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March 31, 2005
JASRAC


Japanese Society for Rights of Authors,
Composers and Publishers

INFRINGEMENT OF COPYRIGHT BY MUSIC FILE SHARING SERVICE
SUSPENSION OF INFRINGEMENT AND COMPENSATION FOR DAMAGES
ACKNOWLEDGED IN APPEAL COURT


The Tokyo High Court made a ruling today (March 31, 2005) against MMO Japan Ltd. (based in Hachioji-city, Tokyo), dismissing the relevant company’s appeal and upholding the judgment by the Tokyo District Court ordering the company, which had operated a file exchange service called “File Rogue,” to suspend transmission of music files. The ruling also ordered MMO Japan Ltd. and its representative Michihito Matsuda to pay compensation for damages caused by copyright infringement. The “File Rogue” service had allowed exchange of music files free of charge on the Internet.

MMO Japan Ltd. and its representative, Michihito Matsuda, had objected to the Tokyo District Court’s final ruling on December 17, 2003 and had made an appeal against JASRAC to the Tokyo High Court on December 26, 2003.

In the current situation where copyrighted works are distributed actively through the Internet, this ruling clearly judges music file exchange services unlicensed by copyright owners as copyright infringement, and so it can be highly evaluated as extremely meaningful in establishing the order of legitimate music distribution in the Internet age. Concerning the amount of damages, the judgment is the same as the ruling by the Tokyo District Court, with 30,000,000 yen as the amount equivalent to the usage fee of works based on the Tariffs for Use of Musical Works submitted by JASRAC to the Agency for Cultural Affairs. This amount was also judged by taking into account the technological environment of the Internet at the time.

File sharing does not pay any price for the creation of music. It may exhaust the cycle of music creation and may also result in the decline of music culture itself. Today’s ruling clarifies that proper copyright protection rules are required for distribution of music on the Internet in order not to let this situation occur. In addition, this ruling meets the international request for copyright protection and, at the same time, is an extremely important ruling for our country, which is aiming to become a “nation based on intellectual property.”

JASRAC has built its own JASRAC NETWORCHESTRA SYSTEM to promote music use on the Internet and to allow licenses to be obtained from a personal computer 24 hours a day. On the other hand, we are working towards the prevention of mindless copyright infringement by taking actions such as conducting surveillances with the aforementioned JASRAC NETWORCHESTRA SYSTEM and by requesting deletion of music files based on the “Law on Limitation of Certain Telecommunication Service Providers’ Liability to Pay Damages and on Disclosure of Senders’ Information.” Your continued understanding and cooperation in this matter is greatly appreciated.


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