Overview Of Responsive Actions To Defamatory Posts

Companies have been increasingly facing reputational damage from defamatory posts on the Internet. In Japan, there are generally two possible actions that can be taken by such companies to respond to such defamatory posts. The first is to have the defamatory post removed by demanding that the administrators of the subject social networking services or websites (the “content providers”) delete the defamatory posts. The second is to file a direct lawsuit against the individual responsible for such posts (the “sender”) by first demanding that the content provider or the internet service provider (“internet provider”) disclose the identification information of such sender. An overview of these responsive actions is provided below.