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Japan Makes Linking Illegal Material Illegal
Once&FutureRocketman writes "According to this article, a Japanese court has handed down a decision that make it a crime to link to a page that contains illegal material. I don't think this crowd needs me to elaborate on the potential ramifications of this decision. " Update: 04/21 12:10 by CT : Ooops, this is a duplicate of
an earlier article. I'm leaving it up 'cuz there's already a ton of comments.
So now all search engines are illegal in Japan if they return a page with links to "illegal" stuff. Also if the page was fine when the link was established but then the person put illegal stuff on it what happens? I guess the anarchy of the web is cool until it's your butt being screwed over by the "ruling class" that just doesn't get it.
Protecting my goats from coyotes and mountain lions. You think I'm going to use a machete?
New XFMail home page
/bin/tcsh: Try it; you'll like it.
DeCSS is not illegal. Only certain specific sites have been prohibited from distributing it due to the MPAA having obtained a preliminary injunction against them. Any site that has not been hit with such an injunction is legally allowed to distribute DeCSS.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
On the other hand, these guns wouldn't be there without the manufacturers and they are therefore indirectly responsible.
The gunmakers are selling a legitimate product. It, like many other products, can be used for illegal purposes. That does not mean that the company is even indirectly responsible for those actions. People never go after knife makers when someone is stabbed to death. Why go after gun makers? If you go after gun makers, why not automobile makers? All you end up doing is trying to shift the responsibility to someone else, even though they were selling a perfectly legitimate product.
The lawsuits against gunmakers on deaths should be thrown out of court.
Couldn't agree more with this, although I don't think I agree with your overall stance on guns.
(Likewise with smoking. Can't smokers read warning labels that first said smoking is harmful, later that smoking kills?)
For anyone who started in the last 20 years, and barring any unusual circumstances, I think I agree with you. However, I also think that the cigarette companies did conspire to hide the facts from consumers about the harm that smoking causes, as well as the fact that it is highly addictive. It's not just a matter of saying "oh, I'd better quit" after you realize that smoking will quite probably kill you. For these reasons, I think that many of the people who are filing suits against the cigarette companies have a legitimate grievance.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
I don't believe that such a list would really work, but it is certainly an example of the measures which were open to them.
I don't know of any measures that could effectively prevent the transfer of copyrighted works. What it comes down to is a bunch of unidentifiable bits. Don't know of any way to filter those.
The interesting thing is that apparently the RIAA has said that they aren't going to go after users. C'est la vie.
Yep. They have no interest in pursuing those who are actually infringing on their copyright. They are looking for a quick fix that will end up setting a bad precedent that they will use to remove even more of our rights in the future. This is almost exactly the same thing the MPAA is doing with DeCSS.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
Are the manufacturers responsible when the product's primary use is illegal and they make no bones about it? Yes.
The primary use of guns is not illegal. The primary use is for law enforcement, self-defense, and sport. There are illegal uses as well, such as armed robbery, assault, and murder. These are all illegal and anyone committing such a crime should certainly be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. It does not mean that the rest of us should lose the right to effectively defend ourselves, our families, and our homes.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
Harmless fun nearly by definition. Quite unobjectionable on its own merits, although other methods to both hunt and fire projectiles at targets exist.
Other methods of transportation exist, yet we do not ban automobiles, despite the fact that they kill tens of thousands of people every year. The point is that while other methods are available, they are not equivalent. We use the method that works best for us.
In both England and Japan, effective policing takes place without arms, but then, the people are not armed either.
Wrong. England is currently having a seriou s gun problem. Guns are still coming into the country despite the ban. Why? Because people still want them, and other people can make money off of them. Criminals still get all the guns they want. They are having problems with gangs toting around automatics. The police still use guns as well (note the picture in that article). Not all of them carry a gun all the time, but they definitely still keep them handy. I haven't read anything about Japan's situation, so I can't comment on that.
Multiple armed home invaders aren't going to be very amused by resistance.
