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Japanese ISPs To Cut Net Access For File Sharers 167

modemac writes "Four major Japanese telecom organizations, which represent 'about 1,000 major and smaller' domestic ISPs, have agreed to forcibly cut the Internet connection of filesharers. They're specifically targeting users of the 'Winny' program, trading copied gaming software and music. The article states that a new set of ISP guidelines will be drawn up on how to cut off users who 'leak illegally copied material onto the Net.'"
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Japanese ISPs To Cut Net Access For File Sharers

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  • As far as I can see from TFA, no proof except the MAFIA's say-so will be required to disconnect people. Seems no courts of law are involved at all.
  • Filesharers (Score:3, Insightful)

    by TFer_Atvar ( 857303 ) on Sunday March 16, 2008 @04:43AM (#22764226) Homepage
    You're reading this HTML file right now. Guess they'd better cut me off for sharing it with you.
  • by SmallFurryCreature ( 593017 ) on Sunday March 16, 2008 @04:45AM (#22764238) Journal

    Lets hope this really happens, let hope that ISP's in Japan really are this stupid and the Japanese citizens do the only thing that is logical. Cancel their service since it is no longer of any use to them so that ISP after ISP goes tits up.

    At least in holland a lot of ISP's are happy to advertise with 'download music fast' without having any music service whatsoever. Copyright infringement is one major reason to get one of the more expensive subscriptions, if everyone just went with the cheapest most minimal subscription, you know the one that is plenty for email, the web, gaming etc etc, then ISP's will really feel it in their revenue.

    On the longer term, lets hope the japanese ISP's learn very quickly that they opened the flood gates. If they can monitor this, expect everyone to come out. Just block winny? Don't count on it, every P2P program will be on it, and why just P2P, why not home run MMORPG servers, why not material that the goverment doesn't want you to host. Why not check every email for illegal material? Congrats, the ISP's in japan just become the enforcer for everyone with a gripe about the internet. There is reason the old telecoms never ever wished to do that with telephone services and they claim they have to keep a line open unless they get an outside complaint even if it is bloody obvious a phone line is only used for criminal activity. You do NOT want to become the police of your customers.

    Lets hope that this turns sour for the Japanese ISP's very quickly, because if this doesn't go totally wrong for the ISP's in question, we will get it elsewhere.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by mad flyer ( 589291 )
      The problem is winny users are totally unable to setup their ssoftware properly resulting in huge publication of sensitive datas. Quite often by police officer on their "home" computers.

      So cutting winny will do more good than harm... And maybe they will try to understand that software used by dirty foreigners called bittorrent...
      • Re: (Score:2, Offtopic)

        by Carbon016 ( 1129067 )
        Putting BitTorrent on a pillar of anonymity isn't a great idea - I can grab IPs and hostnames of peers and seeds in a couple clicks. Compared to Winny, BT seems rather transparent.
        • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

          by BJH ( 11355 )
          The point I think he was making is that BT is perceived in Japan as P2P for foreigners - mainly because 99%+ of the stuff that Japanese people want is on Winny, whereas trying to find Japanese torrents is a bit hit and miss (since the major BT sites generally don't carry much Japanese material).
          • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

            That's entirely untrue.. It's just that most of the Japanese material is animated and has English subtitles.. ;)
        • it may not be a pillar of anonymity, but its damn hard to accidentally publish sensitive data with bittorrent. its not like you'll accidentally share your my documents directory in a torrent.
      • by macslas'hole ( 1173441 ) on Sunday March 16, 2008 @05:19AM (#22764334)

        The problem is winny users
        But is that any business of the ISPs'?
        • When will they start cutting off users spewing spam everywhere because their computer is infected with a bunch of Microsoft viruses? That might actually be something useful.
          • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

            by Sparks23 ( 412116 ) *
            They actually do cut off users, sort of. Comcast, if you connect on port 25 somewhere more than some threshhold like 2-3 times a minute, they shut down your outgoing SMTP on port 25. And will never, ever turn it back on, so you have to start using alternate ports.

