In Japan, it is unclear to what extent the freedom of anonymous expression is protected under the Constitution of Japan. With reference to relevant arguments based on United States Constitutional law, several conclusions were reached. First, given that anonymity is contributive to ensuring individual dignity, freedom of anonymous expression is protected under Article 21, Paragraph 1 of the Constitution. Second, on the basis of the proposition that expressions intended to infringe the legal benefits on fundamental rights of others can be restricted in the cause of public welfare, anonymity accompanied by such expressions can also be justifiably restricted when there is a need to identify the author. Third, freedom of anonymous “public expression” which is essential to the democratic decision-making process can be restricted in a balance with the public right to know. Fourth, freedom of anonymous “private expression” can be heavily protected except for the abovementioned second point. Fifth, anonymity is in itself protected under the Constitution even in relation to non-expressive activities as a means to maintain individuals’ autonomy and dignity as well as personal sphere.

Cybersecurity incidents can have severe consequences for individuals, businesses, national security and even democracy. Since 1988, CSIRTs served as initial responders to those threats. However, CSIRT's roles and responsibilities are not well understood by actors of cybersecurity governance. Part of this is attributed to cyber regime complex. To understand CSIRTs community, previous researchers proposed various definitions of CSIRTs, but some of them are no longer valid because of the changing nature or cybersecurity. In this paper, we conceptualize CSIRTs by using three different lenses: aim, function and culture. We concluded that CSIRTs are organizations aiming to provide relief and recovery to the victims, having incident response as a function, and pursuing reciprocity as an organizational culture. We also argue that the reciprocity is a key concept, as it distinguishes CSIRTs from other cybersecurity governance regimes.

In this paper, we empirically analyzed the relationship between online multi-plays and players' purchasing behaviors on smartphone games by using the survey data conducted by the author in April 2018. We divided online multi-plays into two types: one is multi-play with friends the player also knows in the real world; the other is multi-play with friends he/she knows only in the virtual world. Then the relationship between each of two types of multi-play and his/her purchase behaviors were analyzed. Our estimation results show that the players who multi-play with friends unknown in the real world tend to purchase apps that are not free/in-app-purchase. On the contrary, multi-plays with friends also known in the real world negatively affect paying for smartphone games. The results also reveal that the player who has less free time in his/her holidays tends to pay for smartphone games. Our analysis indicates that game companies might earn more if they promoted multi-plays with friends unknown in the real world.

In this paper, we study the posting behavior with regard to eWOM (electronic word of mouth). The results showed that the only about 32% of the Internet users had posted eWOM. In addition, the results of our analysis showed that the age had a significant negative effect, educational attainment level, newspaper subscription, and internet use time had a significant positive effect on the probability of posting eWOM. Interestingly, there were many altruistic motives for posting.

Furthermore, a more detailed analysis about fake eWOM postings revealed that about 5.7% of Internet users who have posted eWOM had posted a lie at least once. In addition, age had a significant negative effect, and marital status and gender had a significant positive effect on probability of fake eWOM posting. Furthermore, people with selfish motives tended to post fake eWOM.