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Japanese Man Arrested for Distributing Variety Shows via BitTorrent

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Jul 212010
 

A 31-year old unemployed Japanese man by the name of Shuichiro Tanaka has admitted to uploading 3 TV-shows and sharing 165 more on BitTorrent after he was arrested by Tokyo Police’s Cyber Crime unit and charged with copyright infringement. In his confession, the man told the investigators that he used BitTorrent because he believed it was free of viruses and police monitoring while stating that he shared the shows for those that missed them due to prior commitments.

The arrest is the first in Japan as a result of the of the use of the BitTorrent P2P file transfer protocol, which has seen increased adoption in Japan in the millions of users in the last few years as a result of similar arrests due to the use of the locally prevalent and popular P2P programs such as Share, Winny and Perfect Dark which are commonly used to share anime, manga and feature films amongst other types of information.

[via TorrentFreak]

First Man Arrested Using Perfect Dark P2P Client in Japan

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Jan 272010
 
Image courtesy of Funimation

Image courtesy of Funimation

Japanese news sources are filing multiple reports centered around a Japanese man being the first person arrested after using the Japanese Perfect Dark P2P filesharing program after uploading 10 instances of the currently airing Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood TV anime in one day.

What makes the arrest significant is the fact that among Japanese anime enthusiasts, Perfect Dark was considered the most secure P2P sharing program, with its developers claiming a higher degree of anonymity than the formerly popular Share program, which led to the arrest of 10 individuals last November.

This is the first time that someone using Perfect Dark for uploading copyrighted works has been arrested, setting a precedent for future Japanese P2P use.

Now with the first arrest using Perfect Dark, already some in the Japanese community are suggesting other alternatives to Japanese P2P programs, such as BitTorrent for fear of arrest, as it is now illegal to download copyrighted media (since January 1st) not authorized by a license holder in Japan along with uploading such material, which is already illegal.

Old Japanese Uploaders Use Share, Get Arrested, Fail at Life

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Nov 302009
 
Japan Notice on Fansubs

Offer better alternatives, Japan

Earlier today, Japanese police arrested 10 people (many of them unemployed/employed old farts) that were suspected of using the fail ridden Japanese P2P program Share to upload anime, video game image files, soundtracks and other various media.

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Winny Developer Found Not Guilty After Lengthy Appeal

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Oct 082009
 

Isamu KanekoThe developer of the formerly popular Japanese P2P application known as Winny has been found innocent of previous charges levied against him by an Osaka court in 2006, with the Osaka High Court overturning the copyright infringement charge and $15,000 fine.

The prosecution previously sought a year in prison in addition to the fine for being an accomplice to the copyright infringement activities that users participated in.

Isamu Kaneko, the developer of Winny appealed the initial verdict and the presiding judge in the appeal case ruled that merely being aware of the possible infringing uses does not constitute abetting the crimes of its users.

As is typical of such cases, the prosecution initially alleged using specious reasoning that Kaneko was completely aware of the activities of the program’s userbase and even went as far as to accuse him of developing the program specifically to engage in filesharing and other activities, with the judge in the first trial ruling in a similar fashion.

The ruling is expected to set a precedent in Japan regarding P2P application development and usage, as so-called observers and pundits were convinced that Kaneko would have been proven guilty after the appeal.

[via Sankaku Complex (18+)]