AfterDawn: News

Japanese P2P developer arrested

Isamu Kaneko, an assistant researcher at Tokyo University, has been arrested by the Japanese police. Kaneko, the developer of the popular Winny P2P application, is accused of breaking Japanese copyright laws.

According to the police Winny helps and promotes copyright infringement and piracy. Winny, which provides its users with anonymity, became a focus of concern for Japanese authorities last month, when police and military documents were spread on the network.



Kaneko was arrested because Winny allowed people to download games and movies from the Internet in violation of the Japanese Copyright Law.

Kaneko is one of the first file sharing software developers in the world to be arrested. He has affirmed the allegations, and admitted that he expected the arrest, because Winny clashes with the copyright law.

It will be interesting to see whether or not Japanese law can shift the responsibility from the users of the software to the developer.

Source: Mainichi Interactive

Written by: Jari Ketola @ 10 May 2004 11:31

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• 5 comments

• Dela

  It's getting out of control now! P2P just seems to be the place where new scandals and secrets will leak out to the public, with the power of anonymity we will see the more serious documents leak out. This is probably scaring the shit out of every government in the world :-)

  10.5.2004 13:42 #1

• nato1200

  i think you summed it up well, Dela. the more empowered the general public is, the more power the controlling elite lose.

  10.5.2004 19:28 #2

• Thrashman

  Off topic yet on....ive been cutting my teeth so to speak building a website and my shipping template(music sales site for my store)needs to be configed for different item prices,single,multiple,etc,and for different countries.Its all in Php as far as ive been able to discern,so i have a a few questions
  1.What the heck is it and why cant i find a host that can config my shipping template for us and not eu,
  2.if i can find what i need from a host,will i be arrested,or will my customers info be at risk?
  Php has been a total blank spot for me,and now i see this post.
  Any suggestions.
  Please remember i have a very limited amount of exp.with things like this,so please dumb it down if you have an answer.
  Only thing im really good at is ut and quake.;)
  And "poor"at NeverQuest.:P

  11.5.2004 07:31 #3

• Thrashman

  Ok....Now iv'e proven im a noob.Its p2p.
  So.....nm :D

  11.5.2004 07:32 #4

• kopykitty

  Websites that employ PHP run the script on the server. This is unlike P2P where users share files peer to peer (i.e. without a server.) This doesn't work for sharing copywrited information with out appropriate permissions because unlike P2P where there are thousands of sources and recipients for each file, there is one source (you/the server) for all downloads. This makes a perfect target for lawsuites and to shut down the server.

  12.5.2004 04:10 #5