Japan arrests for the first time a youtuber for uploading anime and gameplays to his channel

The 52-year-old man is accused of copyright infringement

Japan arrests for the first time a youtuber for uploading anime and gameplays to his channel

The 52-year-old man is accused of copyright infringement

A 52-year-old youtuber was recently arrested by police in Miyagi prefecture, Japan. This was because his channel was full of gameplays and anime showing copyrighted content. The problem is that almost all of his material was monetized, had millions of views and he did not have the authorization to share it.

YouTube and other platforms have measures in place to prevent any user from sharing copyrighted content. However, this guy managed to upload copyrighted material from the Kadokawa company and make a profit.

Japanese man arrested for uploading anime and gameplays to YouTube

According to details, the youtuber was arrested in Nagoya after the content on his channel was found to be in violation of the Copyright Act, as determined by the Content Overseas Distribution Association (CODA).

The youtuber came to the attention of Kadokawa and the authorities for various Steins;Gate and Spy x Family clips he uploaded to his channel. However, what really set off the company's alerts was a gameplay of Steins;Gate: My Darling's Embrace with plenty of views.

Kadokawa owns the rights to the franchise, so it wasn't at all happy when it realized that the youtuber had been uploading protected material since at least 2019. The situation escalated when the studio realized that the man had monetized much of his content without authorization. Moreover, he had violated guidelines for uploading gameplays of his visual novels.

For this reason, Kadokawa decided to take action against the youtuber with the support of CODA. Especially after seeing that the subject's videos were of long duration and were not reduced to clips. In addition, some had been edited to have subtitles.

Japanese companies are very clear with their distribution and copyright guidelines. Some of them allow clips to be posted or have partner programs to promote their content on YouTube. According to the details, this is the first arrest of its kind in Japan.

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