Founder of video platform FC2 found guilty of hosting obscene videos
Takahashi, 51, was sentenced to three years in prison — suspended for five years — and fined ¥2.5 million ($17,000).
Presiding Judge Hiroshi Kawakami said that Takahashi allowed a large number of such videos to remain on the platform and had even used some of them as a means of generating profits.
"The degree of damage caused to our country's sound sexual order is significant," Kawakami said.
The defense has indicated its intention to appeal the verdict while acknowledging the facts of the case.
According to the ruling, Takahashi allowed obscene videos to be stored in the platform's server computer in June 2013, which enabled large segments of the public to watch them until December that year.
In connection with the case, the guilty verdicts for two individuals who were managing and operating FC2, including Takahashi's younger brother, have become final.
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Japan Times
18 hours ago
- Japan Times
Founder of video platform FC2 found guilty of hosting obscene videos
The Kyoto District Court on Thursday ruled Riyo Takahashi, the founder of video-sharing service FC2, guilty of hosting obscene videos on the platform. Takahashi, 51, was sentenced to three years in prison — suspended for five years — and fined ¥2.5 million ($17,000). Presiding Judge Hiroshi Kawakami said that Takahashi allowed a large number of such videos to remain on the platform and had even used some of them as a means of generating profits. "The degree of damage caused to our country's sound sexual order is significant," Kawakami said. The defense has indicated its intention to appeal the verdict while acknowledging the facts of the case. According to the ruling, Takahashi allowed obscene videos to be stored in the platform's server computer in June 2013, which enabled large segments of the public to watch them until December that year. In connection with the case, the guilty verdicts for two individuals who were managing and operating FC2, including Takahashi's younger brother, have become final.
18 hours ago
Kyoto Court Rules Video Platform FC2 Founder Guilty
News from Japan Aug 21, 2025 16:39 (JST) Kyoto, Aug. 21 (Jiji Press)--Kyoto District Court on Thursday ruled Riyo Takahashi, who founded video-sharing service FC2, guilty over obscene videos that appeared on the platform. Takahashi, 51, was sentenced to three years in prison with a five-year suspension and fined 2.5 million yen. Takahashi allowed a large number of such videos to remain on the platform knowing that they had been posted and partly used them as a means of expanding profits, Presiding Judge Hiroshi Kawakami said. "The degree of damage caused to our country's sound sexual order is significant," Kawakami also said. The defense showed an intention to appeal while acknowledging the facts of the case. [Copyright The Jiji Press, Ltd.] Jiji Press
Japan Times
18 hours ago
- Japan Times
Why Jimmy Lai's persecution should worry Japan
In a crowded Hong Kong courtroom, 77-year-old publisher and democracy activist Jimmy Lai is fighting for his life. One of Hong Kong's greatest entrepreneurs and founder of the now-defunct Apple Daily newspaper, he faces charges under Hong Kong's National Security Law — a vague and sweeping law imposed by Beijing in 2020 that has snuffed out the city's longstanding tradition of press freedom. His alleged crime? Practicing journalism and criticizing the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). It would be easy for people in Japan to view Lai's case as a local tragedy — one more step in Hong Kong's transformation from a vibrant, open city into one controlled by the CCP. That would be a mistake. The persecution of Jimmy Lai is not just about silencing one man and shutting the newspaper he founded. It is part of a pattern. China is using Hong Kong as a testing ground to see how aggressively it can restrict the free speech of former citizens of Hong Kong who have fled for other countries. Free places such as Japan ignore this authoritarian creep at their peril. When China took over Hong Kong in 1997 after 156 years of British colonial rule, it promised that Hong Kong's traditional freedoms would remain intact. Beijing's leaders signed an international treaty with Britain and put forth a mini constitution pledging that free speech and a free press would be protected. Lai, a British citizen, took them at their word. For the first two decades of Chinese control, those promises remained largely intact. But after massive pro-democracy protests that saw millions of protesters take to Hong Kong's streets demanding that China live up to its 1997 promises, Beijing cracked down. More than 1,900 political prisoners have been jailed. Civil society has been crushed, with virtually every independent activist group dismantled. Schools started teaching 'patriotic' classes celebrating CCP ideology. Authorities smashed