Web Links Can Be Considered Illegal, Osaka Court Judgment Sa Country Watch: Japan6/5/2000; 7:17:14 AM April 19, 2000:

A landmark verdict handed down on March 30 by the Osaka District Court states that, under certain sets of conditions, links used to connect one Web page to another could be considered an infringement of the law.The court's ruling means that if somebody creates a Web page that includes a link to another page, and if that other page is in violation of the law, then the person who creates the link can be charged with aiding and abetting the crime. This is regardless of whether or not they are aware of the illegality of the page they linked to.

Emphasis mine.I doubt I need to share my opinion on this ruling. BTW, the logic given above, assuming it is an accurate representation of the court's reasoning, does beyond a shadow of a doubt imply that link-liability is infinitely contagious. Which is to say, if by following a link on your page, you can get to an illegal page, you can be charged with having an illegal link.A page with a link to an illegal page itself become illegal. Thus, it will be illegal to link to a page that links to a page that becomes illegal. Thus it is illegal to LTAP that LTAP that LTAP that is illegal. And so on and so forth.And that is not a silly exaggeration; any solid limit set by the law will be instantly abused. If you say "A person is liable for a depth of three", then someone hosting the illegal page (probably not in Japan) puts up an illegal page, and creates a gateway series of pages that eventually will link to the illegal content.Certainly a judge will inject a certain amount of rationality into any real ruling, that is their purpose. Each judge will be different and you will never be certain whether you could be shut down.BTW Japan, kiss this site goodbye.