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Japan top court tells Twitter to disclose retweeters' info

japantimes.co.jp

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Re: Japan top court tells Twitter to disclose retweeters' info

#61

Post by polm23 »

anilakar wrote: post #58
polm23 wrote: post #57

People are asking about Japanese law on this, so I'll write what I know. I am not a lawyer, just a person who cares about copyright. Japan does not have fair use, instead it has a number of specific exceptions to copyright. For example, you can take photos of things semi-permanently installed in an outdoor area and use those photos for non-commercial purposes, even if you photographed a 2D artwork that might have cop…

What's the legal status of retweets? From a technical point of view, the user is not making any copies but only referring to another post, and it's Twitter who creates the preview. Furthermore, how has Twitter ever been able to operate in Japan in the first place, if they have not made any concessions by disabling features that are considered to be in violation of local legislation?

I have never really thought about this before or heard it discussed, because usually only the behavior of the initial poster is at issue (since they can just delete the tweet and fix the whole problem).

If you are unfamiliar with Twitter, you could consider a user's timeline like their "home page", since they control it, and an RT could be considered a form of "reposting", because you put it in places it had not been before.

I don't think that's a reasonable line of thought, but it is consistent.

Re: Japan top court tells Twitter to disclose retweeters' info

#62

Post by polm23 »

waon wrote: post #41

Japan desperately needs a competent organization that can stand up for the digital rights of its people now. They lack organizations like the EFF that are willing to do this.

Politician Taro Yamada (his name is extremely generic but real) and manga artist Ken Akamatsu are copyright progressives and have managed to avert some of the worst proposed reforms, but I don't think there's any organization working on this.

Re: Japan top court tells Twitter to disclose retweeters' info

#63

Post by em-bee »

aspaceman wrote: post #59
em-bee wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what's bonkers is wanting to punish users for something they didn't do. judges not understanding technology strikes again.

I believe this decision punishes Twitter - not the users.

to punish twitter they wouldn't need the identities of the retweeters. the only use for knowing the retweeters is to haul them into court.

Re: Japan top court tells Twitter to disclose retweeters' info

#64

Post by coldtea »

darren_ wrote: post #27
gruez wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>but rather Twitter did in order to fit the aspect ratio displayed within the application. This is bonkers. The attribution is still there, you just have click it. Besides, I doubt anyone who cared about the image is going to be content looking at the low-res thumbnail. The reputational damage done to the photographer is negligible. Punishing the retweeters is also problematic because they themselves didn't crop the…

> This is bonkers. The attribution is still there, you just have click it This means, almost by definition, that the most viewed versions of these photos on twitter, probably by a very high margin, have no attribution. Why is this bonkers? The right to attribution is clear, and it’s not your place to judge whether or not the artist should be exercising it. The latter question comes down to how feasible it is for a pe…

>Why is this bonkers? The right to attribution is clear, and it’s not your place to judge whether or not the artist should be exercising it.

Why not? It's precisely our place as citizens to criticize laws we deem absurd/unfair/bad, including people who chose to exercize them in hamrful ways.

Human law != some divine dictum everybody should not criticize and uphold at all times. Seggregation was a law too.

Re: Japan top court tells Twitter to disclose retweeters' info

#65

Post by searchableguy »

gruez wrote: post #31
darren_ wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is bonkers. The attribution is still there, you just have click it This means, almost by definition, that the most viewed versions of these photos on twitter, probably by a very high margin, have no attribution. Why is this bonkers? The right to attribution is clear, and it’s not your place to judge whether or not the artist should be exercising it. The latter question comes down to how feasible it is for a pe…

>This means, almost by definition, that the most viewed versions of these photos on twitter, probably by a very high margin, have no attribution. >Why is this bonkers? The right to attribution is clear, and it’s not your place to judge whether or not the artist should be exercising it. Does it mean that any sort of action needed to see the attribution constitutes "hiding" it, opening you to liability? What if the ima…

This is a solved problem. Don't crop photos on your platform. If you want photos to be cropped to fit a square box, make it explicit for users to enable. Have an additional attribution field if that's not sufficient enough.

Re: Japan top court tells Twitter to disclose retweeters' info

#66

Post by anilakar »

polm23 wrote: post #61
anilakar wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the legal status of retweets? From a technical point of view, the user is not making any copies but only referring to another post, and it's Twitter who creates the preview. Furthermore, how has Twitter ever been able to operate in Japan in the first place, if they have not made any concessions by disabling features that are considered to be in violation of local legislation?