independent media. Apple Daily — where I served on the board of directors of the parent company — was forced to shut after Hong Kong's secretary for security froze its bank accounts, making it impossible to pay staff. Lai's trial is the culmination of this campaign — a message that no one, not even the most high-profile dissidents, are safe. In Hong Kong, the CCP is probing how far other countries will allow it to export its repressive model. More than 30 overseas Hong Kongers now have bounties on their heads. Two of them are my colleagues at the Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong Foundation, young women living in the U.S. and the U.K. who each have a HK$1 million ($128,060) reward promised to anyone who captures them and brings them back to Hong Kong. Their crime? Peacefully advocating for Hong Kong's freedom and demanding that Chinese and Hong Kong leaders be held accountable for human rights abuses. Hong Kong Chief Executive John Lee has promised to hunt them like 'street rats,' warning that they won't be safe anywhere. The bounties are part of China's global crackdown. Hong Kong student Yuen Ching-ting posted Facebook messages in support of democracy while studying in Japan. When she returned home, she was jailed on charges of sedition. China wants to limit freedom everywhere, to make it impossible to talk about the ongoing crackdown in Tibet, the genocide in Xinjiang with the largest civilian internment since World War II Nazi concentration camps, the continuing debate over an independent Taiwan and, of course, the promise of a free Hong Kong. To stifle speech everywhere, China uses its economic power. It has cut off supplies of rare earths and other critical exports from countries it seeks to punish. When Australia called for a truly independent investigation into the origins of COVID-19, surely an issue of global importance, China ended the importation of Australian wine and lobsters. If unchecked, this authoritarian model threatens to reshape the global order, eroding freedoms even in societies that once thought themselves immune from China's power. Japan, as Asia's most prominent liberal democracy and the world's third-largest economy, cannot afford to look away. That's especially true with Lai, given his close ties and long association with Japan. He first arrived in the country as a teenage garment salesman in the late 1960s. As the founder of fast-fashion pioneer Giordano, he and Uniqlo's Tadashi Yanai worked closely together in the 1980s to develop brands that changed how clothing was sold. Until Lai went to jail at the end of 2020, his house in Kyoto served for more than a decade as a refuge from the political struggles in Hong Kong. Lai's fate is also a warning for Japanese media and civil society. While Japan's press remains relatively free, it is not immune to external pressure. In recent years, Chinese diplomats and state-linked actors have tried to shape narratives in Japanese-language media, fund university programs, and intimidate overseas Chinese dissidents. If Japan tolerates the silencing of Lai — a man who stood up for democratic principles at immense personal cost — it signals to Beijing that such tactics work. Japan's commitment to a 'Free and Open Indo-Pacific' loses credibility if the government remains silent on human rights abuses in its own region. As the U.S. pulls back from its international commitments, it's vital that free countries such as Japan speak out more forcefully. Tokyo has taken a stronger stance in recent years, but the government hasn't made any statements in support of Lai's release. If Japan wants to speak up for a free and open Asia, it must always speak up in defense of those freedoms — not only when it is cost-free politically. Japan, along with like-minded democracies, should publicly condemn Lai's trial as politically motivated. Japanese lawmakers and civil society leaders should call for his immediate release. Tokyo should consider imposing sanctions on officials responsible for undermining rights in Hong Kong, as the U.S. has done. It might also consider measures against the judges and prosecutors who are doing the dirty work of jailing hundreds of Hong Kong's people. Japanese diplomats and political leaders should raise the case of Lai and other political prisoners in every meeting with Chinese and Hong Kong officials. Above all, Japan must remain firm and not allow itself to be bullied by its larger neighbor. Japan's values are on the right side of history. It needs to defend them. Closing arguments in Lai's case will finish next week. Standing up for Lai now would send a forceful message to Beijing that its bullying and broken promises will carry a cost. Mark L. Clifford is the author of "The Troublemaker: How Jimmy Lai Became a Billionaire, Hong Kong's Greatest Dissident, and China's Most Feared Critic." He is the president of the Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong Foundation.
