Jun 30, 2020 (Japan Times) - The Tokyo High Court on Monday dismissed a man’s demand that Twitter Inc. delete tweets showing his arrest history, overturning a lower court order for the U.S. company to remove the online posts.
In handing down the ruling, presiding Judge Hiroshi Noyama said Twitter plays a significant role on the internet and that strict standards must be applied in this particular case.
In 2017, Japan’s top court set strict standards in a similar lawsuit, dismissing another man’s request to remove news search results of his arrest for child prostitution from Google Inc.’s search engine.
The Supreme Court decided that the deletion of search results can be allowed only when the significance of privacy protection clearly outweighs that of information disclosure.
Last October, the Tokyo District Court heeded the request of deletion by the man in northeastern Japan, saying looser standards should be applied in the case as Twitter does not have the same level of information infrastructure as Google.
But the high court determined that strict standards set by the top court should be applied in this case as well, with Noyama citing how Twitter is being used by “well-known individuals such as the U.S. president as well as government agencies and corporations.â€
