Image 1/1 for "Japan Portrait Rights"
Is it because that the faces have not been blurred out but are actually of people who have blurry-face-disease?
The answer is Japanese Portrait Rights(肖像権(しょうぞうけん)) - rights introduced to "protect" folks in the entertainment industry but has become widespread enough to affect just about everybody in Japanese society. Read on to find out why I think that this is a bad thing.
Portrait Rights is a "right" that has been spread by folks in the entertainment industry. They use this right as ammunition to sue somebody who has published a picture of them without their expressed permission. While Portrait Rights are not enforced by law, the courts are usually in favor of people who sue for Portrait Rights infringement.
This means that if you post a picture of Aya Hirano without her permission on your blog - her office can then sue you.
There is a lot of documentation about Portrait Rights on the net and some of it goes as far as to say that you should not post pictures of your friends or family without their expressed permission. WTF.
They go as far as to assume that you dont like your photo taken without your expressed permission (I personally dont give a baboons bottom). Even if you take a picture of a crowd and there is somebody in the picture where you can recognize them - that person can sue you if you published that photo to a blog/flickr etc.
I go around the Japanese blog sphere and all I see are blurred out faces - even of crowds of people. Bloggers are afraid/believe that they should enforce these "rights".
I can understand introducing some sort of law to protect entertainers but having these "rights" trickle down to affect the rest of society cant be a good thing. If Portrait Rights where enforced by law then one would either have to either avoid taking pictures with faces showing, or learn to use photoshop for face blurring. Before you know it, Canon, Nikon etc will include automatic face blurring features in their digital SLR's. Japan would be a society of faceless humans on the net.
I occasionally use the Mirai mark to cover faces of people who I think may not want to be seen at a Idol photo session for example but choose not to blur out faces - especially if its just people on the street/in a crowd.
The image in this post if from JAME (Japan Association of Music Enterprises) and is of artists covering their faces...
JAME spend a lot of money on advertising to convince you that you should not publish photos which have recognizable faces.
I'm presuming that this is just a Japanese only thing because I never ever see blurred out faces on non Japanese blogs.
