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Japanese YouTuber convicted of copyright violation after uploading Let’s Play videos
(www.theverge.com)
this post was submitted on 08 Sep 2023
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What is the purpose of jail time? Wouldn't a fine be enough to stop him doing it again?
The studios he offended are trying to make an example out of him. Reminds me of Nintendo suing Bowser for $10 Million.
yeah japan is really cruel when it comes to sentencing
Thank goodness they caught this one guy who made these videos without any distribution from a billion dollar company, which for sure did not make any money off of copyright material as well. Smh
YouTube would need to ban 90% of its videos in Japan to protect its uploaders from copyright violations.
That would probably force Japan to update its copyright laws, but YT won't do it because they'd loose profits for one quarter
Why is this man getting years in prison for a copyright violation? People shouldn't be jailed for that, monetary fines is enough. There's no reason this man should be jailed for uploading gameplay videos online.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
A Japanese court has convicted a man of violating copyright law after he uploaded gameplay and anime videos without publisher permission.
Reported by Japanese paper Asahi Shimbun, the 53-year-old man, Shinobu Yoshida, was sentenced to two years in prison and assessed a 1 million yen fine (or about $6,700 USD.)
Yoshida was arrested in May of this year after uploading gameplay videos of the visual novel Steins;Gate: My Darling’s Embrace back in 2019.
Yoshida also uploaded videos summarizing episodes of the Spy × Family and Steins;Gate anime shows.
CODA characterized the complaint as “malicious cases of posting videos containing content and endings (spoilers) without permission from the rights holders, [...] and unfairly gaining advertising revenue through copyright infringement.”
Asahi Shimbun reported that the prosecution stated Yoshida’s actions were, “a malicious act that tramples on the effort of content production.” They argued that because he uploaded videos that condensed and spoiled anime episodes and videos of gameplay from a visual novel — a style of game that focuses on reading to experience the story rather than through gameplay — consumers would be less incentivized to spend money on either.
The original article contains 281 words, the summary contains 188 words. Saved 33%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
I saw this happening eventually and I agree with the copyright strike. I love Let’s Play videos and I have them on in my house all the time. However, spoiling the entire game for a story based game really does cut into the developer’s efforts. But 2 years in prison plus a million yen fine is ridiculous. Prison time is too far. This should be just a copyright strike.
Copyright law doesn’t exist to prevent spoilers.
The term "spoilers" usually refer to small but impactful parts of the plot (character X dies). If this is a translation perhaps it's referring to something else. The post says the anime content was condensed - I take as containing the most impactful scenes (perhaps even the majority of the work). Perhaps being a market substitution "spoils" it from being re-watched from 1st party source.
Copyright law exists so creators can create works and bring them to market in a economical manner.
If I livestream me reading a mystery novel in it's entirety I've devalued that work. This is because any viewers no longer could receive the same enjoyment from the novel meaning they're less likely to buy it. I've essentially republished their work, violating their copyright.
IIRC, the reality of gaming YouTube videos and streams is that you do it with permission from the studio. I heard that arrangements for streamers are built into the license for the software since streaming is obviously beneficial for many studios. Even so, some content creators still get written permission from publishers to stream. (Frost on YouTube got permission from HiRez to stream Smite, for example.) if a studio says you can’t stream the game, they have the right to enforce it.
To my knowledge, almost zero games incorporate licenses that actually give any legal space or protection for streaming, it's almost always a "we 100% have the right to sue you but we probably won't, we totes promise fr fr" kind of situation.
But for this case in particular, what's actually happening is that Japan is one of the strictest countries in the world w.r.t. copyright law; I can't know the laws of every country in the world, but in 90% of jurisdictions the worst you'd expect to happen is the videos get taken down, maybe your channel gets deleted.
Don't screw around with copyright law in Japan though.