Slashdot Mirror
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 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...
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.