To avoid having to watch an entire anime or movie, many fans are grateful for summaries that include spoilers. This can save important time in life. However, for a 39-year-old man from Japan, it now costs him his freedom.
What did the man do wrong? A website administrator from Tokyo published written summaries of film and anime plots that contained many details and thus spoilers.
So far, there have been two such spoiler articles:
- On one hand, there was a complete summary of the movie Godzilla Minus One, released in 2023 and owned by the production company Toho.
- Additionally, the third season of the anime Overlord, which is owned by Kadokawa and was aired in 2018, was completely summarized.
According to the indictment, the Godzilla article was supposed to be over 3,000 characters long and detailed the plot of the movie from beginning to end. The summary of Overlord is also said to have included character names, transcribed dialogues, plot twists, and several screenshots from the anime.
This did not sit well with the production companies Kadokawa Corporation and Toho. They filed a criminal complaint against the copyright holders of the website. The two parties argued that this type of article represents an adaptation of the original works and can thus be viewed as copyright infringement.
Man made a stupid mistake with the articles
Why is this a crime? Although the website operator argued that various film material, music, and acting were missing from his summary, the court ruled against him.
The prosecution argued that a problematic point was that the website was monetized. Thus, the operator did not simply publish the articles but sold them for real money. These advertising revenues now cost him quite a bit of money and years of freedom.
How was he punished? The man was charged with violating copyright law. The Tokyo District Court sentenced the man on April 16, 2026, to a prison sentence of one year and six months with a probation period of four years. Additionally, he must pay a fine of one million yen, which is equivalent to 5,328 euros.
The man from Japan was probably not the only one with a stupid idea. Another person also had to go to jail for buying a Pokémon card. You can read the whole story on MeinMMO: A man bought a rare Pokémon card for 55,000 euros three years ago and is probably still in jail for it
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