Actually, resistance is usually enough to send them packing. They are there for the quick, easy score. They don't want to die over it.
At least with knifes, the chances are that they'll only wound one another.
Sorry, but as you pointed out, some people are bigger and stronger than others. I have no intention of engaging in a knife fight with someone. A gun is much more effective. Even a warning shot will often make an intruder run rather than take his chances against someone with a gun. The odds are way too even, and possibly even against him. If I am competent in the use of my gun, then I am unlikely to be disarmed or have it used against me. I think the real thing that gives guns a bad name is that people don't learn how to handle them. They think it's just like on tv, you point and shoot and bad guys start dropping. I personally think you should have to pass a test to own a gun, just like you do in order to drive a car. There are just too many incompetent gun owners. But, until there are non-lethal weapons available to the public that are at least as effective in any given situation as a gun, I believe we all have the right to defend ourselves and our families to the best of our ability and with the most effective weapon available to us.
I think it highly unlikely that either one of us can convert the other to the opposite way of thinking, but if you'd like to continue the discussion, I am quite happy to.
You're probably right, but naturally I couldn't let your post go unanswered. You understand, of course. :)
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
Even in cases where the driver was drunk, it is called an accident the whole while as the driver is on trial.
Actually drunk drivers are routinely convicted of vehicular manslaughter. The term "accident" is just a very deeply ingrained term when it comes to vehicles. If I was a legitmate gun owner and accidently shot someone while cleaning a gun, they don't call that an accident. Neither should it be called an accident when someone kills somebody after getting behind the wheel of a car while intoxicated. It should be called vehicular manslaughter at the very least, and murder 2 at the most.
People commit murder regardless of what weapon they have available. How many murders committed last year were not committed using a gun? I bet a large portion of the people who used a gun would have used another weapon had a gun not been available (although its hard to imagine someone not being able to get a gun if they want one, same as drugs). Even assuming you could get rid of guns (completely impossible IMO), I don't see the other problems in this country being fixed, so we'll still have the environment in which people will commit murder, simply because they either feel it's right in their situation, or they don't care at all. The way things are going, it's probably just going to get worse too.
The rest of your points are quite reasonable, though you'll usually have more luck outrunning a knife than a bullet.
If I'm defending my home or family, I'm not likely to be running. In other circumstances, running might be a wise idea. As the article I mentioned shows though (and you seem to agree), you're going to have a real tough time trying to get guns away from criminals. So, I'd just as soon not bring a knife to a gunfight.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
The WTO will strike Japan's law down as an unecessary hindrance to porn-producing economies like California and Hong Kong.
Thank God for the WTO, eh?
"Reactionaries must be deprived of the right to voice their opinions; only the people have that right." - Mao
Your argument makes no sense.
First you say that gun manufacturers ought to be liable for crimes committed with their products. Despite there being legal uses for their products.
But then you don't answer the question of whether film and camera manufacturers are liable for crimes committed with their products, and you disagree that DeCSS's creators should be liable at all.
In *EACH CASE* the product has both legal and illegal uses. You can't have your cake and eat it too - are the manufacturers of ANY product which is used illegally liable for that use? Yes or no? Ratios don't enter into it. The purpose the tool is created/used for (aside from legality - e.g. guns kill people, but this can be legal or illegal depending on circumstances) is irrelevant.
Liable or not? Just answer.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
But if I say in some public forum, 'Rodney, two doors down from me sells cocaine - we ought to run him out of town on a rail,' am I still liable, even if someone uses that information (and that information alone) to commit an illegal act?
;)
The trick is *intent*, imho. If you knowingly tried to aid in the commission of a crime, you're in trouble. Making negligence a crime in any but the most extreme cases would have a terrible effect on the freedom of speech.
OTOH, censorware lists (when decrypted) provide a treasure trove of links. Someone should really prosecute them for providing, in a roundabout way, links to all of these horrible horrible things. Let's do it for the children
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
For instance, what do you do in the US if someone in Russia decides to ignore copyright?
