Removal of Defamation on Yahoo! Finance and Identification of Posters

Yahoo! Finance is a site within ‘Yahoo! JAPAN’, operated by Yahoo Japan Corporation, which posts stock prices, news, and other information about listed companies. Each listed company has its own dedicated page, which includes not only stock price charts, news, corporate information, and shareholder benefits information, but also a ‘bulletin board’ where Yahoo! users can post. On this bulletin board, posts related to the company’s stock price movements and other topics are made.

However, not only such posts, but also cases where posts that can be considered as defamation or rumor damage against the company are made. Due to the nature of the bulletin board, such posts are easily seen by individual investors and others, and could potentially have a negative impact on the company’s stock price. Therefore, it becomes necessary to take measures against rumor damage for such posts.

Request for Removal through Out-of-Court Negotiations

There are two main ways to achieve the removal of posts that could be considered as defamation on Yahoo! Finance without resorting to the courts.

Violation of Terms of Use

Yahoo! prohibits the posting of personal information, copyright infringement, obscene information, advertisements, and posts that are off-topic or in the wrong thread in its “Yahoo! Finance Help” section on “Prohibited Actions and Content Requiring Caution in Posting”. In addition to these, “defamation, slander”, “criticism and controversy”, and “contradicting the facts” are also listed as prohibited items.

Defamation, slander
Defamatory or slanderous remarks about others may result in legal liability. Do not do the same just because you have been defamed or slandered by others.
Criticism and controversy
While criticism and controversy are not prohibited, consider why you are doing it. It is not right to use the bulletin board to express discomfort or to vent grudges. Please do not post personal criticisms that lack public interest.
Contradicting the facts
Do not post false facts or fabricate fictional events.

Yahoo! Finance Help

In other words, it is prohibited under the terms of use, not just legally, to make mere defamatory remarks about companies, executives, employees, etc., to engage in meaningless abusive language that has nothing to do with stock prices, to state false facts that contradict the truth, and to fabricate non-existent accidents and write things like “The stock price should fall because this company caused such an accident”.

And it is stipulated that such posts may be deleted after posting. Therefore, companies that have been victimized by such posts can demand Yahoo! to remove the posts because they violate the terms of use.

Request for Transmission Prevention Measures Based on the Claim of Illegality

Even if you do not claim a violation of the terms of use, you can request removal on the grounds that it violates the law. This is the same as with other sites, and it is a request by the so-called “request for transmission prevention measures”. You create a document that includes the provisions of the law, its interpretation, the application of the content of the post in question, and the argument that it is illegal, and mail it to Yahoo! Inc.

However, from the practical sense of lawyers who deal with defamation damage control, Yahoo! does not actively remove posts that could be considered as defamation on its bulletin boards, etc. Even if you report a violation, unfortunately, you often receive responses such as “We take appropriate measures such as preventing the transmission of the offender after considering it in-house in light of the terms of use, etc. when necessary.” and “We have carefully considered the post you pointed out in-house, but at present, we have not reached the judgment that measures such as deletion are appropriate.”

Out-of-Court Negotiations with Yahoo! are Difficult

The key to these removal requests is how “persuasive” they are.

In the case of claiming a violation of the terms of use, the terms of use are rules set by Yahoo! itself and are not laws. How persuasively you argue that it violates the rules set by Yahoo! and should be removed by Yahoo!’s judgment, and how you encourage voluntary removal. This is not “legal knowledge” in the pure sense, and it can be quite difficult unless you are someone who deals with defamation damage control on a daily basis. Also, unfortunately, even with professional help, it is a difficult task that cannot be guaranteed to succeed.

In the case of claiming illegality, this tendency is even more pronounced. As will be discussed later, Yahoo! Inc. often makes quite detailed counterarguments against the claims and evidence of the party seeking removal in court proceedings. Especially in out-of-court cases, there are unfortunately not many cases where they accept our claims and remove the articles. In order to somehow get them to accept our claims, we must create a document that is legally sound and flawless.

Removal by IT Companies or Advertising Agencies is Illegal

It is illegal for external IT companies or advertising agencies, etc. to make such removal requests.
Article 72 of the Japanese Attorney Act states,

No one other than an attorney or a law firm may engage in the business of handling legal affairs related to litigation, non-litigation, review requests, objections, complaints against administrative agencies, and other general legal matters, or mediating these matters, for the purpose of obtaining remuneration.

Japanese Attorney Act Article 72

This is because requesting Yahoo! Inc. to remove posts on Yahoo! Finance, such as defamation, is considered a “legal affair” related to a “legal matter”. There is already a judgment of the Tokyo District Court on this point. This is called “unauthorized practice of law”, and we explain it in detail in another article on our site.

