Looking back at the defamation case involving Yusuke Yamamoto,
Yahoo! News distribution responsibility

On December 2024, 12, the Supreme Court ruled to dismiss the appeal by actor Yusuke Yamamoto in a lawsuit filed by Yamamoto against LINE Yahoo Japan Corporation (hereinafter referred to as Yahoo).

Yamamoto claimed that an article published on the Tokyo Sports Newspaper Company's (hereinafter referred to as "Tokyo Sports") website defamed him, and sought damages not only from Tokyo Sports, but also from Yahoo!, which reprinted the article on Yahoo! News (hereinafter referred to as "Yahoo! News").
With Yamamoto's appeal being dismissed, the decisions of the first and second trials that found Yahoo to be not responsible have been finalized.

Yahoo! News is now an information tool that is closely related to our daily lives, and many people probably use it. In this case, the responsibility of Yahoo! News, which distributes various news, was judged head-on. What was the problem? What kind of judgment was made? What are the future plans? I would like to dig deeper into these issues.

What kind of case was it?

In July 2020, an article was published on the Tokyo Sports website about a cluster infection outbreak at a stage production in which Yamamoto was starring at the time. This article was also distributed on Yahoo! News on the same day.
When Yamamoto's side became aware of the article, they asked Tokyo Sports to delete it the next day, and the article was deleted, and its distribution was also discontinued on Yahoo! News.

After that, Yamamoto filed a lawsuit against Tokyo Sports and Yahoo!, demanding compensation for damages, claiming that the article had damaged his reputation. This is the case at hand.

Prerequisite knowledge

What is Yahoo News anyway?

First, let me organize my thoughts about Yahoo! News.

Yahoo! News is a service that allows users to read various domestic and international news and post comments online. An average of 600 articles are posted per day from over 1 information providers (newspapers, news agencies, etc.), and the number of views is approximately 6000 billion per month (all data as of June 225).

As a rule, Yahoo! does not interview and write articles, and does not check the content of articles individually. The system works as follows: Yahoo! concludes an article distribution contract with an information source, and when the information source submits data to Yahoo!'s management server, the article is automatically posted on the Yahoo! News webpage.
As I wrote "as a general rule," there are exceptions. These are called "topics." Yahoo! has an in-house editorial department that selects articles submitted by information providers based on its own publishing standards, from the perspective of public interest and social interest. Some of the articles are then added with original headlines and related links and posted on the top page as "topics."

What is the Provider Liability Limitation Act?

In order to understand this case, knowledge of the so-called Provider Liability Limitation Act (hereinafter referred to as the Provider Liability Act) is essential, so let's briefly review it here.

The Professional Liability Act is a law that stipulates the right to request disclosure of sender information from internet providers (businesses that provide services that connect telecommunications devices to the internet) as well as court procedures in the event of a violation of rights, such as defamation or obscenity, on the internet or social media.
This Telecommunications Service Liability Act defines providers, server managers/operators, bulletin board administrators, and social networking site operators as "specified telecommunications service providers" (Article 2, Paragraph 3 of the Telecommunications Service Liability Act), and limits the liability of specified telecommunications service providers to a certain extent (Article 3, Paragraph 1 of the Telecommunications Service Liability Act).
Specifically, a person will not be held liable except when it is technically possible to take measures to prevent infringing information from being sent to an unspecified number of people and when he or she knows that the distribution of the information infringes the rights of others (Article 3, Paragraph 1, Item 1 of the Professional Liability Act) or has reasonable grounds to believe that he or she could have known (Article 3, Paragraph 1, Item 2 of the Professional Liability Act).
However, if you are the "sender" of the infringing information (defined in Article 2, Paragraph 4 of the Professional Liability Act as a person who records information on a recording medium that is sent to unspecified persons, or who inputs information into a device that is sent to unspecified persons), you will naturally be held liable (Proviso, Article 3, Paragraph 1 of the Professional Liability Act).

What decision was made?

So how did the court decide this case?

First, the court acknowledged that the Tokyo Sports article contained content that defamed Mr. Yamamoto, and acknowledged Tokyo Sports' responsibility.
However, neither the first nor second trial recognized Yahoo's liability.