Is it fair?
No.
Can you stop it?
..?
Cheers,
Ben
My usual seat in the cluetrain is at A HREF="http://pub4.ezboard.com/biwethey.ht
This is stupid as the linking site has no control over the content of the linked site. It might be ok when the link is created but not later.
Ok so if I find a japanese site linking to some legitimate stuff I have. All I have to do is move some stuff around stick in a how to make a bomb page and blamo the japanese site is now illegal.
Lets say I know a guy named Bob. I've only known Bob as a nice guy, though I don't know him well. I believe that Bob is a capable handy-person. A friend needs a TV antenna installed, so I send them to Bob. Unbeknownst to me, Bob offers to hook up my friend to illegal cable at the same time. My friend accepts, but only tells me that Bob was really helpful. I now send all my reception-challenged friends to Bob. One day, the FCC (or whoever) come down hard on Bob and he's jailed - then I'm similarly charged with aiding and abetting (or whatever), simply because I helped people find Bob. Am I ignorant of Bob's activities? You bet. Am I ignorant of the Law? Hell, no.
So Japan is now holdling people responsible for other's actions based on whether a third party believes that the first knows everything the second is doing. Even describing it is hard! Search engines are the obvious losers, because they now have to prove that the system is totally automated, or whole companies risk going directly to jail. What about the "Submit your link" sites like that FFA crap?
Sure, this instance looks pretty cut and dried, even the journalist is willing to openly agree, but a de-pixelating tool is basically just a very intelligent sharpening tool. Thus Adobe with their Photoshop program are half way to being convicted in Japan - lets hope they don't have a search engine box on their web site...
If what's being linked to isn't illegal in the country it's in, is it still illegal to link to it from Japan where it is illegal? I don't know how they're going to enforce this one...
Ita erat quando hic adveni.
Clearly, all search engines need to immediately block all .jp addresses from accessing them.
.jp addresses.
I'm not kidding; the most effective protest that could happen here is if Google, Yahoo, et. al. immediately block off all
Let the Japanese search engines get arrested. Insist on it, in fact.
Just to explain a few things here:
1) The guy was busted not only for linking to pornographic sites, but also for providing software that he had written that allows people to remove the "mosaic" used on the pr0n.
2) Japanese courts are a little different to American courts - for a start, they're not quite so concerned about "setting precendents" for future judgements.
3) In Japan, if you're busted for something, you're convicted. The conviction rate here is around 96%, so if the police take the trouble of arresting you, it generally means the court is gonna find you guilty, no matter what arguments your lawyer makes.
4) It's pretty clear that the guy was aiding and abetting; it just happens that the form of the abetting was links to other HPs. In the States, that would probably get you off; in Japan, it's nothing more than a detail. The judge has not made a judgement regarding linking to other sites; he's made a judgement about this guy's culpability.
BTW: I don't actually support this judgement (for one thing, I've used the guy's software (FL-Mask) and it's pretty cool), but once you get into a Japanese courtroom, not even God can save your ass if the judge thinks you're guilty.
No... It's just the final link, making 99.9999% of the pages out there that don't themselves contain illegal information still legal.
Hmm. The way the decision was worded makes that unclear - strictly speaking the links site _owner_ was committing a crime, but the website itself isn't necessarily illegal. However, the reason the judge gave for convicting makes it likely that any site with external links will be illegal.
The worst part is that the person putting up the link doesn't have to be aware of the illegal nature of the material to be committing a crime. This creates two problems
Expect some changes to this ruling, to address these issues, if the Japanese legal system has any concept of justice or fairness.
Shouldnt they just be going after the publisher? After all, they are the ones that possess and serve up the offending materials in the first place. Cracking down on everyone else is like stomping on ants coming out of the anthill. Sure you wind up with some dead ants, but you never address the real problem. So what if the links make it easier for people to find the offending material? It also makes it easier for the authorities to find the original publisher. Cut off the head and the body dies. Don't waste your time arresting people who have not actually published illegal materials.
