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Winny P2P Software Creator Arrested
Posted by
Hemos
on Mon May 10, 2004 03:47 AM
from the cracking-down-on-the-software dept.
from the cracking-down-on-the-software dept.
News for nerds writes "The author of Winny, the Japanese P2P software with encrypted networking capability, similar to Freenet, has been today officially arrested for abetment of copyright violation, after the raid in the last December. He started its development in May 2002 and occasionally appeared on the web forum 2ch with his anonymous codename "47", but today turned out to be an assistant professor of computer science at the University of Tokyo in his 30s. Winny was so efficient and popular that it generated problems even at the Japanese police and the GSDF.
As the Japanese police is the most advanced among the world in pulling P2P into criminal cases, outcry of users in Japan is expected."
Related Stories
[+]
Japanese Ruling Against Winny Dev Overturned On Appeal 82 comments
Joren writes "In Japan, in a case that has been five years running, the Osaka High Court on Thursday overturned a lower court ruling that had convicted and fined the developer of controversial file-sharing software Winny of assisting violations of the Copyright Law. Originally charged in 2004, Isamu Kaneko, 39, a former research assistant at the University of Tokyo, was declared not guilty, and will not be required to pay a 1.5 million yen fine levied by a December 2006 Kyoto District Court ruling. 'Merely being aware of the possibility that the software could be abused does not constitute a crime of aiding violations of the law, and the court cannot accept that the defendant supplied the software solely to be used for copyright violations,' presiding judge Masazo Ogura said. Furthermore, in siding with the defense, the appeal ruling stated that 'Anonymity is not something to be looked on as illegal, and it is not something that applies specifically to copyright violations. The technical value of the software is neutral.'"
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Arrested for... (Score:5, Funny)
You know you were thinking the same thing.
Re:Arrested for... (Score:5, Interesting)
Talk about being up-to-date, the Wikipedia-Article [wikipedia.org] already mentions the arrest.
Parent
Re:Arrested for... (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
English language version of story (Score:5, Informative)
English Articles (Score:5, Informative)
English Translation (Score:5, Funny)
Winny developer to arrest the Kyoto headquarters of police, 30 generation Tokyo University assistant domestic beginnings
Assuming that file sharing software "Winny" of the personal computer which exchanges the data of the popularity movie and hit tune etc. () by the fact that it develops, the illegal copy of the movie and music was made easy the Kyoto headquarters of police high-tech crime measure room and five provision stations, in doubt of the Copyright Act violation one help, requested option accompanying from Tokyo large assistant of 30 generations of the Tokyo residence even in 10th morning, set the policy of arresting. As for , being free on Internet, the program software which is open. As for questioning the software developer to "the one help" of the Copyright Act violation the domestic beginning. Stand case in the criminal incident of the joint ownership software developer almost there is no example even in the foreign country.
When the infringement of copyright which worldwide used the file sharing software has swaggered although you feel concern the administration of justice judgement even internationally for the illegal characteristic of the file sharing software has divided, it may call discussion centering on propriety.
That the file sharing software where with investigation of prefecture police/policing, as for Tokyo University assistant, anonymous characteristic is higher than past, is difficult to be exposed by the police opening will be sent plan. The major bulletin board of Internet with "2 don't you think? as development program is announced the ", 2002 May, it released the software of to itself home page. Using , as for Tokyo University assistant with no permission, the doubt which makes exchanging the data which infringes the copyright of the movie and the game etc. easy has in the literary work authority e.g., the salesman of Gunma prefecture (41) the inside = and others of the trial releases the data of the popularity movie to the many and unspecified persons person illegal with crime of = Copyright Act violation.
In addition, as for prefecture police/policing the policy of starting the forcing investigation of several places such as Tokyo University graduate school information science and engineering type postgraduate course even on the 10th.
Tokyo University assistant is special information processing engineering. It is called "47 people" with the net bulletin board, "the file sharing software which gradually can actualize anonymous characteristic appears and does not change the concept regarding present copyright the expectation which is stopped obtaining. It probably is about to try boosting the flow by your?", and so on with, development intention of had been explained.
