Companies offering online file-storage may want to pull out of the Japanese market real soon. A recent court ruling in Tokyo deemed a company called Image City guilty of copyright infringement. Why? JASRAC, an organization that collects the bucks for public music performances, sued Image City because their online file-storage service MYUTA lets you listen to your music files over your cellphone. So by offering a convenient and awesome service, Image City was found guilty of copyright infringement. Something doesn’t sound right here.
It gets wackier. The court ruled that the act of uploading music to an online server is the same as distributing your private music collection to a company. Yeah, the court essentially said it was file-sharing and piracy. This means any company who has the ability to hold your files online is guilty of copyright infringement. How incredibly ridiculous.
Storing Personal Music Online Is Illegal In Japan [Slashdot]
Wow! Japanese law seems to be the exact opposite of Chinese law (or lack of)…I know, not a big surprise!
People who want to share files with friends have other options, though. There’s a few encrypted file-sharing apps on the market that let friends download content directly from each other’s computers, safely and confidentially, GigaTribe is one such example: http://www.gigatribe.com
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