            This is kind of annoying, since a lot of BitTorrent folks put their torrent clients to use ports 25 or 80, and Comcast's net-traffic tools cannot tell the difference between connecting to a remote BitTorrent client, or sending spam. And of cours
            • They actually do cut off users, sort of. Comcast, if you connect on port 25 somewhere more than some threshhold like 2-3 times a minute, they shut down your outgoing SMTP on port 25. And will never, ever turn it back on, so you have to start using alternate ports.

              But why should a residential end user be using SMTP on port 25? That's the port that SMTP servers use to talk to each other. You should be using port 587 [ietf.org] + authentication [ietf.org] anyway to send e-mail through your smarthost.

              • Three very simple reasons you might be:

                1) Not all sites use port 587; though most major ISPs do, smaller businesses with their own mailservers, or small shell-account providers sometimes only have port 25. Very annoying.

                2) Many mail clients still auto-configure for port 25, which is arguably an increasingly outdated behavior, but still affects many home users who never really figure out how to go and change their SMTP server settings from the defaults.

                3) Some residential users run home Linux mailservers (w
                • by tepples ( 727027 )

                  Not all sites use port 587

                  Organizations with their own mail servers should upgrade their software. Organizations that rely on a "shell-account provider" or other third-party smarthost should complain to the provider, and if that fails, switch to one that offers port 587 once their contract runs out.

                  Many mail clients still auto-configure for port 25, which is arguably an increasingly outdated behavior, but still affects many home users who never really figure out how to go and change their SMTP server settings from the defaults.

                  But the MUA's default for SMTP server settings is an empty string for the hostname, which doesn't get the mail sent in any case. If users (or ISP-provided configuration software) can set the hostname, why not the port?

                  Some residential users run [...] servers

                  Each cable or DSL

                  • I'm not saying there are no alternatives. I'm just saying in reply to the post about 'when will they cut off folks for spamming,' spam-zombie machines are cut off already. I just find it unfortunate that they do so without ever contacting the customers who are cut off, and with no recourse to ever get off the blocked list. (Really, more the 'without contacting the customers.')

                    The second point -- mail software often picking port 25 instead of 587 by default -- has bitten less-computer literate friends. I
            • >since a lot of BitTorrent folks put their torrent clients to use ports 25 or 80

              Sounds like they should be using their own ports, not abusing known ports for their file-sharing. The reason they dont do so is because ISPs cut them off. Now youre complaining about... ISPs cutting them off?

              Also you should be using 587 for email submission not 25.
          • If the world started doing that, then the total bandwidth used of the internet everywhere would drop by about 50%, and there'd be a booming new industry for people sanitizing PCs.
      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by nlitement ( 1098451 )

        datas
        Data is the plural of datum..
    • ...if there's a viable alternative. If changing ISP isn't possible or practical, it will modify behaviours of neither users nor the ISPs. It'll simply result in unstable service and unstable customer bases, helping no-one but (because it's distributed across all ISPs) hurting no-one who can make any difference.
      • by rucs_hack ( 784150 ) on Sunday March 16, 2008 @05:12AM (#22764314)
        I personally think that 99.99999% of the reason ISP's are coming round to the idea of punishing file sharers is that doing so will cut their costs, thus extending the profitable lifetime of their current levels of infrastructure. After all, they need to make room for this new media on demand thing.

        I don't for a second think it's because they are concerned about copyrights. I doubt they'd admit this though.
        • Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)

          by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Sunday March 16, 2008 @05:53AM (#22764408)
          Comment removed based on user account deletion
          • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

            by ronocdh ( 906309 )
            Actually, even companies like Verizon are looking into this [newteevee.com]. I think it's an exciting time.
            • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

              Comment removed based on user account deletion
            • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

              THe MPAA and RIAA would be drooling if Verizon would be dumb enough to do this. Billions in capital just sitting in the bank and knowingly violate copyright laws.

              This idea wont work in the west with modern IP laws protecting copyright. The companies will be held liable. Its the same reason alot of universities ban file sharing here in the US. The legal bills are not worth it not to mention they can save with infrastructure.
              • THe MPAA and RIAA would be drooling if Verizon would be dumb enough to do this. Billions in capital just sitting in the bank and knowingly violate copyright laws.

