanese TV means a significant drop in anime produced. A significant drop in anime means less of it exported to the US (legality notwithstanding). That leads to the otaku/Japanophiles in the US losing their candy-colored pseudo-philosophic drivel. THAT leads to their now relatively-well-contained minor communities breaking down, and that leads to them breaking out and infesting the rest of the internet at large!
Don't you see? This isn't about keeping the slobbering masses stupid! This is about keeping the slobbering masses away from US!
Yeah, and as more and more people stop watching TV, the amount of ads that show up in commercial breaks on Hulu grows. It's up to two, now, from just one -- don't you think that by the time TV "goes away," it will have reached parity, rendering this argument obsolete?
It is by my will alone my thoughts acquire motion; it is by the juice of the coffee bean that the thoughts acquire speed
I wonder what this means for the Japanese Government sponsered TV Streaming App:
Keyhole TV
Wikipedia Article
Looks like the issue is a commercial entity providing the space-shifting service. This isn't an individual setting up his own DVR and using a VPN to watch recorded shows. This case involves a company acting as a proxy for the individual, hoping that the following claim will protect them -
.
Having not seen actual court documents, I'm inclined to think that the third-party service is the real issue. Oh, and that pesky part about the media cartels not getting a cut.
Are they pissed about the possibility of the stream ending up online?
Yes. This is basically the thing. But its better to have somewhat more context: we are talking about a country with amazingly fast internet connection. Neigbourghoods are in esence connected with what we call "ethernet speed" so it's not uninimaginable that some guy buys such device and feeds his pay-per-view stream to his building's router, effectively allowing all their neigbourghs to view tv for free (or just imagine a college building the day of superbowl or victoria's secret show...).
Maybe by then you'll have the good sense to give up on Hulu too.
Something bad is coming when people are suddenly anxious to tell the truth.
And just do the sensible thing and just pirate everything (and then whine unceasingly when shows get canceled for lack of revenue from viewers) or is this a "popular culture is so crass and I'm so sophisticated it hurts, but in a snooty way, not a plebeian way" statement?
They have a right to control EXPORT of the content to other countries, which is what this ruling forbids. Read the frakkin' article
Information wants to be expensive AND wants to be free. So you have Value vs. Cheap distribution fighting each other.
This is incorrect. This ruling went against Nagano Shoten's Maneki TV service which was targeted almost exclusively at a small number of Japanese living overseas - especially people who were doing the same thing by sticking a media PC at their Japanese apartment or parents house or whatnot and streaming it themselves.
Sony sells a device called location free TV that does the same thing except you set it up yourself with no service provider involved.
I wouldn't read too much into this ruling. If Sony is sued successfully then this would actually be news.
And just do the sensible thing and just pirate everything (and then whine unceasingly when shows get canceled for lack of revenue from viewers) or is this a "popular culture is so crass and I'm so sophisticated it hurts, but in a snooty way, not a plebeian way" statement?
Right. As if piracy has ever been the cause of a show being cancelled.
Modern copyright is theft of culture from everyone and it retards the progress of the useful arts and sciences.
As opposed to some other countries where special interest groups made it OK to rent video games and consoles, but NOT okay to rent music CDs.
True story: a branch of a Japanese retail chain opened a store in my town in the US. Being the thing they do back home, they had Japanese music CDs for rent. Mind you, this was in the days before CD copying existed so it was not like you could make a perfect copy unless you had a DAT drive, which almost nobody did. And then the tapes for that would cost more than the CD. So basically CD copying didn't happen.
But the store was eventually found by the US music licensing companies (ASCAP, etc) and C&D'd over this practice of renting CDs. Apparently it's not allowed in the US, which may explain why I've never seen any other place in the US do it.
But I don't understand why. You can rent DVDs. You can rent video games. You can even borrow CDs from the public library. But you can't rent them.