がまぴょん

Thank you as always for supporting BABYMETAL. After we made our post yesterday, we received questions relating to “personal use” of copyrighted artworks (e.g., @luca_ettore). Those questions are common ones that frequently come up from among fans, so please let us take this opportunity to share our view. As a matter of law, reproducing copyrighted artworks in fact constitutes an infringement of copyrights even when there is no profit from such reproduction, except where (among other exemptions) the notable exemption of "personal use" applies. What people sometimes misunderstand is the important fact that the "personal use" exemption only applies to: (i) uses by the very person who has reproduced the artwork in question; and (ii) uses by such person's close family members. For example, if one reproduces a copyrighted artwork and gives it to a friend for free, it still can be an infringement even though there is no profit made from such giving because, in this hypothetical case, the recipient is not that person's family member. That's what the law (i.e., the Copyright Law of Japan) says. Another point that sometimes confuses people is the “fair use” justification. As opposed to the United States copyright law, Japanese statute does not recognize such broad justification. Japanese statute lists up specific exemptions (one of which is the “personal use” exemption that we explained above) and, unless one or more of those exemptions apply, use of a copyrighted artwork is an infringement. Having said all that, obviously, for us, fans come first. Therefore, we do not normally enforce our legal rights (even when we have ones) on fans' purely supporting our artists. In other words, we don't foresee enforcing our rights against fans as long as the use of our artworks are not being commercialized, monetized, damaged, or exploited for advertising purposes, etc. Our such policy is not anything new and it is posted on our official website as well - see our response to the 5th question at amuse.co.jp/contact/sns/ . Again, fans always come first. We would be most grateful for your continuing support for BABYMETAL🦊🤘