                DMCA safe harbour provisions: the ISP can't be held liable, as long as it removes infringing material once notified of its presence by the copyright holder. Of course once the material is removed, some user uploads it straight back, but that's not the ISP's fault; the copyright holder just has to issue another takedown notice ;-)

              • by IdeaMan ( 216340 )
                Have them set up a Freenet Node [freenetproject.org].
                Problem solved. (Hint: plausible deniability.)
          • How long until they reinvent usenet? It used to be that every ISP had a usenet server, and via that you could download or upload _anything_.

            It mostly died out because binaries on usenet are a pain in the arse, and he storage needed for a full usenet server (including the binaries groups) nowadays is phenomenal.
          • by trawg ( 308495 )

            Some ISPs in Eastern Europe solve this problem by setting up a DC++ server for their subscribers.
            A few ISPs here in Australia tried this; it was deemed to be encouraging copyright violation and they were promptly shut down by the authorities.
        • by Dan541 ( 1032000 )

          I personally think that 99.99999% of the reason ISP's are coming round to the idea of punishing file sharers is that doing so will cut their costs, thus extending the profitable lifetime of their current levels of infrastructure. After all, they need to make room for this new media on demand thing.

          I don't for a second think it's because they are concerned about copyrights. I doubt they'd admit this though.

          Of course they aren't going to admit to their fraudulent business.

          ~Dan

        • by Yaa 101 ( 664725 )
          The reason is that telecoms are quickly buying up ISPs, the telecoms have already stated that they hate the current internet infra.

          They just want to scare everybody off this infra and onto their centrally coordinated GSM/GPRS network.
        • Then they are really f-ing stupid. No one buys hi-bandwidth lines to check emails or go to stinking youtube. Cut your customers access to filesharing and you'll lose the foundation of your business. Save money on what? Not that many customers buy into that Triple Pay model they usually offer. Who wants that. Besides, if some ISPs block that traffic other, specialized, ISPs will come up. That's what I would do, build a high bandwidth, high throughput network were the customer gets what he wants. This is the
          • Besides, if some ISPs block that traffic other, specialized, ISPs will come up.
            Over what last mile? If the cable/phone duopoly refuses to offer its copper to your ISP, how do you plan to pull wire across the private property of non-subscribers to reach subscribers?
    • Re: (Score:1, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      As a content creator, yes I hope it DOES happen. Because I'm sick of self righteous pricks helping themselves to the fruits of my hard work and paying fuck all in return. Especially the pompous ones that come onto slashdot and try and define stealing hollywood movies as some kind of fucking civil rights issue.
      grow up.
      • by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 16, 2008 @06:15AM (#22764470)

        As a content creator, yes I hope it DOES happen. Because I'm sick of self righteous pricks helping themselves to the fruits of my hard work and paying fuck all in return. Especially the pompous ones that come onto slashdot and try and define stealing hollywood movies as some kind of fucking civil rights issue.
        grow up.
        As someone who believes in copyright, you sir are a disgrace to it, need to grow up, and get a real job.
        You want money? Sell your art. Want more? Make more art and sell it too.
        Not enough money? Get a better job. You don't hear anyone crying over the walmart worker for not making millions due to their career choice.

        Copyright specifically says your work of art belongs to the public to further the arts and sciences.
        Those works of art belong to us, after a short time. Until that short time is up, we will keep hold of what is owed to us, since we clearly can not trust you to hold up your end of the deal anymore.
        DRM, trying to claim and define 'limited' as 70 years after you die, are all proof positive you have no intention of keeping your end of the copyright deal in good faith. Don't bitch when we don't either.

