A victim damaged by a distribution of a violating
information can demand ISP to disclose the identification of its sender. But to obtain the information
which can identify the sender, the victim must file
two lawsuits, firstly against the hosting provider,
and secondly against the internet access provider,
because the former provider normally doesn’t keep
the name and address of the sender, but only the IP
address and timestamp of violating information
which make the victim to identify the latter provider who has the information of real name and address
of sender. This is long way to file a lawsuit against
the sender violating the victim’s right.
To get the identity of the sender, the victim must
prove the violation of his right, mainly defamation or
copyright infringement. In case of defamation, the
plaintiff has to prove not only his damage of reputation from the distribution of sender’s expression, but
also the lack of public interests or the falsehood.
This burden of proof is more than the lawsuit between the victim and the sender.
In 2020, Japanese government prepared the reform of this law. The research group made a plan to
reform which establish a single procedure to disclose
the information of the sender violating the victim’s
right.
This article analyses the plan to reform of the
right to demand disclosure of identification information of the sender.
