Japan top court tells Twitter to disclose retweeters' info • Hacker News Board

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

#71

Post by kalleboo » Fri, Jul 24, 2020, 7:46 AM UTC

whym wrote: post #5

My understanding is: Photographer published a photo on their own website. Tweeter posted it on Twitter. Twitter trimmed it, removing the credit line. Retweeter retweeted it. Photo was still trimmed. Photographer sued Retweeter for distributing their work without proper credit. An obvious question would be if Photographer asked them to delete the tweet(s) first, and why they chose to sue Retweeter not Tweeter. I'm gue…

Worse. According to the article;

* Photographer published a photo on their own website

* Tweeter posted it on Twitter, the credit line is preserved.

* Retweeter retweeted it. The photo thumbnail in the reweets are trimmed in the timeline. Tapping on the photo to view it in full, you can see the credit line.

* Photographer sued Retweeter for distributing their work without proper credit.

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

#72

Post by judge2020 » Fri, Jul 24, 2020, 7:49 AM UTC

searchableguy wrote: post #65

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…

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.

So I should be able to post a 400x1000000 photo on my feed and anyone that comes across it must scroll for at least a few minutes to see my attribution and get past the tweet.

Of course, this also means the "hide this tweet" functionality must be removed for images since, otherwise, you could hide the tweet after seeing only the top part of the image that doesn't have the attribution and thus Twitter would be aiding in people not seeing the image's attribution (as they are doing in this court case).

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

#73

Post by polm23 » Fri, Jul 24, 2020, 8:08 AM UTC

Thorrez wrote: post #68

polm23 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I agree but the court did not. shrug

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

#74

Post by gerland » Fri, Jul 24, 2020, 8:41 AM UTC

ladberg wrote: post #4

I don't use Twitter so I could be wrong about what happened, but this seems crazy. Three people retweeted a photo that included the photographer's name. However, Twitter didn't show the name in the thumbnail because it cropped the image (but was still visible when enlarged). Somehow, this led to the government mandating Twitter to release the identities of the retweeters? Does anyone know how a random image from 10 y…

Does it matter how many people rights were borkend and how famous they were?

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

#75

Post by totetsu » Fri, Jul 24, 2020, 8:42 AM UTC

don't we have algorithms that can smart crop an image to preserve points of interest? Could that be used to keep text at the top or bottom of an image. Ugly as that may be.

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

#76

Post by waon » Fri, Jul 24, 2020, 8:42 AM UTC

fiblye wrote: post #35

userbinator wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The laws are also reflective of the culture --- from what I've seen, they are very pro-copyright, pro-DRM (think of companies like Sony). In contrast, someone attempting to do this in the US would probably lead to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect .

Japan also has strong privacy laws, extending into excessive and absurd defamation laws. For example, if you have piles of proof of someone committing a crime like sexual assault and the cops refuse to take it seriously, you can reliably post it on Twitter these days and people will take it seriously. In Japan, the person who committed the crime can reliably sue you for ruining their reputation and win. Stating actua…

This seems like FUD. How are the laws itself “excess and absurd” compared to rest of the democratic world? It’s also strange to assert Japan has “strong privacy laws” when the exact opposite is happening in this very article we’re discussing.

> In Japan, the person who committed the (sexual) crime can reliably sue you for ruining their reputation and win

Unfortunately, this is not an uncommon thing outside of Japan [1]. And to be fair, you can’t just put a blanket ban on defamation lawsuits because it’s not wrong to sue for defamation if the allegation of sexual misconduct is in fact false. I don’t believe the majority of them to be the case, but ultimately, it’s for the courts to decide.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/12/arts/defamation-me-too.ht...

> Stating actual plain facts about a person that harms their image on any public platform will land you in trouble, unless it’s something that’s clearly in the public interest to know

Whoa. This the whole point of having defamation laws. Would you rather live in a world where every embarrassing details about your life can be published online?

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

#77

Post by waon » Fri, Jul 24, 2020, 8:49 AM UTC

userbinator wrote: post #32

duffmancd wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is. Japan's "copyright" laws are different and include Moral rights ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_law_of_Japan#Moral_r... ) which are nontransferable and include the right to how your work is attributed. I'm not sure why it is the retweeters, rather than Twitter who are responsible for the automatic cropping that occurs when you retweet. But I neither a Lawyer nor a Japanese Copyright expert.

The laws are also reflective of the culture --- from what I've seen, they are very pro-copyright, pro-DRM (think of companies like Sony). In contrast, someone attempting to do this in the US would probably lead to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect .

I think it’s more reflective of corporate lobbying.

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

#78

Post by numpad0 » Fri, Jul 24, 2020, 8:54 AM UTC

userbinator wrote: post #32

duffmancd wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is. Japan's "copyright" laws are different and include Moral rights ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_law_of_Japan#Moral_r... ) which are nontransferable and include the right to how your work is attributed. I'm not sure why it is the retweeters, rather than Twitter who are responsible for the automatic cropping that occurs when you retweet. But I neither a Lawyer nor a Japanese Copyright expert.

The laws are also reflective of the culture --- from what I've seen, they are very pro-copyright, pro-DRM (think of companies like Sony). In contrast, someone attempting to do this in the US would probably lead to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect .

The culture is strongly against unfair advantages. Piracy, repost, pay raises, etc. everyone’s weary of being seen as indulging in privileges.

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

#79

Post by hatmatrix » Fri, Jul 24, 2020, 9:01 AM UTC

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…

A lot of comedians complain about this. Rather than retweeting, several accounts just copy-paste jokes from any number of comedians, without attribution, and they get a million followers.

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

#80

Post by buran77 » Fri, Jul 24, 2020, 9:12 AM UTC

searchableguy wrote: post #65

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…

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.

The only solution is to have the attribution in a separate field, presumably charging the poster with providing the correct information. "Not cropping" is not one because the alternative is resizing and it potentially has the same obscuring effect.

No matter what the solution is, the people who retweeted are definitely not the ones to hold responsible in any sane justice system. They retweeted a picture but had no input on how it is displayed, and have no control over whether this changes in time.