* Infringement of copyright, the judgement which cracks internationally
The kitchen knife also and, can also be able cut the vegetable damage the person. Those where you accuse of a crime to the person are just the execution doer who kills and wounds. The handgun the person other than killing and wounding, in Japan the possession and production is prohibited with purpose. The Kyoto headquarters of police this time, the developer of the communication software, as for with "one help" of the Copyright Act violation it finishes stepping on in stand case, in the same software net society, it is equal to the development "of the handgun", that you probably can say that it judged.
As for , as for the data which is exchanged the necessity for the user to register to the provider without, it is entirely encoded. As for the prefecture police/policing high-tech investigation room, Tokyo large assistant who was developed the major bulletin board of Internet to "2 don't you think? from the speech
Parent
In other news ... (Score:5, Insightful)
<sigh> I guess I won't bother trying to write any decent software then, if the possibility exists that I'm to be arrested for it. What would the point be?
Re:In other news ... (Score:5, Insightful)
It Vibe [itvibe.com]
Parent
Re:In other news ... (Score:5, Interesting)
This Police mentioned in your story is the same Kyoto Police that WENT TO TOKYO to arrest Winny's author, a Tokyo resident.
Think different states in the US. It is like hearing Chicago Police going to New York to arrest a New York resident. Something must have motivated them so much...
Parent
Re:In other news ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Couldn't you say the same thing about guns? Guns are designed to kill. Pistols particularly are made for just that (do you go hunting with your 9mm Beretta?). Sure you could use them for target-practice and such, but that doesn't change the fact that killing is what they are meant to do.
Parent
Re:In other news ... (Score:5, Insightful)
When I used to use Sega Genesis emulators, it was mostly because I would compile things with gcc-68k and then see if I could talk to the Genesis video processor and get it to do what I want.
*shrug*
But then again, I usually drive <=55 in a 55 MPH zone. Most people around here don't.
Does that make me a "pussy"/"fag"/"asshole"/buzzword-of-the-week?
(Apologies to any females or homosexual men who read this post; I just needed to prove a point)
Parent
Re:In other news ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Um, yes? That was, you know, his entire fucking point?
Filesharing apps are designed to share files. You can use them to share anything, including pirated movies. The choice to infringe copyright is yours, and has nothing to do with the utility of the application.
See? He was agreeing with you.
Man, you gun nuts are almost as paranoid as BSD users...
Parent
Re:In other news ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Filesharing applications are designed to share files efficiently. You can use them to share anything, including copyrighted material. The choice to share copyrighted materials is yours, and has nothing to do with the utility of the application.
Parent
What I don't like about that argument... (Score:5, Insightful)
Same goes for everything running the network infrastructure. The Common Carrier status may protect them legally, but not in this context. They're all massively contrbuting to illegal acts. Right down to the computers running the Internet backbone itself.
Both private individuals and corporations typically have some form of violation, if nothing more than expired software they use anyway, or more users than they're licenced for, or being zombified spam/virus boxes.
Like P2P apps, computers in general have legitimate uses. But if you want to talk numbers, they too get drowned out by the fact that PEOPLE aren't law-obidient. That is neither the fault of computers nor P2P apps.
Welcome to general purpose computing, and general purpose communication. If the majority want to use it for something illegal, what do you do? There's simply no way short of crippling a PC into an appliance, limited to only do pre-defined tasks. If you can program it (even within a DRM-ridden sandbox), you can make it general purpose. And then you're back to square one.
Kjella
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Re:In other news ... (Score:5, Insightful)
This is something that is impossible to do hiding in the shadows, because warez kiddies simply don't care about it. Add to that, trying to rescue obscure titles, when doing so would be illegal, and that can be a problem for some grandma that has that old disk in her attic. How much will be lost, and even if its 0.0001%, who knows if that will end up being important somehow?
You, you'll drag out all sorts of lameass arguments though. Who cares about 30 year old software? Some authors are making it public domain (wow, 1 out of 100). No one uses these computers. You should buy it through ebay (better act quick, if you wait til June will summer heat finally flip that one bit?). Maybe you'll trot out the "sacrifices have to be made, to protect the greater Britney Spears albums" bullshit.
As a grown adult, a taxpayer, and a human being with just as much right as any songwriter, you're damned straight I judge who should get paid for what. I have a brain that works, and when I see a elementary school teacher getting paid $19,500 a year, and an athlete playing a child's game 3 months out of the year for $50 million, not only am I allowed to say "What the fuck?", it would be wrong not to.
