The Tokyo District Court on Thursday ordered the operator of an Internet chat room to pay a total of 4 million yen to a cosmetics firm and its head because content on one of its message boards defamed them.
Presiding Judge Takashi Saito ordered Hiroyuki Nishimura, who runs the 2-Channel chat room, to pay 3 million yen to DHC Corp. and 1 million yen to Yoshiaki Yoshida.
The plaintiffs claimed that Nishimura failed to prevent people from posting remarks on the site that claimed many DHC employees were Yoshida's mistresses and that DHC products were harmful to the skin. They added that the situation was aggravated because the site allows posting of anonymous messages.