Japan
On 27 May 2002, so-called Provider Liability Limitation Law (プロバイダ責任法 or プロバイダ責任制限法) was enacted. It is said that the major purpose of the law is to limit the liability of ISPs, administrators and system operators of bulletin boards, hosting services, and others. The law covers copyright violation, defamation, and obscenity among other things. Regarding those contents that have to be removed, the law holds that the service providers cannot be held liable unless 1) they have the technological means to remove the content and either 2-a) they have the knowledge of the illegal content or 2-b) they could reasonably have gotten to know it. It also specifies circumstances under which service providers may offer personal information of a user to another.
Major cases preceding the law include Niftyserve Case, in which a system operator/ moderator of an online forum was found to be liable for not removing a series of defamatory postings. The system operator was noy requested by the defamed participant to remove the content, but had the knowledge of the content. The court found it to be an important ground for the liability.
Read more about this topic: Online Service Provider Law
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