The era of governments controlling access to information is over. Look at the US. We have some really nasty drug laws. Enforcement of these laws has been pretty swift and severe, and an increasingly large number of people have been incarcerated. Has this really stopped the drug cartels from muling tons of the stuff northward every day? Hell no! I still have to walk by people selling dope just to get to the 7-11 that gets robbed weekly so people can buy their next fix.
You know what? Information is a lot more slippery than drugs. It has no mass, no odor, and can travel at the speed of light. It can be hidden or disguised to a mathematical near certainty. You only need one server to get the message out, not 300 mules with condoms full of coke in their stomachs. Once it is distributed, it can be replicated endlessly by the end user.
You want to stop this? You think you can? The technical solutions will rise up and cut away at your authority permanently. Your best shot is being as permissive as possible, and then crucifying the publishers when appropriate. Getting all draconian will only drive it to the underground. You know, the underground of MILLIONS ala Napster. The tighter you grip at the information the more it will slip through your fingers. Wake up and start realizing what is going on here. We have the playbook for the 21st century and we can put your ass on the bench.
-BW
Take a site on geocities. If I am in Japan and link to something there, I really need to go visit that page every day. The site I originally linked to may have gone away and been replaced by a site that is illegal. Now, I would be breaking the law.
For that matter this could happen anywhere (I use geocities as an example because of the high turnover). I had an account a long time ago on a server and had some stuff there I still find people linking to. The site has been gone for 4 years now. But it is very possible someone is going to come along and request that same account name, put something illegal up, and now those sites will be pointing to it.
It's lunacy.
Therefore linking to a site that links to a site containing illegal material is also illegal.
And since we all know you can reach anywhere on the web with 9 hops, the whole WWW is now illegal in Japan.
--
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
If banks were illegal, yes.
Buying/posessing cocaine is illegal. If you come to me looking for some nose garbage, and I say 'yeah. Go two doors down and ask for Rodney, he'll hook you up.' then technically, I *AM* committing a crime. I am aiding in the commission of a crime.
If trafficking in a certain type of material is illegal, and you provide people with information as to how to obtain that material, then you are committing a crime. The proper response, in the eyes of the law, is to say 'Sir, that material is illegal. I cannot help you to obtain it.'.
what about yahoo.co.jp? I found a page linking to a site hosting illegal CSS info and DVD linux drivers from Yahoo. (http://search.yahoo.co.jp/bin/search?p=d ecss) Does this mean that search engines are all illegal in Japan?
It means that some court just opened up a legal can of worms that it will take lawyers a decade to straighten out --- and until it's straightened out, nobody knows the answer.
There was a similar *effect* a few years ago in the US when the first cases involving suing ISPs for content came out --- there was a year or two where everyone was nervous about what the courts would decide, because you didn't know if, say, a company could be held liable for statements in posts to their corporate newsgroups.
Eventually the law settled down, and a set of rules were established and disseminated, and most companies stopped worrying.
In this case, the time to *start* worrying is now --- but there's no excuse for panic; no judge is going to rule search engines illegal, they're going to draw up some elaborately technical distinction between search engine links and normal links, and create a whole class of bizarrely detailed law about what sorts of sites fall on one side, and what sorts of sites fall on the other.
The article says: The court's ruling means that if somebody creates a Web page that includes a link to another page, and if that other page is in violation of the law, then the person who creates the link can be charged with aiding and abetting the crime. This is regardless of whether or not they are aware of the illegality of the page they linked to.
What does this mean for search engines/portals that operate in Japan, like Yahoo Japan? Do they have to check each site to make sure that it is not illegal under Japanese law? If someone changes their site so that it includes illegal material, after the link has already been up for a while, will Yahoo Japan be liable?
I hope this precedent isn't adopted elsewere.
=======
Life is exciting, isn't it?
The DMCA--for corporations, the best copyright law money can buy.
