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Japanese P2P Users Arrested, Creator Targeted
nutznboltz writes "According to a story on CNET Asia, two Japanese users of the Winny P2P application have been arrested for copyright violations, and the developer of the P2P software has also had his home searched by police. Winny was 'supposedly anonymous', and purported to be based on Freenet, although Freenet creator Ian Clarke is claiming that Winny is not really like Freenet, and that he's 'not concerned that the Japanese police have somehow found a way to compromise Freenet's security'."
"I'm not concerned that the Japanese police have somehow found a way to compromise Freenet's security," Clarke
"..but probably not those that allow Freenet to protect user anonymity." Clarke
I'm confused, it looks like Clarke said Freenet's compromised and he doesn't care, and that Freenet isn't compromised.
So - what did they intend to find? Or do they use it like intimidation of some sort?
Clarke wants to save his face, but it's well known in certain circles that freenet doesn't provide 100% anonymity if the attacker has enough resources, e.g. a large ISP or the gov.
It takes some time, but you can determine the IP and stored data of a user.
But I don't think that this is so bad, in free societies such anonymizer tools are often abused by criminals, spammers and perverts and in oppressive societies the use of the tool gets you in prison anyway. The Chinese gov is not so stupid to get caught by the "hahaha - my data was encrypted, you can't prove anything"-argument.
So it's really no loss there.
Owner of a Mensa membership card.
I am often amazed at the abilities of some. A 15 year old breaks a hard crypto for DVDs in what seems is a poetic 30 line program... And so many others who have contribuited to technology. But in my limited thinking I cannot see how a truly anonymous P2P network could ever be thought up.
...So it seems to me.
After all the encryption, all the routing and packet filtering... eventually we're always left with unavoidable IP addresses. There's always going to be, has to be, a destinaton and origination. If a computer program can find the location of a song, so eventually can a human.
The FBI tracked the release of an email virus to some upstairs apartment laptop with a temporary dial up connection in a third world country within three days of it's release. What was it, the I love you virus or something written by some tech students? I sat in wonder watching the news reports and the video of dirt streets and old third world buildings wondering how the hell they did it. How they knew it came from that upstairs apartment. Probably logged in just long enough to send it. Not just in three days, but probably sooner with them taking 1-2 days for the "public" release.
Then I consider a truly anonymous P2P file share and wonder if it is even possible. The song is going to be on a hard disk. That hard disk is attached to the net and will have a number representing it's network location. All of which can be traced. In my mind, again, if a program can find the song, even as difficult at it may seem, so eventually can a human.
Just like *they* can never make an unbrakable copy protection, Will *we* ever be able to completely anonymous while on the Net.
I'm just wondering....
Stupid laws that cost thousands of extra police hours not only waste tax-payers money, they take police from their real job
Couldnt agree more. But this isnt the main culprit. Globally more is spent on 'THE WAR ON DRUGS' and chasing criminals who only steal to feed their habits than on ANYTHING ELSE. Apologies for the caps - just trying to be sensationalist because Im talking about drugs - which we all know are REALLY SCARY AND BAD.
Of course - these kids coul dhave been P2Ping to support a crack habit. It all comes back to wasted money on THE WAR ON DRUGS...
Here are the snippits from the spam.
Subject: Digital Music News: Don't Go to Jail
Music Industry Informs Internet Users of Risks Peer-to-Peer Networks Pose
STAY OUT OF COURT - USE LEGAL 'SHARING'
Staff Writer, The Digital Music News
The Recording Industry Association of America has filed 300 lawsuits against alleged file swappers. Don't want to become victim number 301? Then it's time to switch from programs like Kazaa and Morpheus to a legal music download service Songs purchased on legal services are more reliably of a higher quality than those downloaded from a peer-to-peer network where you're never quite sure if the file was properly labelled, ripped on an underperforming computer or contained a virus Below are the options that will help keep your life free of lawsuits To learn more about safe and secure ways of using the Internet http://www.riaa.com
The message then goes on to pimp for the various pay services. I have no idea if the RIAA actually paid for the spam, of if it is a joe job.
When you install Freenet and go to your local gateway-page there are not one but two search engines linked. That's how you search WWW - that's how you search Freenet.
Or do you know of a way to search the World Wide Web that does not include using servers which have spidered the content? Please let me know.
it's in my head
Winny was developped by the Japanese developper called "47", and it was after WinMX user was arrested here in Japan, in 2001. It was the world-first arrest of P2P users. Japanese copyright law was amended in the years before to crack down infringement over internet, protecting "right of enabling sending copyrighted material".
