Jiji just reported[J] that the Kyoto and other police arrested the president of Osaka-based Home Page System by allowing FC2 users upload obscene videos. Ex-president and a brother of the FC2 founder is also under arrest.
Home Page System has been claiming themselves as a PR company for FC2, one of the largest Japanese web service which is running vast variations of user-generated services including bulletin board, video sharing, blog, social network, etc. According to Alexa, FC2’s traffic is ranked at 4th among all Japanese web services, only after Yahoo! Japan, Google Japan and Amazon Japan.
FC2 is well known by claiming to be an American company based in Las Vegas, therefore the contents are not restricted by Japanese law. The Las Vegas address is a rental address and it has been suspected years that the Home Page System is the substantive owner of the site. Until recently, the trick seemed working and most of illegal contents uploaders had been gathering to FC2, and selling micro contents (even they do not own copyrights) to vast Japanese visitors.
Last September, the Home Page System was raided by Kyoto Police by letting its user broadcast live porn programs. That raid did not change much the services on FC2.
[Update] FC2 stated its position on the official blog [J] that the arrested person is not the president of FC2 but the president of the outsourcing developer company.
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