Nowadays, there are more and more content creators who focus on anime, and as expected, anime content becomes popular on social media, such as summaries, streams, etc. The Miyagi Prefectural Police announced the arrest of a 52-year-old man, known as a famous YouTuber from Nagoya City, Japan. This individual faces serious charges for allegedly violating the Copyright Law by sharing videos of gameplay of visual novels and thrilling summaries of anime on his channel.
Anime YouTuber gets arrested for copyright violation
According to the article shared through the popular forum Yaraon, a police report mentions how the suspect shared videos that contained material from the popular visual novel Steins;Gate: My Darling’s Embrace, obtaining economic benefits through monetization. Likewise, he edited and posted scenes from the anime Steins;Gate and SPY x FAMILY along with subtitles and narration. The publisher Kadokawa, owner of the rights of the visual novel, confirmed that this suspect had been uploading this type of content since 2019.
It is important to remember that video game companies usually establish “terms of use” that clearly delimit the sections of the game that should not be live-streamed and what content cannot be monetized. These policies are implemented with the purpose of preventing the disclosure of spoilers about the plot of a video game and also to prevent content creators from obtaining profits exclusively through products whose main focus is the narrative, such as in the case of visual novels.
The article ends by mentioning that in the audiovisual content industry, “fast-content” or “fast-movies” videos have emerged on YouTube, where creators summarize series and movies using sequences of them and their own narration. These videos have generated concern, as they affect the interest of viewers for the original content, which has led to the implementation of more rigorous laws and policies on copyright.
Forum users have shared their opinion with comments such as:
- “It’s okay to ban all RPG streams, do you think you’ll buy it yourself after seeing the spoilers?”
- “It should be a uniform permission system”
- “The content is more interesting than the game in general”
- “It’s okay if it’s a fighting game, but it’s an RPG or Moro that’s interfering with business”
- “There was also a case where the company gave permission, but the president made a fuss about copyright violation without knowing it”
- “Was he a creator popular enough to make money?”