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First criminal 'revenge porn' case involving messaging app Line emerges in Japan

11 Comments
By Preston Phro, RocketNews24

Even as discourse over how best to eliminate revenge porn grows overseas, the first criminal case involving the messaging app Line has emerged in Japan.

According to various news sources in Japan, Kazuki Uchikawa (27) and Takuma Takakubo (26) have been arrested for sharing topless images of an unnamed woman in her 20s without her permission via Line, the free messaging app that has taken the nation by storm in the past few years.

The woman had apparently joined a Line talk group (basically a shared messaging group) with Takakubo and several gamer friends after meeting him through a social networking site. Takakubo took the photos of the woman while she was changing and shared them on the talk group in April. He was apparently angry at the woman losing a souvenir he had bought for her while overseas.

Uchikawa then shared the photos with three other talk groups. He confessed to the crime, telling police, “I thought it would get them excited.”

It’s unclear exactly how many people the photos were shared with, though NHK has indicated that it was approximately 60 people. According to police this is the first criminal “revenge porn” case in Japan involving Line, though not the first “revenge porn” case. Japan passed anti-revenge porn legislation in November last year, and numerous cases have already emerged. The maximum punishment for posting “revenge porn” in Japan is a prison sentence of three years.

Line is a popular and free messaging app with a large user base in Japan. Several incidents involving the app, including bullying, dating scams and even murder, have occurred in the past few years.

Sources: Yahoo! News Japan, NHK, Asahi Shinbun, Yomiuri Shimbun

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11 Comments
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Deleting Line, now.

-7 ( +4 / -10 )

Facebook - twitter - line these things are called social networking. Yet in reality they just make people more distant and less able to communicate when interacting with others in the real world. Japanese culture has a real "keep a safe distance" approach with socializing on many levels. These thing are just going to mess up the following generations untold. Proud to say i have no TV no Facebook twitter or line. And dun dun duuuun im still alive.

P.S. Revenge porn is very very low!

2 ( +3 / -1 )

Several incidents involving the app, including bullying, dating scams and even murder, have occurred in the past few years.

Are they trying to suggest that Cony and Brown are somehow responsible for all of this? Give me a break, it has nothing to do with Line.

6 ( +6 / -0 )

Deleting Line, now.

Oh, why don't you just cut off your own hands, because other people have killed each other with their hands?

4 ( +6 / -2 )

Deleting Line, now.

Yes, because there are people sending your naked photos on Line as we speak.

4 ( +4 / -0 )

Wait... he was angry at her for losing a souvenir he gave her? It really doesn't take much to make some people lose it.

2 ( +2 / -0 )

Revenge Porn? That's some extreme sensationalism for some simple topless pics. Yeah, he shouldn't have share them without her permission, but it's far from porn.

0 ( +2 / -2 )

So, Line is to blame? Its just a medium. He could have sent pics through Whats app, Skype, Instagram, Facebook, etc.

1 ( +2 / -1 )

Glad to see the police are taking this issue seriously.

Not sure what policies Line has in place to prevent Revenge Porn and other stuff but most major social networking sites (Facebook, Twitter, etc, also recently Reddit) explicitly ban that sort of stuff.

I wouldn't say they should be held criminally responsible, but if they (Line) are giving people a platform in which they are doing this stuff (and it can be devastating to the people targeted), they definitely have a moral responsibility to take measures to try to prevent it.

-1 ( +0 / -1 )

Sigh... They have been doing stuff like this on 2chan for years, and nobody investigated a thing.

Are they gonna retroactively go back on to those BBS sites and deal with them as well?

-1 ( +0 / -1 )

Sigh... They have been doing stuff like this on 2chan for years, and nobody investigated a thing. Are they gonna retroactively go back on to those BBS sites and deal with them as well?

If the victim has complained and the pics are still there... why not?

3 ( +3 / -0 )

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