On that note, maybe the issue of songwriting is a worthy one, maybe not. But it seems to me that it could be solved more fairly, more efficiently, without shackling me to eternal copyrights, database copyrights (did you know they were making a comeback?), and all the other stupid shit the corporate lobbyists can dream up.
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Re:In other news ... (Score:5, Informative)
Nope, the artists generally make their money with merchanise and concert sales. The record producer makes the vast majority of the money from the album sales.
Finkployd
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Abating what exactly? (Score:5, Insightful)
Why not sue the computer manufacturers for abatement as well? There are any great uses for P2P, it is a great way to distribute music and video you have created, and I have distributed many animated shorts I have worked on via bit torrent etc...
How long will it be before someone sues the makers of a web browser, FTP, or IRC app for 'copyright abatement'?
Winny (Score:5, Informative)
[quote]
Since Winny is pretty much unknown outside Japan, here is some background information for slashdot readers: Winny is a P2P file sharing program created by a Japanese programmer, who still remains anonymous to this day. It came out two years ago as an attempt to share copyright-protected materials "safely" when somebody was arrested for using another P2P program (WinMX). Since the application was extremely well designed and almost anything is available on its network, from movies to software, it has become immensely popular in Japan, so much so that there are a dozen book available on how to use it and network traffic in the country was down 20% after the news of the arrest broke. As for the reasons why the police was able to identify those two people who were arrested, they used an extra bulletin board feature, which does not guarantee anonymity unlike its file transfer feature, to distribute a list of warez videos. Therefore, I don't think this news has anything to do with the validity of Freenet's technology, or with that of Winny's for that matter.
[/quote]
What has he done again? (Score:4, Insightful)
Rule 1: Don't brag about defying the law (Score:5, Informative)
Or is it just because he made it difficult for them to crack the network he`d created that they wanted even more to "crack him", as an example?
That's the major theory currently doing the rounds in the media, but it's also been reported that when he released Winny, he gave as his reason for developing it "to demonstrate why current copyright laws are wrong and help to change them". While I think he has a valid point about copyright [uh oh, are they going to come after me now?], openly showing disrespect for the law isn't calculated to put you in law enforcement's good graces.
It also seems [yomiuri.co.jp] [Japanese] he's telling police that he "created Winny to foster copyright violations and destroy content companies who are bent only on legal action and don't try to find new business models to protect their copyrights". Take that as you will . . .
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See Also (Score:4, Informative)
Controversial (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Controversial (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Who invented FTP? (Score:5, Insightful)
He should be arrested as well. I mean c'mon! Who haven't had a private FTP-account long before the P2P-concept were even thought of? Or Gopher? I am sure some copyrighted literature has been made availble by gopher!
If creating technology that allows material to be pirated is a crime, I suggest all manufaturers of CD-R(W)s, DVD+-R(W) with associated burnes, harddisks, floppys, floppydrives, tapes, tapeplayers, dats, lossy as well as non-lossy data-compression technologies, not to mention microphones and every single net-capable electronic device be arrested pronto.
After all they're facilitating copyright infringement. Even digitally one might add for most of them!
Re:Who invented FTP? (Score:5, Informative)
It's called (rough translation) the "home copying foundation".
It requires every recordable medium to have a special kind of 'tax' which is divided among copyright holders.
This might sound bad.
However, this also makes it legal to copy anything as long as you don't give/sell the copies to others. (so for now, no DMCA here. hurrah)
Parent
Re:Who invented FTP? (Score:4, Insightful)
That sounds to me like the European RIA get's a free lunch, another free lunch and to deny everyone else the lunch they've allready paid for.
Is there btw any possible way I can cease to be an individual and become a corporation? Seems benefitial these days...
Parent
And we see (Score:4, Interesting)
No, I'm not bitter about this coming up after having decided to move to Japan. sigh...
(Well, to be fair, Japan's copyright law does have a clause allowing personal copies, which is recognized as valid by pretty much everybody, and which even the local press is mentioning in their articles on this, like this one [yomiuri.co.jp]. But they also have a DMCA-like clause that pretty much negates its effect for encrypted stuff.)
