| The Tokyo District Court today decided that both Japan MMO and Michihito Matsuda,
the representative of Japan MMO, were infringing the rights of making transmittable exclusively owned by 19 plaintiffs
(RIAJ member companies and their affiliates) by offering Internet file-sharing services called the FileRogue
and that both of them were liable to pay for damages which the plaintiffs suffered.
On February 28, 2002, the 19 plaintiffs had filed a civil lawsuit claiming that Japan MMO shall not offer
any service with MP3 files extracted from music CDs released by the plaintiffs and that Japan MMO and Matsuda
shall pay approximately 151 mil. Japanese yen for damages which the plaintiffs suffered. Today's interlocutory
judgment was focused on who the principal of infringing activities was and whether Japan MMO and Matsuda were
liable to pay for damages. Hearings to determine the extent of the cessation against defendant's activities
and the payment amount will continue before the Court toward its final decision.
Japan MMO opened its Japanese web site on November 1, 2001 to offer the FileRogue file-sharing services and
distributed special software tools, through the site for free, that enable a huge number of subscribers to
directly transmit and/or receive shared files by providing search and link information through the FileRouge
server. According to a survey jointly conducted by JASRAC and RIAJ last January, they identified that most
of 70,000 MP3 files which were made available for sharing at any time were infringing materials made from commercially
available CDs without authorization.
On April 9, 2002, the Court had already issued a preliminary injunction against Japan MMO to stop its infringing
services, in response to the plaintiffs' application. The Court consistently decided today that Japan MMO had
been playing a principal role in infringing activities upon the rights of making music CDs transmittable, and
also decided that both Japan MMO and Matsuda were jointly liable to pay for damages. (Complying with the preliminary
injunction, they had suspended its entire services on April 16, 2002.)
Today's ruling is considered to have significant meaning in saving Japan from degenerating into a "Pirate
Paradise" in the borderless Internet world, maintaining international harmonization in the area of copyright
protection.
RIAJ will continuously take drastic measures against such illegal use of music on the Internet that will corrupt
the "cycle of music creation" and decline the music culture.
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