Japanese companies and court continue to astound me at how draconian their ~~enforcement~~ punishment surrounding "fair" use.
this post was submitted on 20 Apr 2026
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Fair use is a US thing, not a Japanese thing. Also, I'm not convinced a lot of these videos would've qualified as fair use even in the US. To say they were posting spoilers is an understatement. A lot of these videos restate every detail of the entire plot from beginning to end.
Here's an interesting article on how fair use actually works: https://fairuse.stanford.edu/overview/fair-use/four-factors/
I've done some searches for plot synopses of a manga recently and somehow landed on one of these kinds of blogs, at least I think it is judging by machine translation.
What struck me about the blog I read was how little of the author's own voice is in it. It wasn't a review or critique of the manga, it was just a page-for-page transcription. The author had no editorial opinion at all, didn't even so much as say "good story" or "bad story." If there was any kind of analysis of the work at all, no matter how shallow, I would be more inclined to defend it.
"Spoiler article" is an interesting moniker, but I wonder how the conversation would go if they were re-framed as "wiki articles." Even mid-tier Wikia/Fandom wikis have about as much detail on character/plot pages as a "spoiler article" but they go one step further by having Analysis sections, Personality sections, lists of character relationships, etc. These sections rely on an author analyzing the work and writing something transformative or original about it. Can't say it necessarily would have saved them in court, but who knows.
Thanks for the article. I'll have to read it in the morning.
I suppose you are right with this particular case. I've read essays and watched video essays where they go through the plot almost point by point but the ones I consume do have the reviewer's voice and thoughts on them.
Never have I came across just retelling of them. Well that's a lie, I did, but not frequent enough.
Edit: also to add, Japanese IP holders do turn a blind eye for the most part with doujinshi, which commonly are derivative enough from the source IP.
A summary of the story is not okay, but a retelling of the story where the characters are banging in all kinds of freaky ways is fine.
Don't try to monetize fan anything. Ever. Don't even ask for donations. While keeping money out of it doesn't really protect you under the law, it vastly reduces the chance that the copyright holder will be interested in going after you unless you get so popular that they can't ignore what you're doing.
There are actually plenty of fanworks that ask for small amounts of money. Just look at Comiket's doujinshi scene! I think the difference here though is that these spoiler articles in question don't add anything of value at all.
Some people need synopsis reviews to fully understand what they watched. I use them all the time for things I have watched. If you make these things illegal, I will simply not consume your content anymore. There are plenty of other forms of entertainment to spend my money on.
Two notes about piracy that these Neanderthals keep failing to understand. If somebody pirates your content they likely weren't going to pay for it anyway, and if somebody reads a synopsis they either weren't going to consume your content or they already have and want to know more.
Piracy is a service problem. People pirate because you are not providing something they need. Instead of punishing people for being human, you should try and figure out what you are not providing and fix that instead.
With that said, the real point of the lawsuit is that the site operator profited with ads. That is a separate discussion.
Japan continues to uphold their status as a country with the most unreasonable copyright laws
Only because the Japanese courts just always defer to whatever the Japanese business wants. Its like dealing with the Yakuza, but legal.
Wtf.
next target : wikipedia anime summary