Uploading Your Music For Personal Use Is Infringement In Japan?

from the weird-copyright-rulings dept

Tue, May 29th 2007 9:23pm — Mike Masnick

Just as Japan is looking to make things slightly more reasonable for people uploading TV clips, it appears that the courts have given people a setback concerning music copyrights. There's apparently a service in Japan that allows users to upload songs that they own to use those tunes as ringtones on their phones. The uploads are only for personal use and no one else has access to them. However, according to an article on Slashdot, a court has ruled that just the act of transferring those songs to computer servers owned by someone else constitutes copyright infringement. Even though the actual act of infringement then is due to the end user doing the uploading, the court appears to have found the company that hosts the servers as the guilty party. As the article notes, this could effectively make any online storage site guilty of copyright infringement in Japan. This ruling makes very little sense no matter how you look at it, and hopefully whatever changes Japanese politicians are looking at concerning copyright law will look for a way to protect this type of usage.

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7 Comments

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zcat, 29 May 2007 @ 11:43pm

you should be so lucky
Here in New Zealand you can't do anything at all with your CDs other than play them directly from the original media. No mp3 rips or transferring to mp3 players or making a CDR copy or tape to play in the car..

Everybody does it anyway, but technically it's all illegal.
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Overcast, 30 May 2007 @ 6:24am

Pretty much anything except for PAYING the recording companies anymore is infringement. Even after you buy the CD, you can only listen to it on the original disc, if it gets scratched - no biggy, just BUY another!

In a 'perfect' world for the entertainment industry - we would just simply pay them, like another tax. They would provide nothing. That's the goal they aspire to I think.
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Overcast, 30 May 2007 @ 6:25am

And to add.... until I CAN legally burn myself a copy without hassle - a CD isn't worth buying to me. Period.
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dorpus, 30 May 2007 @ 6:43am

Uploading recalled products?
Secom, a security company, ran a TV ad in Tokyo for security alarms for children. In the ad, the narrator says "protect your children from wild beasts who appear human", and showed electric repairmen and construction workers turning into hyenas and attacking children.

After dozens of protests from construction workers and electric repairmen, the company has pulled the ad.

Meanwhile, hyenas on the internet have uploaded copies of the banned ad online.

http://www.asahi.com/national/update/0530/TKY200705300380.html?ref=rss
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Just say no, 30 May 2007 @ 8:46am

One of these days we'll learn
The problem, I believe, is more us the consumer rather than the entertainment industry. Pretty much, any country that doesn't endorse piracy is getting reamed by these crazy rules and laws put out by the industry.

If we were smart, we'd realize this is entertainment and not a need. Then we'd all have a Great Worldwide Music Out, as opposed to the Great American Smoke Out. Worldwide, nobody would buy any music of any sort for a say a weekend. Not that big a sacrafice. If it were actually adhered to though, it would send a HUGE message to the enterainment suits. Too bad it will never happen.
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Anonymous Coward, 30 May 2007 @ 1:53pm

Re: One of these days we'll learn
Why bother with a 2 day boycott when you can just stop buying music forever and steal it all online for free? The xxAA's can make all the laws they want, but none of them are effective and usually just piss off customers to the point that they no longer want to pay for music and would rather steal it just so the music industry won't get the money from the sale. If you actually want to pay for more DRM and a bigger copyright lobby, then keep buying music, if you hate that stuff then steal it if for no other reason than to keep the money from the xxAA's and their international political agenda of greed.
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clive, 1 Jun 2007 @ 2:16pm

not much better in the UK
It's a similar story in the UK.

Legally you can't take that nice bright clean CD you bought from a shop and make a copy for your iPod. You can't make a a backup either.

Luckily the politicians have actually realised the a law which is broken by the majority (?) of the population on a regular basis needs review.

Hopefully there will be something sensible (ha) in the near future.
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