        Deal with it
        • As someone who believes in copyright, you sir are a disgrace to it, need to grow up, and get a real job.
          You want money? Sell your art. Want more? Make more art and sell it too.
          How the fuck does he sell more when people who want it have pirated it for free? Fuck me, you do a good job of showing that piracy makes you stupid.
          • by mstahl ( 701501 )

            Quite frankly I'd rather hear the music of people who are in it because they love it than those who are in it for the money. Bear in mind that up until the point where recording industry companies could make billions off each artist by artificially increasing the price of their works, most artists were poor. I'm an artist and I don't really have any wild expectations of getting rich off my work (I sell screenprints and photographs for booze money), because I recognize that I'm selling basically a few dollar

        • Copyright specifically says your work of art belongs to the public to further the arts and sciences.

          "Furthering" the arts and sciences implies that a copyright or a patent is an incentive to others with significant talent and the ambition to create something new and something better.

          It has nothing whatever to do with your "right" to download a free screener of a movie not in theatrical release.

          Until that short time is up, we will keep hold of what is owed to us

          The creator owes you nothing. He is not o

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward
        I create plenty of content as well. I do it for the love of putting it out there in the hope that others will get some joy out of it or that it will create more time for some. Apparently, if it is really worthwhile content, society will reward me and I will live forever.

        Shut up you greedy fuck and start smelling the shit your clearly shoveling.
        • Re: (Score:1, Informative)

          I create plenty of content as well. I do it for the love of putting it out there in the hope that others will get some joy out of it or that it will create more time for some. Apparently, if it is really worthwhile content, society will reward me and I will live forever.

          Shut up you greedy fuck and start smelling the shit your clearly shoveling.

          The difference between him and you though, is that he makes a living from it to pay taxes which ultimately provide the welfare cheques and food stamps you rely on to survive.

      • Shouldn't you be identifying yourself as "Cowardly Anonymous content creator"? If you're so righteous then why post anonymously? You're a whiny loser, and I'll bet your so-called "content" isn't worth paying for in the first place, or you're just such an asshat to everyone that they intentionally pirate your worthless crap just to spite you. Go be passive-aggressive somewhere else.
      • As a content creator, yes I hope it DOES happen. Because I'm sick of self righteous pricks helping themselves to the fruits of my hard work and paying fuck all in return. Especially the pompous ones that come onto slashdot and try and define stealing hollywood movies as some kind of fucking civil rights issue.
        grow up.

        Let's set aside the moral high ground and the sensationalism for a moment.

        Even if I agreed with your sentiment, the problem with your position is it denies reality. These people helping themsel

      • Let me know your name, so I can avoid what you create, because all you care about is money, and not doing it because you enjoy it.

        "Stealing" is not the same as duplicating. And no, you don't have the right to tell others what they can, or can not, share with others.
    • What's a matter, doesn't anyone in Japan know enough to use their neighbors' WiFi connection when filesharing?
    • by kklein ( 900361 ) on Sunday March 16, 2008 @06:31AM (#22764500)

      Um, yeah. You haven't lived here in Japan have you? People don't push back. They let companies plow them over and say nothing. There are no consumer rights in Japan. If they really do this and I lose my net access, that's it. I just lost my net access.

      I'm already really throttled. I DL US TV slower now that I have FTTH than I did on ADSL. I have 83Mbit, but it only seems to work when I downloading something from a website or something.

      This is going to do nothing to subscription rates. People get the fast service because it isn't much more expensive than the slow, and because the guys from SMAP are in the commercials. It has nothing to do with the speed, because, honestly, most Japanese people can barely even type.

      This is not a good development for me...

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by v(*_*)vvvv ( 233078 )

        There are no consumer rights in Japan.
        Actually, there may be even more than in the US. In the US, in exchange for customer service and consumer rights, people line up in court.

        In Japan, change often happens in response to customer complaints, which is extremely rare, if not nonexistent in the US.

        because, honestly, most Japanese people can barely even type.
        I regret I took you seriously.
    • ``At least in holland a lot of ISP's are happy to advertise with 'download music fast' without having any music service whatsoever. Copyright infringement is one major reason to get one of the more expensive subscriptions, if everyone just went with the cheapest most minimal subscription, you know the one that is plenty for email, the web, gaming etc etc, then ISP's will really feel it in their revenue.''

