AfterDawn: News

Japanese man arrested for sharing TV shows via BitTorrent

Marking a first, an unemployed 31-year old has been arrested in Japan this week for sharing unauthorized TV shows via BitTorrent.

The arrest is the first ever in Japan for torrent use.



Shuichiro Tanaka of Saitama Prefecture was arrested by the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department’s cyber crimes division for allegedly uploading and sharing TV shows.

The authorities said that from June 4th to 9th, Tanaka captured the programs using his computer then uploaded them via BitTorrent.

Over the course of the year, Tanaka allegedly uploaded 165 episodes of different shows such as "Waratte Iitomo" and "Genius! Shimura Zoo."

When asked why he uploaded the shows, Tanaka plainly said: "I did it for people who missed the programs. Because there is a potential for viruses on Winny [another popular Japanese peer-to-peer file sharing program] and others, I used BitTorrent, which I heard police weren’t investigating."

Written by: Andre Yoskowitz @ 21 Jul 2010 15:55

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• 12 comments

• hikaricor

  I'm glad the police finally found something else to do with their time.
  Since the global abolishment of murder, rape, slavery, and child molestation five years ago most of us feared that these fine men and women would be soon be out of jobs.
  Enter the internet and evil pirates who give away copyrighted material for free.
  When will these sick bastards learn the difference between right and wrong??

  21.7.2010 16:27 #1

• Mysttic

  NEVER!

  21.7.2010 16:39 #2

• crunk15

  sooooo its illegal to share a show that airs for free on tv anyways?
  

  21.7.2010 16:46 #3

• Mysttic

  Yes because the shows don't air free on TV, they get paid by advertising and other means behind the scenes. Just because public doesn't pay for said tv shows, doesn't mean it doesn't cost anything. Without permission, sadly there is a case of guilt here.

  21.7.2010 18:34 #4

• magnets

  i wonder if you uploaded a show with the adverts left in you could use the argument that you weren't denying anyone profit.
  (in most countries courts will not prosecute victimless crimes*)
  
  
  *victimless in the eyes of the law, not your eyes.

  21.7.2010 21:08 #5

• KillerBug

  They don't care if the adverts are left in; it is all about making an example out of someone. For all we know, he might have left the commercials in; he sounds like a real amateur.

  21.7.2010 23:04 #6

• Zealousi

  Good to see the chop sticks are down and something is starting to being done on the pirate scene, one thing thou if you get caught selling DVD's on the street it is a slap on the rist and a fine and off you go. Still think the runners are still roaming free
  

  22.7.2010 00:38 #7

• scorpNZ

  Originally posted by hikaricor: I'm glad the police finally found something else to do with their time.
  
  Enter the internet and evil pirates who give away copyrighted material for free.
  When will these sick bastards learn the difference between right and wrong?? Police are a Governement agency yes? so isn't it the Governement who is telling them what to do thru it's minister of Police & not the police themselves picking what & what not to do.
  
  File sharers aren't pirates tho in the media that word gets bandied about quite a bit & one could be forgiven thinking filesharers are,only thing is pirates make money
  
  
  
  

  22.7.2010 05:23 #8

• baxter00

  Originally posted by hikaricor: I'm glad the police finally found something else to do with their time.
  Since the global abolishment of murder, rape, slavery, and child molestation five years ago most of us feared that these fine men and women would be soon be out of jobs.
  Enter the internet and evil pirates who give away copyrighted material for free.
  When will these sick bastards learn the difference between right and wrong?? Sounds familiar.

  22.7.2010 08:33 #9

• hikaricor

  Originally posted by scorpNZ: Originally posted by hikaricor: I'm glad the police finally found something else to do with their time.
  Since the global abolishment of murder, rape, slavery, and child molestation five years ago most of us feared that these fine men and women would be soon be out of jobs.
  Enter the internet and evil pirates who give away copyrighted material for free.
  When will these sick bastards learn the difference between right and wrong?? Police are a Governement agency yes? so isn't it the Governement who is telling them what to do thru it's minister of Police & not the police themselves picking what & what not to do.
  
  File sharers aren't pirates tho in the media that word gets bandied about quite a bit & one could be forgiven thinking filesharers are,only thing is pirates make money
  
  
  Woosh.

  22.7.2010 11:41 #10

• Interestx

  More of this costly waste of time & money.
  
  In the UK it's legal to record a TV show.
  If I move that copy to a hard drive (my Sky HD DVR has a copy facility) how is that different to the days of collecting shows on VHS (like everyone used to do)?
  
  As an existing subscriber I can also go to 'catch up' web-sites and download any of a large number of UK TV station's shows if I missed them, for free.
  
  The fact is all downloading from torrent sites does is give me the peace of mind I'm not stuffing my kit full of the spyware cr@p people like Sky use when you use their download services.
  
  This rewriting and abuse of copyright is ludicrous, utterly vindictive and a confused nonsense given the environment in which it occurs (like the 'official' catch-up services I'm already paying for).
  
  The simple fact is they (the media outlets) think they can close down all the 'free' points of access to the stuff they broadcast - and in the UK this often means stuff that was already paid for by public subscription through the mandatory TV licence fee.
  Even when (in the case of Sky) that company also has it's fingers in the internet pie as an ISP.
  They want it all ways around & they want to monitise everything they can.
  Even if weve already paid several times over.
  
  They're invariably hypocrites of the highest order
  (see Sony, music & movie makers as well as producing CD/DVD/Blu-ray drives and the various blank media for them).
  
  Greedy b@st@rds at work, again, it's nothing less.
  

  22.7.2010 21:44 #11

• Mez

  Originally posted by hikaricor: I'm glad the police finally found something else to do with their time.
  Since the global abolishment of murder, rape, slavery, and child molestation five years ago most of us feared that these fine men and women would be soon be out of jobs.
  Enter the internet and evil pirates who give away copyrighted material for free.
  When will these sick bastards learn the difference between right and wrong?? Their crime rate is very low. They don't have slavery in Japan. Sony has a huge say in Japan so the guy got wacked.

  2.8.2010 23:28 #12