Regarding Yahoo's responsibility, Yamamoto's side argued that 1) Yahoo distributed the article on Yahoo News, which it manages, and therefore expressed the content of the article itself, and 2) even if it cannot be said to be an expressive act by Yahoo, it can be said to have aided and abetted the defamation by Tokyo Sports, and therefore should bear responsibility along with Tokyo Sports.

Yahoo countered that it was not liable under the Professional Liability Act. In other words, Yahoo was a "specific telecommunications service provider" as defined in Article 2, paragraph 3 of the Professional Liability Act, but not a "transmitter" (Article 2, paragraph 4, Article 3, paragraph 1, proviso), and furthermore, it did not fall under the category of a case in which Yahoo knew or had reasonable grounds to know that the distribution of the article in question infringed the rights of others, and therefore it was not liable under Article 3, paragraph 1 of the Professional Liability Act.
Yahoo understood the structure of Yahoo News to be similar to that of bulletin boards and social networking sites, and countered that Yahoo, the operator of Yahoo News, is, in a sense, the same as the operator of an electronic bulletin board.

The court accepted Yahoo's argument and denied Yahoo's liability, stating that Yahoo was a "specific telecommunications service provider" and not an "originator."
In its decision, the court also expressed the view that, because Yahoo! has entered into a distribution agreement with the article writing company, distributes news based on this agreement, and earns advertising revenue and other income as a result, the distribution of articles on Yahoo! News can be considered a joint business between the article writing company and Yahoo!.
However, the court placed importance on the system in which an article is automatically posted on the Yahoo News webpage when the source of the information submits the data to Yahoo's administrative server, and determined that in the case of this article, it would be difficult to determine whether Yahoo entered the information onto a recording medium.
In this way, the most important point in this case is that Yahoo's liability regarding Yahoo News is being discussed in the context of the application of the Professional Liability Act.

In the past, one case in which Yahoo!'s liability regarding Yahoo! News was decided was when the family of Kazuyoshi Miura, famous for the "Los Angeles Scandal," filed a lawsuit alleging that their feelings of respect and reverence had been violated. In this case, the Tokyo District Court relatively easily affirmed Yahoo!'s liability, on the grounds that even if the distributed article was published without Yahoo!'s personal involvement, Yahoo! could still demand compensation from the source of the information under contract.
However, due to this Supreme Court decision, it is expected that such disputes will not be held in the future, and that the matter will be discussed solely within the scope of the Professional Liability Act, as in this case.

What do you think the future holds?

So, in light of this case, does this mean that if an article that constitutes defamation is published on Yahoo! News, it will no longer be possible to hold Yahoo responsible?

This case is merely a case-by-case judgment, and the conclusion will naturally be different if the circumstances change. However, since there have been few court cases in which the responsibility of news site operators has been questioned, it is likely that this case will be used as a reference for judgments in future court cases.
However, the article on Mr. Yamamoto that caused the problem this time was a general article provided by an information source, and was not a "topics" article involving Yahoo's in-house editorial department. It remains to be seen how such a judgment will be made regarding articles involving Yahoo's involvement.

In addition, Yahoo! News discreetly displays the source of information, instead displaying the Yahoo! News logo prominently. For these reasons, some are of the opinion that it is not appropriate to treat Yahoo! in the same way as the operator of an electronic bulletin board, and that even if the Professional Liability Act is applied, it would be appropriate to apply a stricter judgment on one of the requirements, namely "reasonable grounds" to recognize that the distribution of the information infringes the rights of others (Professional Liability Act, Article 3, Paragraph 1, Item 2). In this way, even in similar cases, there are still issues that need to be discussed (Note that in this case, Yamamoto's side did not specifically argue or prove this point).
Furthermore, in this case, Tokyo Sports immediately deleted the article at Yamamoto's request, and distribution of the article on Yahoo! News was automatically suspended. However, I think it is debatable whether Yahoo! is still considered not to be a "distributor" in cases where, for example, despite a request to delete the information source and Yahoo!, the information source did not delete the article and Yahoo! continued to distribute it.
As there are still many issues that remain, we will continue to report any noteworthy decisions that are made in the future.

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【2025.1.30】