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Tokyo High Court upholds Filerogue ruling

Via CoCo: the Tokyo High Court has upheld a December 2003 lower court ruling (related article) that MMO Japan violated the copyright law with its Napster-like P2P file-sharing service called Filerogue. The company is ordered to pay 66,890,000 Yen in damages to JASRAC and 19 members of the RIAJ.

An interesting snippet from Internet Watch:

東京高裁知的財産第3部の佐藤久夫裁判長は、まず「ファイルローグにおいて流通する情報を逐一捕捉することは技術的にも容易ではないことから、サービスを提供しているからといって、日本MMOが著作権侵害の主体だとするのは適切ではない」とした。その上で、「しかし、ファイルローグの利用方法としては、主に違法な著作権侵害行為が想定されるもので、日本MMOが著作権侵害行為を予想しつつ提供し、侵害行為を誘発していた。また、日本MMOによる管理も可能であり、管理による経済的利益を得る余地があると見られる事実があるときは、サービス提供者側の責任が問われるのも当然で、侵害の主体と認めることができる」と指摘[...]

Quick’n dirty English translation [+ added emphasis and numbers]:

Supreme Court Judge Satō Hisao: “As tracking in detail the information shared via the Filerogue network is a technically hardly feasible task, it is not appropriate to say that MMO Japan is infringing on copyright by just providing the (Filerogue) service. However, one could expect that Filerogue would be mainly used for copyright infringing activities [1]; MMO Japan knew this and offered its service, thereby inducing infringement [2]. Furthermore, as MMO Japan can administer (the Filerogue service) and make money with it, it can be held liable as a service provider and thus can be considered as an infringer.”

Some remarks:

1. I have some problems with the court’s predictability claim here: how to know beforehand that a new technology will be mainly used for copyright infringing activities?
2. Also problematic is the “inducing infringement” (侵害行為を誘発, shingai kōi wo yūhatsu) part, which is reminiscent of the wording of the INDUCE Act. Note this is different from section 4 of the related article linked to above. According to the article “the court found that the defendant MMO Japan Ltd. committed infringement against the plaintiff’s copyright on the ground that the defendant’s acts per se constituted copyright infringement, not on the grounds that the defendant instigated users to commit such an act or aided and abetted such an act.” Very different thus from the High Court’s “inducement” talk…

On a note aside, I’m curious to see if these statements will have an effect on the outcome of the Winny case…