I have never really thought about this before or heard it discussed, because usually only the behavior of the initial poster is at issue (since they can just delete the tweet and fix the whole problem). If you are unfamiliar with Twitter, you could consider a user's timeline like their "home page", since they control it, and an RT could be considered a form of "reposting", because you put it in places it had not been…

> I don't think that's a reasonable line of thought, but it is consistent.

I guess we can agree that this seems to apply to Japan in general :)

> you could consider a user's timeline like their "home page", since they control it, and an RT could be considered a form of "reposting", because you put it in places it had not been before.

Strongly disagree with this. I'm a seasoned user and I feel that I'm completely out of control regarding what I and others see. This might also be a cultural (wrt. internet and mobile computing) difference, but I don't consider a Twitter-like timeline to be human-generated content at all, apart from the content that the users have explicitly created themselves. I believe this is also why most of HN seems to have a backlash at the moment.

FWIW, attribution rights are common everywhere, but they're an integral part of copyright, not something that can be applied separately as a secondary measure if ordinary copyright enforcement fails. I also believe that most users here are aware of the issues with the Japanese court system and face.

Re: Japan top court tells Twitter to disclose retweeters' info

#67

Post by Thorrez »

darren_ wrote: post #27
gruez wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>but rather Twitter did in order to fit the aspect ratio displayed within the application. This is bonkers. The attribution is still there, you just have click it. Besides, I doubt anyone who cared about the image is going to be content looking at the low-res thumbnail. The reputational damage done to the photographer is negligible. Punishing the retweeters is also problematic because they themselves didn't crop the…

> This is bonkers. The attribution is still there, you just have click it This means, almost by definition, that the most viewed versions of these photos on twitter, probably by a very high margin, have no attribution. Why is this bonkers? The right to attribution is clear, and it’s not your place to judge whether or not the artist should be exercising it. The latter question comes down to how feasible it is for a pe…

Most people don't watch the credits of a movie. That doesn't mean the actors didn't get attribution.

Re: Japan top court tells Twitter to disclose retweeters' info

#68

Post by Thorrez »

polm23 wrote: post #61
anilakar wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the legal status of retweets? From a technical point of view, the user is not making any copies but only referring to another post, and it's Twitter who creates the preview. Furthermore, how has Twitter ever been able to operate in Japan in the first place, if they have not made any concessions by disabling features that are considered to be in violation of local legislation?

I have never really thought about this before or heard it discussed, because usually only the behavior of the initial poster is at issue (since they can just delete the tweet and fix the whole problem). If you are unfamiliar with Twitter, you could consider a user's timeline like their "home page", since they control it, and an RT could be considered a form of "reposting", because you put it in places it had not been…

But if the original tweeter deletes it, the retweet is deleted too. So I don't consider a retweet to be a copy, but rather an alias to an image that exists on someone else's account.

Re: Japan top court tells Twitter to disclose retweeters' info

#69

Post by Beldin »

londons_explore wrote: post #55
gruez wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>This means, almost by definition, that the most viewed versions of these photos on twitter, probably by a very high margin, have no attribution. >Why is this bonkers? The right to attribution is clear, and it’s not your place to judge whether or not the artist should be exercising it. Does it mean that any sort of action needed to see the attribution constitutes "hiding" it, opening you to liability? What if the ima…

> Do we need modals in front of every image with the attribution, so we know for sure that the viewer knows who created the image? Don't give EU lawmakers ideas...

What Twitter does likely violates (eg.) all cropped cc-by-nc-nd licensed images on twitter.

I'm certainly not in favour of allowing one of the big tech companies to systematically undermine such Creative Commons licenses just because it's more convenient for them.

If we're going to allow anyone to ignore license terms, let's not start with corporations.

Re: Japan top court tells Twitter to disclose retweeters' info

#70

Post by malwarebytess »

wsatb wrote: post #40

Possibly unrelated, as this is a bit of a stretch in giving credit, but Twitter has a huge problem with people posting content as if its their own. I've seen multiple things go viral on some random's Twitter account and they have zero relation to the creators of the content, whether it be an image or video, or even just a dumb joke. I feel like retweets died when the button was actually added to the platform. That pl…

>That platform has eroded a ton over the past decade.

Maybe so but the re-posting of content with no attribution or knowledge of the source was the norm before twitter existed. Arguably it's the natural state of the internet.

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