What if the link is established BEFORE the illegal content is posted. Common enough to link to the page of another, for some general purpose. Then there would be no criminal intent.
Similarly, what if the content was made illegal after the link was made. This basically requires active editing on the part of a web page owner, and establishes "STRICT LIABILITY" for alleged unlawful content.
I used to be a trial observer in Japan. Can't say I would want to be up against their criminal justice system! Certainly on something so sweeping as this law! If I were hosting, I sure wouldn't do it in Japan!
Quis Custodiet Ipsos Custodes "Who Keeps the Keepers Themselves" ~ Juvenal
Firstly,
/. The person here was making software that allowed people to view pornographic material. This was done by removing the masking done on web-sites to censor out the explicit part of images.
The personal opinion of this journalist is that the judge has made an extremely appropriate decision.
You gotta love objective journalism.
Anyway, I believe that this is not as bad as it seemed when I read the blurb on
This is clearly software designed against the 'spirit' of the anti-pornography laws Japan seems to have. This person is a citizen of Japan, and is therefore subject to their laws. He is also making money (it was shareware, which means you have to register, at a cost). IANAL, but if I were a judge in this case, I would find him guilty of SOMETHING for so doing things which so clearly violate the spirit of the laws Japan has made. (whether those laws are good or not is a seperate debate...)
I am not saying that this decision, or indeed these laws are not something to get concerned about. This also does set legal precident that most of us would shudder over. However, this was a direct link, to an illegal site, by a person who was doing pseudo-legal activity himself. The various posts of 'now the whole net is illegal!' are extremely over-reactionary in this case.
I didn't ever think about this angle, but suddenly Napster seems to be in a little more danger than they were.
------
If a tree falls on an anonymous coward yelling 'first post' in the forest, does anybody hear?
To this, I must respond, as I see there may be some abiguity about my post.
People are responsible for their own damned actions. Don't try to blame it on society, the media, your parents, peer pressure, or anything else. This does not mean, however, that I should be able to walk away after supplying a friend with a gun, knowing he intends to shoot someone. Mens Rea is present.
Gun manufacturers aren't directly responsible for deaths caused by guns. On the other hand, these guns wouldn't be there without the manufacturers and they are therefore indirectly responsible. The lawsuits against gunmakers on deaths should be thrown out of court. (Likewise with smoking. Can't smokers read warning labels that first said smoking is harmful, later that smoking kills?)
That is the point.
------
If a tree falls on an anonymous coward yelling 'first post' in the forest, does anybody hear?
Let me throw this out for an example then.
Assume I'm Japanaese and say I'm an Anime fan and I have a web page that has links to other fan sites. Say one of those sites begins to add illegal things on it. Like pirated videos, hentai (XXX stuff), etc. But those things weren't there when I originally linked to it. But, hey, we get busy and can't keep our pages up to date. Am I now responsible?
I realize the true intent here may be to prevent direct linking like many MP3 sites do. ie.) "I only have links to these files. None of them reside on my server/site."
So, what is to keep Japanese from obtaining sites elsewhere in the world anonymously. The only enforceability of this would be for servers hosting data (or I guess hosting the links to the data) that physically reside on Japanese soil. Or, I suppose that if a foreign site could be linked to ownership by a Japanese citizen that may be enforceable.
I am glad I'm a U.S. citizen. As messed up as things may seem over here, we are still pretty damn hard-core when it comes to freedom of speech. (Let's keep that up BTW.)
This all seems to me like corporate marshall law. Bring on the one world government, right? That way they'll make us all abide by the same rules. Screw that. Who's money is it anyway? I don't understand why companies just want to keep growing and growing. It's got to be those rich fsckers at the top doing all this crap. Enough of my ranting. I feel sorry for them. I feel sorry for Australia too.
For those who fight for it, life has a flavor the sheltered will never know.
I knew this would happen, and I'll try to find the article on it, but it was published on more than one Website fairly recently. Unfortunately, these were video game Websites, and searching their archives is a chore, but I'll try...
