Japanese Ruling Against Winny Dev Overturned On Appeal 82
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.'"
Re:2006? (Score:3, Interesting)
It got overturned now.
Before it was just part of the usual corporate shenanigans. Now, we might very well be witnessing one of the first signs of sanity amongst the human species since the invention of the internets.
Nudge, nudge, wink, wink (Score:3, Interesting)
The difference of course being that the device that you list have abundant uses *other* criminally liable copyright infringing behavior. While P2P software reminds me of the brick of grape solids and sugars sold during prohibition with the label "warning, do not ferment, bottle, and age the product resulting from dissolving this item in water. Doing so will result in producing an illegal alcoholic beverage". ("Nudge, nudge, wink, wink" comes along decades later, but the manufacturers of the product would surely have understood the concept. As surely as the developers of P2P software do.)
downloading a file sharing program will be illegal (Score:4, Interesting)
Just read about it in the newspaper. (Daily Yomiuri [yomiuri.co.jp], for me.)
Unfortunately, the on-line version leaves off a few things.
For instance, Kaneko's lawyer's pointed out that auto manufacturers would not "be punished if speeding became rampant." (Reported in the print news.)
Also, the on-line version doesn't mention that, "A revised Copyright Law that prohibits users from downloading such peer-to-peer file sharing software will come into force in January." (The last line of the print article.)
Impressive! (Score:2, Interesting)
First, let me just say: YATTA! [youtube.com]. With that out of my system.. I, for one, am impressed by this turn of events! Was this appeal processed high enough in the Japanese court system to set precedence for similar cases in the future?
It doesn't really come as a surprise that this crap isn't considered passable in Japan though. Don't the Japanese people generally pride themselves in being sensible, logic folk? They have the worlds strongest work morale, longest life expectancy and best quality of life for the elderly. They are a huge player in the world of economy despite being a tiny island with very little to work with in the way of traditional valuable resources (oil, coal, etc.). Why should they start letting Sony et al harass their people? IKKEEEE, JAPANESE JUDGE-SAMA!
That being said, I am a "thief". I am aware that downloading something gives the creator no income and I do believe that content creators should make money if they make something people like. However, I never buy an album simply because I know that the artist who actually did the work gets a meager percent or two of the money I spend on his stuff while the record store and certain associations get all the rest.
A carpenter might bill you $100 an hour and take home $35 (35%) with his employer claiming the rest for insurance, sick-leave and all the management and responsibility the carpenter is freed from. An album costs about $30 and the artist gets about $1-2 for each album sold (about 3-4%). Until this changes, until artists truly open their eyes to the fact that they can make the same money without the backing of a record company while charging one hell of a lot less for their works, I will not spend my money lining the pockets of RIAA/MPAA executives!
Note, I do enjoy a good concert, be it a local band or Metallica, and I go to the movies whenever something seemingly worthwhile comes along. Also, I do buy movies I really like (like the Terminator movies, LotR Extended Editions, The Matrix, a few Jackie Chan movies, Marvel superhero movies, etc.). I just don't want to spend a crapload of money on a worthless plastic disk that I cannot even copy for personal use or put on my mp3 player, with no way of knowing that I like all the content on the disk AND knowing the artist gets next to nothing for my purchase.
Re:Criminal vs Civil (Score:3, Interesting)
The distinction between civil and criminal cases only exist within common law systems and do not exist in the majority of existing law systems in the world.
I live in a civil law country (Denmark), and we certainly have both criminal and civil cases. However, damages has to be justified by direct costs, and the bar is fairly high. (There are a few exceptions, e.g. rape, but those have more or less set amounts).
Not sure what would happen in a copyright case, though, as the real economic cost of someone uploading a song to pirate bay is hard to quantify, to say the least.
Re:FYI (Score:3, Interesting)
Cars can be used to kill people. And knives. And airplanes. And bombs - shoot, those are supposed kill people, and yet no one ever sues Picatinny because their munitions wiped out a bad guy.
The arrest may be good in the long run (Score:2, Interesting)
Since it fostered a community of covert P2P in Japan. Winny's successor, Share, and its successor, Perfect Dark, are both programs that use Freenet-like encryption and ensure anonymity of the user. IIRC the dev only posts new versions on Freenet and Share to begin with.
While the encryption isn't perfect, it is much more secure than torrents; with Share or Perfect Dark you can't even reliably tell who uploaded or downloaded what and when.