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ISP Sued over Blog Post

Written By: guyjin on November 23, 2009 10 Comments

According to a Mainichi report today, an internet provider has been sued to provide information on a blogger that posted information about a Fukuoka doctor’s arrest and trial. Apparently an unnamed blogger who follows legal cases online had posted information about the arrest of the doctor, including the alleged crime. He then included this information about the alleged crime in a follow-up story, where he reported that the doctor had been found not guilty. All of the information disclosed in the story was publicly available in other news sources.

As a blogger, it is always interesting to take note of what laws and limitations are placed on the practice. According to the law on Internet provider responsibilities, passed in 2002, in the event that a person violates the rights of another person, such as through defamation, the ISP can be required to hand over their details. In the above case, the doctor is alleging defamation, but this is unlikely to stand given that the information was freely available, and that the post included the fact that the doctor had been found not guilty. The blogger has also removed the ‘offensive’ post from his blog “out of consideration for the doctor’s feelings”.

Japan is generally considered a country with very strong press freedoms, although the exclusivity of its press clubs and major media ownership do mean that a lot of stories tend to become homogenized… Blogging has also taken off in recent years in Japan, although in its early days blogging has been focused more at the celebrity and hobby level than as a serious news and information source. This is certainly changing though. The US has found recently that stories arising from blogs have the potential to become major national scandals, and even affect policy. The age of ‘citizen journalists’ does seem to be on the rise… This will almost certainly begin to happen more and more in Japan, in time, even though the barriers against it (especially the homogeneity mentioned above) are still large.

At the moment, there are no specific restrictions on blogging in Japan, other than the standard copyright and intellectual property laws, and laws related to defamation etc. Lets hope that it stays that way…