      Also, downloading music and movies (but not software, unless otherwise specified, e.g. in the case of op
    • Outside of complaining about privacy concerns, your average person, in Japan or elsewhere, isn't going to cancel their ISP contract because they're no longer useful. Sure, if the only reason you got internet service was to download files off of Winny, then yes, it would become useless. However, if you use email, the web, VoIP, or the latest video-on-demand services that a lot of the fiber-based ISPs are starting to offer, then you're going to be hard-pressed to simply drop the internet entirely.

      Japan has
  • I was worried that we might face more competition from Japan that we have. But now it's clear that they are taking steps to ensure that the vast majority of their citizens will never have net access. This is a great relief.

  • Nothing new (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Carbon016 ( 1129067 ) on Sunday March 16, 2008 @05:01AM (#22764288)

    According to the new agreement, copyright organizations would notify providers of Internet protocol addresses used by those who repeatedly make copies illegally, using special detection software. The providers would then send warning e-mails to the users based on the IP addresses of the computers used to connect to the Internet. If contacted users did not then stop their illegal copying, the providers would temporarily disconnect them from the Internet for a specified period of time or cancel their service-provision contracts.


    This is pretty much what companies in the U.S. do too. People that seed a bunch of copyrighted files often get cease and desists from their ISPs and if it keeps happening the ISP will sometimes (not always, as it's beneficial for the ISP to keep them around) cut their service off. TFA seems to claim that the majority of this is going to focus on "leakers" of copyrighted material: this means mass-seeders and probably scene groups. It's doubtful that the ISPs are going to end up cutting off many _downloaders_ of the material, but mostly focus on the _distributors_: which is pretty much precedent for ISPs at least in the U.S. and I would assume globally.

    Now according to Wiki, Winny is intrinsically anonymous [wikipedia.org], and the only way the police were able to track those sharing the files was by them boasting on the Winny forums of their upload. So we probably would have heard about this earlier had Winny not been built to be as anonymous as it is now - it seems that the issue has been prompting arrests and controversy for five years or more.

    Also, expect 2ch to go bananas over this in the next couple of weeks.
  • By these ISPs taking responsibility for the (pseudo) illegal activity happening on their network I can see this easily be pushed further and further to the point where the ISPs must play big brother on behalf of Governments and Corporations. For example now they are simply scanning for users using a specific P2P services and acting accordingly, but what will happen when Governments say ISPs should monitor for malicious hacking, fraud or illegal communications? The Safe Harbor provisions within the DMCA dire
  • Share and Perfect Dark are where it's at.
    • by AHuxley ( 892839 )
      The Share (P2P) wiki page notes "It's possible to crawl about 100000 nodes within a few hours."
      All your ip's are belong to .jp.
      Perfect Dark (P2P) does sound better, but with all products the real fun is an insider.
      Someone gets in the application, to the forum or irc sites thats one degree separated from the use of application.
      All the encryption and "mixnet" will not save you then.
      You still need to find the community of people with the same interests - thats where the feds will be waiting.
      Chatting with
  • I am not using (Score:3, Interesting)

    by mapkinase ( 958129 ) on Sunday March 16, 2008 @05:55AM (#22764420) Homepage Journal
    I am not using filesharing copyright infringing material at all, so my major concern is how it would affect me as a user of a legal filesharing? How do they detect if a customer is using winny or bittorrents?

    In US there were reports that customers are cut off just because of the sheer volume of the data they are uploading or downloading. At least Japan is not doing that...
    • by BJH ( 11355 )
      Most ISPs in Japan do some level of bandwidth throttling. For example, mine (OCN, run by NTT) throttles me back from about 100kbps on fast torrents. The trigger seems to be around 1Mbps - if I go over that on a torrent, boom! I'm cut back.

      It's extremely annoying, as I'm on a 100Mbps FTTH link, and somehow all the media in Japan fail to mention that these terrible "bandwidth hoggers" aren't getting even 1% of the maximum that they pay for.
    • by g-san ( 93038 )
      All your traffic goes through the ISP, they can look at every packet you send. They can tell what programs you are using, what you use for mail, they can even read your mail if you don't use secure email. They can do this by sitting down and watching your traffic in real time, or most likely, many connections go through a box to do this automatically. If you are using winny or a bit torrent client, it has to send out a request to become part of the P2P network, do searches, send/receive data, etc. Each one
  • the more files will slip through your obstructions
  • by icyisamu ( 941436 ) on Sunday March 16, 2008 @06:32AM (#22764504)

    The main target for this act is to stop a file sharing program / network called Winny. Winny [wikipedia.org] is one of the top File sharing program / network in Japan.