Ok, here's one, Japanese Game Makers File Suit, it's from 1998. It may after you lived there that they made it illegal, or just after that they decided to crackdown on it. I suppose it is also possible that this article is a hoax, but I'm guessing it's legit because I remember seeing it more than one place when it came out.
All the creatures will die, And all the things will be broken. That's the law of samurai. (Jubai, 1605)
It's also illegal to sell used video tapes and video games in Japan, so, basically, I think it is more or less the kind of corporate Hell the Multinationals want to turn the US into. We're still ahead of Japan in this area, our corrupt, unethically pro-corporate government still takes baby steps toward destroying our freedom... (See Article) where it seems the Japanese government already thinks freedom is for corporations and the government, not people.
I feel sorry for the citizens of Japan, who produce some of my favorite creative works, that they have to live under such an evil government.
All the creatures will die, And all the things will be broken. That's the law of samurai. (Jubai, 1605)
Here is another problem. The PM wants to ban all Internet gambling sites based in Australia.
Here is a pertinent quote from an executive of an ominously named Australian online gambling firm:
"What it might do is encourage Australian players to move offshore because the Internet obviously does not have any geographical boundaries," Bill Forburn, chief executive of Goldens Caskets Interactive Gold, told reporters.
Work for Change & GET PAID!
Anybody who thinks that the US Code is the most draconian must be seriously stoned. In many countries, you really wouldn't, say, want to publicly make the same kind of cracks about the Government that Leno and others can make freely every weeknight in front of the nation...
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
Hmm.... they can't stop a US company (or other non-Japanese companies) from linking to illegal material -- so what are they trying to accomplish? Seems pretty useless because it's so simple to get a account offshore and host elsewhere.
.JP sites that link to illegal material, and will be forced to use .COM/.NET/.ORG like the rest of us. And of course more business for US hosting firms.
I suppose the only effect that will have is they won't be able to register
OOOH... they could still keep their normal sites, link to an offshore site that contains links to illegal material. =) It's a battle the governement can't win!
-rt-
-rt-
** Evil Canadians are taking over the world. Learn about the conspiracy
When you distribute, you actively spend effort to give out the goods. Linking is just telling someone where the goods are; they have to go get the goods themselves. While it is very very easy for the user to click on the link, it is still the end user that takes action to obtain the goods; you have not touched or in any way moved the goods yourself. For instance: you witness robbers take bags of stolen money from a bank and hide it in a nearby park. You then tell someone where you saw the money being dumped, and that it is stolen. No matter who you told, you have not done anything illegal, even though it is trivial for the people you tell to help themselves to stolen property. ("Aiding" theft is another matter - but if you do not spend every possible effort to track down the robbers and arrest them, then relative to what you could be doing, you are technically "aiding" the robbers' escape.)
I mean illegal. Whether or not it is immoral, if it is illegal, it should not be there. I take issue with the laws that exist, but I am not going to get myself heavily fined or thrown in jail breaking bad laws. I will continue to keep my mp3 collection, harbor a copy of DeCSS, and do many other things that are probably illegal, but if push comes to shove, I would probably back down if faced with the alternatives of hefty fines that I can't pay or jail time. There are more important things. Call me sellout if you like, but I have my priorities.
To get back on topic, the issue is not one of morals. I don't really care what people do on their own time, but if there is a law against it, I see there as being three options:
We may not like the laws that exist, but if we break them, it seems that we must be prepared to take the consequences.
-----
Vikhozhu odin ya na darogu;
Skvoz' tuman kremnisti put' blectit;
Noch' tikha. Pystinya vnemlet bogu,
Rhapsody in Numbers
It seems to me that, in theory, "illegal" material should not be on the internet (again, in theory, that does not mean in the real world). In a sense, linking to another's site is a form of distributing that material, thus illegal. It seems to me that this descision is not the problem, but rather the underlying laws. Perhaps we should instead aim our hostilities at the Japaneese laws that outlaw pornography.
note: this is honestly not meant as a troll or flamebait; if you think I am wrong (which I very well could be), please try to explain why in a rational and polite fashion -- I don't swear at you, I would like the same curtiousy (pardon my poor spelling)
-----
Vikhozhu odin ya na darogu;
Skvoz' tuman kremnisti put' blectit;
Noch' tikha. Pystinya vnemlet bogu,
Rhapsody in Numbers
Does this rulling apply to deep linking, or only the first tier of links? If it's deep linking, then i can see a large number of .jp sites disapearing overnight.