Since then, among Japanese users and hackers, non-encrypted P2P which is still popular in the West today became things of past.
Since Freenet made of Java was very slow application then (not much improved today), he made Winny as native Windows P2P application, with encrypted storage distrubited across peers. According to the developper, Winny is good at the both anonymity and efficiency, but anonymity is slightly lower than Freenet. Because a receiver can't determine a sender is the one who originally inserted the file to the network or not, it was considered anonymous and then more secure than ordinary P2P network, say, Gnutella or eDonkey etc. Winny has other functions like forum system, and clustering by keywords combination set by its users which help users with similar interest mold cluster. Other remarkable difference from Freenet is it dosn't split files, but can do multiple-source download.
With the help of community and its own efficiency as P2P network, Winny become extremely populor in Japan unlike experimental Freenet in the West and consumed huge bandwidth.
But those who were arrested the last month was arrested because they sent files directly, without being a bridge, or put some warez onto web page and running Winny beside it. Therefore it is still not clear whether just running Winny and sending cached files without modest deliberation means guilty or not.
Winny is really WinNY, with WinMX N is the next of M, and Y is the next of X.
And, I'm told, most people can escape imprisonment or heavy fining by just apologising well.
Unless you're a foreigner
I'm not saying this guy is innocent, but he got a longer prison sentence than most murderers. Japan has a conviction rate above %90 percent. They can also hold someone on suspicion for up to 21 days without so much as a phone call. My greatest fear is just being a suspect. It doesn't matter if you're guilty or not here. So I get a heavy fine and no "prison sentence." I could still be in prison for almost a month before charges are even filed.
Just found a link to The Motley Fool that very much suggests that file-sharing isn't taking any revenue. If this is truly the case, how do they justify the restraint of freedom induced by laws and methods of enforcement? This appears to be less a case of protecting revenues as a simple imposition of unjustified power.
More musings on power and on civil disobedience. I should say that I admire the independent artist who chooses to share samples, and do not especially admire those who trade music illegally, but here, punishment is disproportionate.
Wikileaks, no DNS
I believe that the words "arrested for downloading..." should not be appearing in our lives because "arrested for downloading music" sounds very similar to "arrested for downloading political material" and this is exactly how a society moves from free to big-brother. Lets put things in perspective here: You are not gaining unauthorized entry to a remote system, you are not 'stealing' (as in bank notes) money, you are not diverting electronic funds to yourself. Flaim me all you want about what you 'are' doing but those facts remain.
What you are doing is partaking in an activity that may negatively effect a large economy. Now there is no definite case here, it could be that you were not taking a potential sale because you would never have intended to buy it in the first place, who knows? its a very blurry area and no-one can claim they know all the facts. Having said that there are allot of things in our society that follow similar logic:
Driving your car for example, now you may not contribute a significant amount to pollution yourself but everyone together does (this has more proof behind it than the case against music downloading). If you go get a drink during commercials then you aren't doing anything personally but if every single person got up during that commercial it would have a zero viewer figure (which leads to the question are the advertising companies doing their job if no-one wants to watch their adverts?). As a society we have deemed that some things are ok and some are not for whatever reason but if its deemed that filesharing is not ok then you will have put that over driving your car and a whole host of other things we do that are far worse, is that ok? its up to you.
Its society's job as a whole to decide the balance here, personally i think filesharing should be accepted and that it will lead to a positive change in the way things are done and the way music is made. Maybe it will lead to the downfall of the RIAA as we know it and music will suddenly become not a money driven thing but a enjoyment driven thing maybe like open source software, is that good? is society happy with the way things are now? are you happy with the way things are with the RIAA? because its the majority of the people that matter in a democracy not the richest and if you live in a democracy then thats the way it goes.
PS. It might happen that you dont live in a democracy or your democracy is broken and for example 2 million people all getting together in a park to demonstrate over something does not sway your PM's view atall even though it was one of the biggest demonstrations in your country's history. Or, your government openly receives funding from major corporations and just happens to churn out laws that suit those corporations and has now allowed one of those corporations to run its voting. If this is true for you then the above post means nothing, go back to your work, do what you are told and let it get worse. If you dont live in a democracy and dont want one than also ignore this post and i hope you have better luck than us and that we dont try and invade you anytime soon, if we do im sorry i had nothing to do with it.
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Its simple, use UDP, and use WiFi. Use a portable storage device to access WiFi. Suddenly you have an annonymous network with no IP addresses.
We just do not have enough WiFi access points to do this and still depend on ISPs