The supreme court of Japan made a judgment stating that the service of transfer of Japanese TV programs to customers overseas is infringing on their copyrights of broadcasting companies. There are two companies of defendants of alleged infringement and one is different from another slightly. One company has a hard disk recorder inside Japan, which is parent machine, and a customer overseas receives TV program by a child machine which is transferred through internet line connected with its parent. The company rents a set of machine ( parent and child ) to a customer.  Another company asks a customer to buy the machine which transfers TV program to overseas, and keeps it for the customers inside Japan and furnishes TV program by them. Copyright owners brought lawsuits against these two companies, and the Supreme court made judgements on them at the same time. If the meaning of “ infringing act” is interpreted in a literal sense, none of two companies infringe copyrights of TV program because their customers copy programs and two companies only provide the system which enable customers to copy. But the judge regarded two companies as infringers by means of abstract way of thinking and concluded that the providers of alleged system themselves infringe copyrights of programs. The supreme court has made a leading judgment on the case of Karaoke, in which the bars having Karaoke machine and CD

infringing copyrights of music provided them to customers. The owners of bars only provide machines and places to infringe copyrights and their customers infringe them by using Karaoke machines and singing copied music. The judge of the court regarded the bar owners as infringers of copyrights.