A court has ordered the operator of an online phone book site to delete its listing of a man's name, address and phone number and pay him about ¥50,000 ($450) in compensation for damages.

In handing down the ruling on Tuesday, presiding Judge Yukiko Ito of the Kyoto District Court said, "Information posted online spreads quickly and its deletion can become difficult," adding that one's permission to list private information in a paper phone book does not necessarily mean allowing someone to post the information online.

The site operator, a man residing in Zama, Kanagawa Prefecture, claimed that the move did not infringe on the man's privacy because his information had been listed in Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corp.'s publicly available phone book.

In 2015, the Kyoto resident sued the site operator after his request to delete his information online was rejected.