Japanese YouTuber convicted of copyright violation after uploading Let’s Play videos

while i think that two years of prison for this is completely ridiculous, a "let's play" video of a visual novel, it's essentially the same of "playing" a visual novel

This is the best summary I could come up with:

A Japanese court has convicted a man of violating copyright law after he uploaded gameplay and anime videos without publisher permission.

Reported by Japanese paper Asahi Shimbun, the 53-year-old man, Shinobu Yoshida, was sentenced to two years in prison and assessed a 1 million yen fine (or about $6,700 USD.)

Yoshida was arrested in May of this year after uploading gameplay videos of the visual novel Steins;Gate: My Darling’s Embrace back in 2019.

Yoshida also uploaded videos summarizing episodes of the Spy × Family and Steins;Gate anime shows.

CODA characterized the complaint as “malicious cases of posting videos containing content and endings (spoilers) without permission from the rights holders, [...] and unfairly gaining advertising revenue through copyright infringement.”

Asahi Shimbun reported that the prosecution stated Yoshida’s actions were, “a malicious act that tramples on the effort of content production.” They argued that because he uploaded videos that condensed and spoiled anime episodes and videos of gameplay from a visual novel — a style of game that focuses on reading to experience the story rather than through gameplay — consumers would be less incentivized to spend money on either.

The original article contains 281 words, the summary contains 188 words. Saved 33%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

I wish the article did a better job of exploring the subject. It really only presents one side of the story, here.

It seems to be the trend countries and companies pushing harder against piracy.