Each country and region has its own culture, customs and etiquette, some are unique that they may not be found elsewhere.
Japan is one of them.
People in Japan have a strong culture of “give and take”. And that aspect is also brought to the internet and social media.
For example, people in Japan are more sensitive when it comes to privacy, and are more reluctant in putting their personal information for everyone to see. Younger generations that tend to use social media more often, in Japan, they are also less enthusiastic in sharing as many posts on the web as others in other countries.
And things go even further, as Japan's Supreme Court has ruled that users who retweet copyright-infringing images on Twitter, can have their details passed onto rightsholders. That regardless if they knew the image was in violation or not.
The first case happened briefly after the law comes into place: the court ordered Twitter to turn over the email addresses of three users who allegedly retweeted a copyright-infringing image on the platform.
The case can be dated back to 2014.
At that time, a photographer saw one of his photos had been scraped from his website and posted to Twitter without his permission. He was also disappointed when Twitter's algorithms automatically cropped his name out.
The photographer decided to take the matter to court, where he seek not only the identity of the original poster but also others who have retweeted that post.
The Tokyo District Court concluded the original poster clearly violated the photographer's rights, but dismissed the claims against the retweeters.
Dissatisfied, the photographer took the case to the High Court handling intellectual property. That court also agreed that the original poster breached the photographer's rights, but said that the retweeters did violated the photographer‘s moral rights, since they have all reshared the photo which has the photographer's name cropped out.
As a result of this, the High Court ordered Twitter to provide it the email addresses of both the original poster and the retweeters.
Twitter appealed the decision to the Supreme Court, and essentially took responsibility for the cropping of the images, saying that users had no control over its cropping algorithms.
Four out of the five judges involved sided with the photographer, with the court stated that a retweet is equivalent to an endorsement.
A similar case happened back in 2019, when a judge ordered a journalist to pay ¥330,000 in compensation to former Osaka Governor Toru Hashimoto for defamation of character through a retweet.
At the time, the court that ruled that a retweet equals an endorsement has shocked many Twitter users, especially Japanese, with most of them expressing doubts about how should they really behave on social media networks.
The ruling however, doesn't show that all retweets are endorsements.
It explains that retweeting "can be done for a range of purposes, such as to express endorsement of the original message, or to criticize the original message." When the purpose is to criticize or prompt debate, the ruling reads, "It is highly unlikely that one would retweet without additional comment. Generally one would attach a critical or neutral comment (to the original tweet)."
The Japanese culture is also characterized with the people's mentality that tend to ask for permission before sharing content.
This is because the Japanese people tend to be concerned with what other individuals may think of their actions. So, it is practically common for people to ask for permission to share any content or information taken from another person’s social media account.
And the cases above, show how even the court is ruling this.
“Twitter has 45 million users in Japan. It is hoped that the company will take action,” Presiding Justice Saburo Tokura said.