    Many Japanese anime fansub groups get their original copy of the show via this network. I am sure there are tons of other stuff being shared on Winny, judging from the fact that they have a Software Download board where copyrighted materials are shared.

    The creator is facing similar claims to that of the Bittorrent creator, where he has created a tool that can be used to share files with the advantage of being anonymous.

    • by eganloo ( 195345 )

      The main target for this act is to stop a file sharing program / network called Winny. Winny is one of the top File sharing program / network in Japan.

      The trick is that many (but not all) Japanese users have moved onto a replacement program called Share and other software, after vulnerabilities in Winny's anonymity features were discovered. Then vulnerabilities were discovered in Share, too, so some users have moved onto yet another replacement.

      The creator is facing similar claims to that of the Bittorrent

    • by Kjella ( 173770 )

      The creator is facing similar claims to that of the Bittorrent creator, where he has created a tool that can be used to share files with the advantage of being anonymous.
      There's many things that can be said about torrents, but they're in no way anonymous. The only protection you have there is strength in numbers, and I've heard nothing about anyone make anything legal stick to Cohen.
  • Just tax it (Score:2, Interesting)

    by dimeglio ( 456244 )
    Simple enough, if 99.9999% of the traffic is for "illegal" sharing, then make it legal and collect a tax. Pay off the media producers and problem solved. Everyone wins.
  • by jonaskoelker ( 922170 ) <jonaskoelker@yah o o .com> on Sunday March 16, 2008 @06:38AM (#22764520)
    For those of you who don't RTFA (yeah, that's you!), here are some interesting points:

    The Internet provider organizations have, however, judged it possible to disconnect specific users [...] if they are identified as particularly flagrant transgressors in cooperation with copyright-related organizations.
    We all know how inexact the RIAA and MPAA members are in determining infringers. Why should we expect the Japanese to be different?

    the measure would become the first countermeasure against Winny-using rights-violators
    Notice the slant? They label Winny users as rights-violators. "Those people are rights-violators. They are bad people. If someone violated your rights, you would want something done about it, right?"

    most of the files exchanged using the software [are] believed to be illegal copies.
    Notice the word most. Not all. The ISPs will have to distinguish between legal and illegal to make a correct decision. Whether they'll do that or not, time will tell. Perhaps we can use history as a guess?

    Also, aside question: how can a copy be illegal? I get that it can be illegal to create and to posses, but how can the copy itself be illegal? If it's made on a USB stick and then thrown out (ownership of the copy has ceased), the copy by virtue of not having changed is still illegal. Who do you sue, the USB stick?

    (I figure they mean illegally possessed copies, but imprecise language like this bugs me a bit.)

    Two years ago, a major Internet provider tried to introduce a measure to disconnect users from the Internet whenever the company detected the use of Winny or other file-sharing software.

    However, the provider abandoned the idea after receiving a warning from the Internal Affairs and Communications Ministry that such an approach was regarded as Internet snooping and might violate the right to privacy in communications.

    According to the new agreement, copyright organizations would notify providers of Internet protocol addresses used by those who repeatedly make copies illegally, using special detection software.
    I can't imagine how "special detection software" might reliable determine whether copyright infringement is going on without looking at the transmitted data. Isn't it then obvious that the copyright organizations are doing "Internet snooping and might violate the right to privacy in communications"?
    • Notice the slant? They label Winny users as rights-violators. "Those people are rights-violators. They are bad people. If someone violated your rights, you would want something done about it, right?"
      Well, perhaps you would want something done, had it been your rights being violated, and not the rights of some faceless corporation (or artist).
  • North side, east side
    Little Winny, Winny wears the crown,
    P2Ps the king around town
    Downloads, uploads
    Winny drives them silly with its
    file sharing shimmy shuffle down
    Way past one, and feeling allright
    'Cos with little Winny round
    they can last all night
    Hey down, stay down, stay down down