Therefore, if you order article removal (or the provisional measures mentioned later) from a service provider other than a lawyer and pay for it, the contract and expenditure will be considered as “contracts and payments for illegal acts”. Especially for listed companies, if these are brought up in audits or general meetings of shareholders, it could raise serious doubts about the company’s compliance awareness.

Request for Deletion through Provisional Disposition

Returning to the topic, Yahoo Japan Corporation is often reluctant to delete articles through out-of-court negotiations.

However, as a Japanese company that abides by Japanese law, Yahoo Japan Corporation will dutifully delete the relevant posts if ordered by a court. Therefore, if deletion through out-of-court negotiations fails, you will need to seek the deletion of the relevant posts through the court. The deletion of articles on Yahoo! Finance is possible not through litigation procedures, but through provisional disposition procedures. This may sound a bit complicated, but the process involves creating a “provisional disposition petition,” which serves almost the same function as a “complaint” in a lawsuit, attaching evidence as in a lawsuit, applying for a provisional disposition order to the court, and obtaining a “provisional disposition decision,” which serves almost the same function as a “judgment” in a lawsuit, through a procedure called “examination.”

https://monolith.law/reputation/provisional-disposition　(ja)

Provisional Disposition Procedures are Faster than Litigation

The biggest difference from litigation is speed. While litigation typically schedules the next date a month after each court date, in the case of provisional disposition, the time between examinations is about a week. This allows for a very speedy resolution.

However, the preparation of documents and evidence between examinations is challenging. Those who have experienced litigation will understand that the “one month” span in litigation is not “too long.” In litigation, it is necessary to clearly articulate everything in a chronological or logical structure, and evidence is required for everything. To counter the opponent’s argument and rebut it if it is not appropriate, you must carefully prepare your documents and evidence. The time required for this work, such as “one month,” is not “too long.”

Documents and Evidence Must Be Prepared Meticulously

The same applies to provisional dispositions. While provisional dispositions are indeed fast procedures, this does not mean that you can win with sloppy documents and evidence. And Yahoo Japan Corporation, depending on the content, often makes deep arguments about the content of the bulletin board posts to be deleted. You must prepare a rebuttal to that argument within a span of a week. This can be quite difficult unless you are a lawyer with extensive experience in provisional dispositions.

Furthermore, to avoid the need for “heavy” work in the rebuttal phase, you must anticipate the arguments from Yahoo Japan Corporation and carefully create a flawless provisional disposition petition from the beginning.

As such, seeking a provisional disposition to delete article posts on Yahoo! Finance can be challenging. However, if you can win this, Yahoo Japan Corporation will delete the relevant posts.

Identifying Posters through Provisional Dispositions

In cases where we need to identify the person who made a post on Yahoo! Finance that constitutes reputational damage, we would also request a provisional disposition procedure.

https://monolith.law/reputation/disclosure-of-the-senders-information (ja)

It is possible to request both deletion and identification of the poster at the same time

This provisional disposition can be carried out simultaneously with a request for deletion. In other words, you can request in a single provisional disposition, “This bulletin board post is illegal, so I want it deleted, and I want the poster’s information disclosed for identification.”

However, Yahoo Corporation rarely holds personal information about Yahoo! users. Services like Yahoo! Finance can be used without registering real names or addresses with Yahoo!. Therefore, instead of disclosing names and addresses, we request the disclosure of the IP address used at the time of posting. Once the IP address is disclosed, we can identify the provider of the line used for the post, such as Nifty or SoftBank BB for fixed lines, or docomo or SoftBank for mobile lines.

As the next step, we can sue the identified provider, demanding, “Disclose the name and address of the user who was using this IP address at this time.” This allows us to receive the disclosure of the name and address from the provider, enabling us to identify the poster.

However, there is a time limit for identifying the poster. For older posts, the provider may no longer have access logs, forcing us to give up on tracking. This is a problem that applies generally to identifying posters, not just on Yahoo! Finance.

Also, due to the “time limit,” it is important to quickly complete the provisional disposition procedure when identifying the poster. To finish the provisional disposition with as few hearings as possible, thorough preparation and flawless legal document creation are crucial.

It is also possible to do this after deleting the post through out-of-court negotiations

Furthermore, it should be noted that a provisional disposition for IP address disclosure can be made even after the article has been deleted through out-of-court negotiations. Even after the article has been deleted, Yahoo! retains information about the IP address of the person who posted the deleted article. However, you must preserve evidence that “the article was once posted on Yahoo! Finance (and I want to request IP address disclosure because it was illegal)” before deletion. The method of preserving evidence effectively using court procedures is a bit specialized. If you ask a lawyer to identify the poster for a case where you have achieved deletion yourself, there is a risk that you may have to give up if effective evidence preservation has not been carried out. If there is a possibility of identifying the poster, you should consult a lawyer before making a deletion request or similar.