First the Dr Godfrey / Demon thing in the UK, now this. I just seriously hope this doesn't become a world-wide trend.
Syllable : It's an Operating System
what about yahoo.co.jp? I found a page linking to a site hosting illegal CSS info and DVD linux drivers from Yahoo. (http://search.yahoo.co.jp/bin/search?p=d ecss) Does this mean that search engines are all illegal in Japan?
Use my userscript to add story images to Slashdot. There's no going back.
What about linking to a site that links to a site that hosts illegal material? Is that going to be illegal? If thats the case, and I link to google, and google links to illegal material, then can I be prosecuted? What about 3 or 4 links down the chain? If that is the case, then almost anyone could be prosecuted if you follow the link tree far enough, if it isn't, then all you have to do is link to a dummy page to that links to the site that links to the illegal stuff. Either way, this law is flawed. (I won't even go into the merit of the law, or in this case, the lack thereof).
You...are wrong.
I could run into six volumes of expletive laced indignation...you're not worth my time.
You are an ignorant slave-in-waiting.
Or simply an uncreative jokester.
Quick...go buy a notebook so that you can write down the transgressions of your neighbors so that you can report them to the authorities.
You are an ape that wears clothes and begs for food.
I am a thinking being. We have nothing in common.
Think about it, one minute you're emailing one of your buds to tell them they better patch the server, here's a link to SecurityFocus. Next minute, they're cutting a hole in your ceiling and SWAT enters your pad via a portable fire pole.
I suppose the end result will be that .jp will become the cyberspace eqivalent of Mc Donalds Playland for the script kiddiez.
cat
If what you say is correct, that what the judge MEANT to do was saying that providing links to material that you are aware is illegal (creating a database of links to illegal sites) then that is illegal.
In other words, if I had a database of all the places where you could learn to make bombs on the Web, then that page would be illegal - it's links which are SUPPOSED to be to illegal sites. However, if on my link page, I have a link to a site which just happens to decide to post, oh, I don't know, DeCSS, than that would not be illegal, as I was not actively promoting the link as illegal.
I could be wrong though. Also, IANAJL (J = Japanese, figure the rest out :)), so I might be understanding this wrong. I can say that based on what you said, if such a ruling was passed in the US (and IANAL here either), then linking to sites which happened to have illegal content would not be criminal. But compiling a large list of illegal sites would be.
You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.
Certainly looking for illegal material using a search engine will create links to illegal material. Would this ruling make Yahoo, Excite, Infoseek and such responsible for the links that they provide as a result of a query?
I know this is going to be an unpopular opinion given the other posts, but here I go:
* The person hosting the site that was linked to was convicted of a criminal act in japan by hosting the site, before the person linking to it was taken to court. Reading the article, it is clear that the linker would not have been taken to court if the first lawsuit did not go through.
* The link was only part of the legal argument against the linker. The linker provided a tool to allow the porn site to commit a crime, and advertising in the form of a link so that the site's crime could reach a wider audience. It was clear that the intent of the tool was to facilitate a crime.
This does not seem to set a drastic precedent - it was clear that it was the intent of the site to aid criminal acts, and the site provided a tool that made criminal acts possible that would have otherwise been impossible. This could be compared to a site that provides the address of and blueprints of a house and security alarm codes to break in. If someone used the information and tools (the codes) to break in, then the site would have aided and abetted a criminal act.
Happy 4/20, everyone!
No, Thursday's out. How about never - is never good for you?