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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

#81

Post by fenomas »

waon wrote: post #76
fiblye wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 […

> Whoa. This the whole point of having defamation laws.

Defamation laws normally deal with disseminating false information, not embarrassing information. True statements cannot be defamatory in many/most legal systems, no matter how much they harm someone's reputation.

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

#82

Post by throwaway9d0291 »

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…

> What if the image was too big and I have to scroll down to see the attribution? What's the difference between having to click on a thumbnail to see an attribution, and having to scroll down?

Scrolling is a way to navigate a single, continuous document. The publisher has published a document in which the image is displayed properly, with attribution, i.e. the publisher has done everything right. The user's device has decided to change how that document is displayed but it's still clear and obvious that the attribution is part of the document.

A cropped thumbnail is something entirely different. This is a copy of the image, something new that the publisher created and inserted into a document, without attribution. It has a link to a document that does have attribution but the document, in isolation, lacks attribution.

The issue here is that a new copy of the image was created and displayed, specifically, a copy without attribution information. This is also illegal in the US under DMCA [0], though DMCA requires that it's intentional.

> What if the attribution is too small to see at normal zoom levels, and you have to zoom in?

Same deal.

[0]: https://www.photoattorney.com/2007/07/watermarks-can-be-musi...

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

#83

Post by waon »

fenomas wrote: post #81
waon wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 […

> Whoa. This the whole point of having defamation laws. Defamation laws normally deal with disseminating false information, not embarrassing information. True statements cannot be defamatory in many/most legal systems, no matter how much they harm someone's reputation.

The topic was about Japanese defamation laws. Outside Japan, privacy laws would cover these cases.

Also note that facts that “harm someone's reputation” isn’t indicative of illegal or even immoral conduct. For example, having caught the COVID19 disease might harm one’s reputation, but it doesn’t make one a bad person however true it is.

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

#84

Post by throwaway9d0291 »

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 US actually has a similar clause in the DMCA [0], the difference is that the US requires that the act be intentional.

[0]: https://www.photoattorney.com/2007/07/watermarks-can-be-musi...

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

#85

Post by kd5bjo »

stordoff wrote: post #46
fireattack wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This reminds me of a question I asked before on Wikipedia [1]. Some of their pictures on Commons, such as https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Belgium_-_Location_Map_(2... , are from UNOCHA (United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs). UNOCHA specifically asks their work to be 'Credit as follows: "Credit: OCHA"', but obviously Wikipedia don't do it on their article page if you just embed the pic…

The linked CC licence states (and it appears to be confirmed that this is the licence that applies[1]): > If You Distribute, or Publicly Perform the Work or any Adaptations or Collections, You must, unless a request has been made pursuant to Section 4(a), keep intact all copyright notices for the Work and provide, reasonable to the medium or means You are utilizing: (i) the name of the Original Author [...]; (ii) the…

> keep intact all copyright notices for the Work

Is the watermark itself not a copyright notice that needs to be kept intact?

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

#86

Post by greggman3 »

kalleboo wrote: post #71
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.

Why is that worse?

I'd be pretty pissed if my chance at exposure was blown because the one time it got spread virally it got spread without visible attribution. With visual attribution 10s of thousands or even millions of people see my name. Without visible attribution (having to click through to a larger version) I've effectively been robbed of $$$$$$ PR

I work on lots of open source and of course all my attribution requirements (BSD, MIT) don't require things to be upfront but I posted a photo online with my name in the corner and someone cropped it out I'd be pretty pissed.

I suspect for photos it's even worse. I have 7k photos CC-BY on Flickr. If people post them to twitter I doubt they add the required attribution. Maybe CC should start requiring or at least recommending attribution to be embedded in EXIF for images so that Twitter etc can automatic provide visible attribution AND include the same EXIF text that in any scaled versions they generate so that if someone reposts the scaled versions the attribution continues. Of course people can remove the EXIF or replace but that's not what we're talking about here. We're talking about some photographer getting unintentionally cheated out of PR.

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

#87

Post by heliodor »

buran77 wrote: post #80
searchableguy wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 in…

> They had no input on how it is displayed

To rephrase that, they had no control over whether the result of their action is legal or illegal.

They did it anyway.

In this scenario, one should verify the result of one's action.

In any case, this is bonkers! But it probably feels that way because social media has conditioned us to take other people's work and do whatever we want to it and with it.

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

#88

Post by fiblye »

waon wrote: post #76
fiblye wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 […

That’s not the point of defamation laws. If someone assaults you and you post a video on twitter, most first world countries will use that as evidence against the person who assaulted you. In Japan, it’s perfectly legal to record someone, but making the fact that the person is dangerous and not in police custody will get you in trouble, and the person who assaulted you will use the video against you. Defamation is generally globally defined to be false statements made with the intent to harm someone’s reputation. In Japan, full context, factual representations are treated as just about as bad as a false claim.

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

#89

Post by emiliobumachar »

totetsu wrote: post #75

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.

Maybe a standard to put attribution text and its location in metadata, so that the cropper can know that it's cutting it out, and know what it has to put back in?

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

#90

Post by roblabla »

em-bee wrote: post #63
aspaceman wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

To be fair, they could be asking for the identities in order to summon them as witnesses against twitter. I don't hold much faith that this is the intention though...
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