    'Cos little Winny, Winny won't go
    But you can't push Winny round, Winny won't go,
    try tellin' everybody but, oh no
    Little Winny, Winny won't go ... ;~)
  • Not surprising (Score:2, Informative)

    by trytoguess ( 875793 )
    It doesn't help that Winny was created for anonymous file sharing I suppose. But it's rather strange, I thought most people migrated to Share [wikipedia.org] when the creator of Winny was arrested, and are now starting to move on to Perfect Dark [wikipedia.org] now that anonymous file sharing isn't possible in Share. I'd think the latter two users would be targeted as well.
  • I never really liked Winny anyway. Perfect Dark and Share are much better, and hopefully they'll be populated with even more quality piratables after this info gets out.

    Yes. I went there. Unabashed declaration of intention to steal shit.
  • So they are going to determine what files you are sharing first, or are they just cutting off anyone that uses the client, regardless of what they are doing?

    All debates aside about IP, there millions of files shared like this with ZERO question of the legitimacy of doing so.
  • (From Wikipedia)

    Winny (also known as WinNY) is a Japanese peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing program which claims to be loosely inspired by the design principles behind the Freenet network, which keep user identities untraceable.

    So, this begs the question, how do they know what the user is downloading? Is there a vulnerability in WinNY that allows identities to be traced, or do they just assume that any WinNY user is filesharing?

    According to a 2006 report by the Recording Industry Association of Japan, upwards of three million people had tried Winny, and it has alternated with WinMX as the most popular file-sharing program in Japan...Critics of Kaneko have stated that the main purpose of Winny is to violate copyright law, unlike Freenet, another peer-to-peer system that Winny is often compared to, which claims to protect freedom of speech. These critics also claim that 2ch's Download Software board, where the software was first announced, is a haven for copyright violators, and that Kaneko himself had said that the aim of development of Winny is to push the tide towards a world filled with copyright infringement, quoting several posts from 2ch.

    So, this is a curious question. Is WinNY being singled out because its developer is promoting copyright infringement, because of its popularity, or because of its anonymity? I'm curious how this would affect other p2p technologies in Japan.

  • by Simonetta ( 207550 ) on Sunday March 16, 2008 @12:15PM (#22766062)
    The decision of the Japanese authorities to cut off Japanese people from file sharing may be more of aspect of Japanese culture than a legal decision. File sharing is the fastest growing way of distributing cultural works (yes, even Brittany Spears pop tunes are cultural works) from outside Japan to Japan. This may be a sign that the Japanese authorities have come to believe that non-Japanese culture has become too prevalent in Japanese society.

        Japan has never been a democracy. It has always been a rigid authoritarian culture. When the authorities decide to act, they simply announce their decision and everyone obeys. Japan did close themselves off from the west before for centuries between the late 1600s until the 1850s. This happened after the authorities decided that Western ways were becoming too powerful and were beginning to threaten their power. It may be happening again.

        And, of course, it may be a total clusterfuck by a group of totally clueless bullies who have no idea of what they are fooling with. But then again, for young Japanese, what's the difference?
    • by cliffski ( 65094 )
      What the fuck?
      You do realize that you can actually BUY content without pirating it right? How the fuck does stopping Japanese people using bit-torrent to steal stuff represent cultural isolation? If US music stores started banning sales of western DVDs to japan, you may have a point. The prosecuting of people for copyright infringement is just the Japanese enforcing the law, not censorship or cultural isolation.
      get a grip.
    • I was waiting for someone to awkwardly shoehorn "culture" into the topic as eventually someone does with 99% of topics involving Japan.
    • No. Britney Spears and etc. will be just as available in Japan as always—for purchase in retail stores. There is absolutely no shortage of foreign culture in Japan, and given the relatively small net-savvy population I'd say this would have little-to-no isolationist effect.
  • Ahoy all ye pirates, here be wisdom.