Oh man, I feel bad for this guy. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Oh man, I feel bad for this guy. (Score:5, Insightful)
At the level of the individual officer, your job performance is how many "good" arrests you make (those that lead to convictions), and how many "bad" arrests you make (those that do not lead to a conviction). Making a bad arrest is essentially a career-killer. So, they are very careful to only arrest those against whom they have a watertight case. Somewhat more negatively, anyone with enough political influence that they *might* be able to get off won't be arrested at all. Organized crime figures are essentially immune to investigation from lower-level law enforcement--they can't get a conviction, so they don't even bother. Most negatively is what happens when a truly innocent party is arrested. There is intense pressure to build a case regardless of actual guilt or innocence. What percentage of innocent suspects are railroaded by the police is unknown, although probably not too high.
At the next level is the prosecution. Again, convictions are good, and failed attempts at prosecution==dead career. Additionally, as the parent post notes, there is a limited budget to bring about a prosecution. So, the prosecution ends up cherry-picking cases. Compounding the success rate is that (as elsewhere in the world) the police generally won't arrest anyone with the prosecuting attorney's OK. Again, this has the negative effect that "hard" cases aren't even considered, and there is the occasional attempt to railroad an innocent suspect.
At the last level is the judiciary. At this point, potential cases have been through two very stringent filters. The trial is almost unnecessary at this point, but judges do occassionally acquit. As the parent post notes, judges who acquit end up with worse careers. The analysis says this isn't based on acquitting the innocent, but to acquitting on "reasons of statutory or constitutional interpretation, often in politically charged cases." However, it seems that nearly any case with an acquittal is "polically charged" since the prosecution will use politics to their advantage in a weaker case.
Overall, the Japanese criminal legal system has some serious problems. Most of the problems come from the inability or lack of desire to attempt any "hard" or "weak" cases, but some comes from aggressively pushing a case which shouldn't have been brought in the first place. On the other hand, it mosly works. Overall crime and incarceration rates are low, and success is the hardes metric against which to argue. Still doesn't mean that the Winny author has a snowballs chance of getting off.
Parent
He should move to a free country (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:He should move to a free country (Score:5, Insightful)
Funny isn't it? The so-called 3rd world will probably be the next safe-haven for software development. Seems like all the "developed" countries are bending over for the companies and for international trade deals that require the same.
/yes, my country is doing that too - and very quietly, all while touting an IT industry windfall Real Soon Now...
Parent
Was there intent? (Score:4, Interesting)
So, does intent matter any more and how does it apply to this case - or can we expect anyone involved in (for example) the design of TCP/IP to be hauled into jail? It's the logical next step.
A shame (Score:5, Informative)
Winny vs Freenet... (Score:5, Informative)
Winny was designed to be very difficult to use outside Japan, not only was it exclusively in Japanese but it also refused to work on international systems with Japanese support (hint: You had to have japanese code pages by default, doable but not easy).
The network itself is still operational, but naturally there won't be any more development. Like Freenet, you could find pretty much anything there, but that didn't seem to bother the Japanese quite as much as the Western world, at least it was very popular.
Kjella
what are we going to _do_ about it? (Score:5, Insightful)
Arresting scientists crosses the line. I wouldn't feel right supplying the cartells that make this possible.
* = That doesn't permit redistribution.
The Winny author (Score:5, Interesting)
Thought police (Score:5, Insightful)
Japanese constitution certainly ensures freedom of speech and thoughts, but it sounds like KPD is a thought police.
Winny means guilty! (Score:5, Funny)
Operative words - (Score:5, Insightful)
> allowed a 41-year-old man from Takasaki and 19-year-old
> from Matsuyama to illegally download pirated
> games and movies from the Internet,
So... arrest IE, Mozilla, Netscape, Opera, WSFTP creators...
Re:Oh no! (Score:4, Insightful)
In that case, better lock up everyone who contributed to the design and development of TCP/IP right now!
And I'm sure "the terrorists" have used MS software at some point as well
Parent
Re:Oh no! (Score:5, Funny)
Porn.
Parent
Re:Oh no! (Score:5, Insightful)
It's always been accepted that the posession and/or use of items that are used almost entirely for criminal purposes can be restricted. Brass knuckles, lockpicks, radar detectors, and other things have been restricted in some way practically everywhere. If P2P software developers don't get their shit together and come up with ways to get the illegal shit off their networks, the exact same thing will happen to them. The continued facilitation of LARGE-SCALE piracy does absolutely nobody any good.
Parent
Re:Oh no! (Score:4, Insightful)
Also Blizzard Interactive should be offering game patches via BT as well. (couldn't bother to find the sources but you get the idea).