    Pirates can only operate on the fringes of civilization. Too far out and the prey be too scarce to keep a pirate in booty. And ye be wanting enough civilization to have ports to put in for supplies, to spend de booty on grog and whores and such. The Spanish Main was an all too brief time, when booty was plentiful for the takin' but the Navy wasn't. The good times came to and end, but not before bold men made their fortunes.

    This here Intarnet tube thing was a new fron
  • If that happened here, we would just see even more Darknets spring up. What a waste of everybody's time.
  • of why we urgently need to build a robust wireless mesh [slashdot.org].
  • This is about ISP guidelines changing so they obide to requests of copyright holders concerning illegal sharing of their material, and, only on Winny. And this is actually already done in larger scale in the US, and hence the outcry, and the retraction of some actions. This story is more symbolic than anything. Those with a clue have already switched to the latest platform, and they are in the clear. This is more of a PR move to get people to think p2p is bad and banned and to not even try it. This works to
    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by lazerbeat ( 1257390 )
      In Japan, copyright enforcement is far stronger. Selling illegal copies of Gundam DVDs on an auction site will not only get you arrested, but it will get you on the 6 o'clock news. Counterfit merchandise is illegal to bring into the country, and will get confiscated at customs if you are caught. Im not sure I agree that the copyright here is that much stronger, there seem to be a lot of weird things going on. In Akihabara there are people on the street selling DVDs full of ROMs and bootleg porn every Satur
      • There are a lot of strangeness, but FYI:

        a. Rental is not illegal, so they are all legitimate businesses. And neither is selling blank CDs, no matter where they are stacked.

        b. Manga cafe's are also legal. They are protected under fair use. Each cafe has their own copy. However, one cafe company tried to scan all their mangas and upload them as ebooks. They were arrested.

        c. The magazines you are refering to are slightly naughty in nature (often bundled with porn, etc). So it isn't like the mainstream media is
  • *shrug* (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Duncan Blackthorne ( 1095849 ) on Sunday March 16, 2008 @03:32PM (#22767434)
    You can't stop the signal, Mal.

    Human civilization can and will devour itself trying to bring this sort of thing to a halt. Why? Because it's always gone on, on some level or another, and always will go on, on some level or another.

    Prostitution is more illegal than file-sharing is. There are always efforts in most places in the world to stop it, but the best those efforts are ever able to do is slow it down a little. We're talking tens of thousands of YEARS here, people, and it hasn't been stamped out -- and never will be either.

    Want to really stop it, and everything else society at large deems "unacceptable"? Then you need the ability to mass-erase an idea from people's minds all at once, along with every material reference to said idea, because you can't kill an idea: You can't stop the signal, Mal. Ah, but there's a problem there, too, isn't there? If any government or individual had that sort of power over people, then we're living in a world that makes 1984 [wikipedia.org] look like amateur night -- and from there the human race would likely last about another two generations, tops, before completely dying out.

    Want another example of what I'm talking about? Drugs. The world, for all of recorded human history and beyond, I'm sure, has had a problem with intoxicants of all kinds. Every culture does or has, at one time or another, tried to stamp them out. They all failed, didn't they, and for the most part our own efforts here in the U.S. are largely a waste of time, money, and resources; none of those efforts have or can really do much of anything to affect the idea of intoxicants. Remember Prohibition [wikipedia.org]? Yeah, that worked real well, didn't it?

    As I see it we, as a race, have three directions we can go to address this class of issue:
    1) We can stop fighting it, accept it, and try to develop ways to work with it so that it doesn't necessarily have to be a zero-sum game all the time.
    2) We can fight it tooth and nail to the last, hoping that it's actually possible to erase an idea from human consciousness.
    3) We can continue the cat-and-mouse games that this class of things has always been surrounded by and interwoven with, and the people who get caught at them pay the penalty for being careless.

    Where we are now is #3. What I WANT to see is #1 -- but I don't think we're evolved enough to get there yet. Where some authorities and most corporations want to go is #2 -- and they're ice-skating uphill if they try.

To thine own self be true. (If not that, at least make some money.)

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