Kazaa had announced an agrement a few months ago to distribute short films via it's network.
A french movie producer recently introduced a "fake" bootleg version of it's movie on all p2p networks. What it was in fact was a Sort of Making of with exclusive interviewa from the actors. The tone was pretty much "you should rather support the movie by going to the theatre etc.." Was a great success from what I heard.
But yeah I agree totally with you. P2p networks are 99% used in an illegal way.
Yet philosophically I adhere to the idea of a self maintained network, not server reliant and thus not censurable.
Parent
Re:Oh no! (Score:5, Funny)
Easy. We could go to the streets of New York to download The Gangs of New York [imdb.com].
Alternatively, we could go to the gangs of New York to download The Streets of New York [imdb.com].
Parent
Re:Japanese legal system (Score:5, Funny)
IANAL but I think that a very common form of punishment in Japan is to force people to sign up for japanese gameshows.
Anyone who has seen just glimpse of those should get my point...
Parent
Re:Japanese legal system (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Re:Japanese legal system (Score:5, Interesting)
The sad thing is that the Japanese people don't seem to mind it, as long as the media seems to report it as "the right thing to do", and it is a well known fact that the major media outlets do a lot of ass kissing.
There are exceptions of course, people that understand the severity of the issue, people that lobby against the blatant miuse of legal forces, and the occasional newspaper article that isn't worried about pissing off the gov't. Unfortunately, it's a pretty rare exception.
The only difference is this time, even the media's first announcements of the incident included some opinion on how this could be a very sticky situation. They specifically mention how the producer of fruit knives aren't arrested just because some dork decides to stab someone with it. The police have compared this to the production of a gun, which they say has only one use: harming people. Personally, I would say it is used for hunting, self defense, and thus has legitimate uses. All that said, the news papers have mentioned that even Winny has positive uses, and although it can and most often is used for the illegal distribution of copyrighted material, it is merely a tool.
The assistant professor that created this piece has written in 2ch that he made it in order to challenge the way current copyrights work, and the business models behind them. I think his heart was in the right spot, but method was wrong. However, I STILL think he produced a very good package, and whether or not he is willing to believe his own story or not, there ARE positive uses.
I am actually currently trying to get ahold of his attorney (more specifically, I'm trying to figure out who is attorney is) because I want to stand in court and testify for him. I am a member of a group that has ideas that are contrary to current laws. Our group is civil, we don't break any laws, and we are politically active in voicing our opinion. However, we are also very underfunded, and a majority of the members are scared to speak out in public or offer internet bandwidth for the transmission of materials, especially videos of our public events, because the Japanese police are notorious at using all the tricks in the books to supress free speech. The method we've taken? Winny.
I would like to stress again that our political movements are NOT ILLEGAL, we do not participate in any illegal activities, and are strictly voicing our opinion. However, there is reason to be scared. I am one that has little to lose over going public, and have actually done so multiple times during various events. And I would like to stand in court and testify because the arrest of the Winny author is in direct contrast to our best interests, and we are an obvious case of legitimate use of the software.
Many of you may laugh at how "backwards" Japan and it's legal system is. Watch out though, the situation is worsening every day in the U.S., and you may be seeing similar headlines "coming soon".
Parent
Re:Japanese legal system (Score:5, Funny)
10th day of the month. Even number userid. Post has 245 characters, starts with a vowel and ends with a consonant.
He is asking a question!!!
Doesn't mention that in the modding tables I use. Are you sure you've got the latest ones?
Parent
Re:Not "47", but "Mr. 47" (Score:4, Informative)
Wrong. His handle is "47". People call him "47-shi", adding "-shi" as a honorific.
Parent
Re:Umm.. I think this is a big reason why.. (Score:5, Insightful)
The Japanese cops have no-one but themselves to blame there. If someone in the prefecture is using this software to download copyrighted works, then it is time to clean up their own house first.. Same goes for the military. Security is your fucking job, fools!
Even if the coppers were using an installation of Whinny to keep an eye on what's moving about on it, it does beg one question:
If an organisation keeps important and sensitive documents on a windows box running shady p2p warez-sharing apps, do you think that they should be trusted with such documents?
I reckon this is just sour grapes because the chief of police picked up a virus while downloading pr0n...
Parent