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Winny P2P Software Creator Arrested
News for nerds writes "The author of Winny, the Japanese P2P software with encrypted networking capability, similar to Freenet, has been today officially arrested for abetment of copyright violation, after the raid in the last December. He started its development in May 2002 and occasionally appeared on the web forum 2ch with his anonymous codename "47", but today turned out to be an assistant professor of computer science at the University of Tokyo in his 30s. Winny was so efficient and popular that it generated problems even at the Japanese police and the GSDF.
As the Japanese police is the most advanced among the world in pulling P2P into criminal cases, outcry of users in Japan is expected."
... Black & Decker has been charged as an accomplice to many murders committed with their tools.
<sigh> I guess I won't bother trying to write any decent software then, if the possibility exists that I'm to be arrested for it. What would the point be?
--- We are not in the 8th dimension. We are over New Jersey.
I don't understand, does this mean that if I develop a really great and cheap duffelbag that I can be arrested if it's used by a bank robber?
Why not sue the computer manufacturers for abatement as well? There are any great uses for P2P, it is a great way to distribute music and video you have created, and I have distributed many animated shorts I have worked on via bit torrent etc...
How long will it be before someone sues the makers of a web browser, FTP, or IRC app for 'copyright abatement'?
Well, maybe I didn`t quite get it right, but in what way exactly is what he`s done illegal? Or is it just because he made it difficult for them to crack the network he`d created that they wanted even more to "crack him", as an example? Believe you me, maybe that will be the start of a new row of attacks from RIAA and MPAA towards program creators.
We have been saying that the amount of non-infringing use MUST increase if anonymity and P2P is to remain legal.
But nobody has any viable solutions.
So you're saying that because software is used in a certain way, the author of said software is guilty of the same crime by implication?
...
In that case, better lock up everyone who contributed to the design and development of TCP/IP right now!
And I'm sure "the terrorists" have used MS software at some point as well
His arrest is controversial since there was no mention that he participated in sharing files, only for writing (and updating -- an argument used by the police that his act was deliberate) the software that enabled file-sharing.
He should be arrested as well. I mean c'mon! Who haven't had a private FTP-account long before the P2P-concept were even thought of? Or Gopher? I am sure some copyrighted literature has been made availble by gopher!
If creating technology that allows material to be pirated is a crime, I suggest all manufaturers of CD-R(W)s, DVD+-R(W) with associated burnes, harddisks, floppys, floppydrives, tapes, tapeplayers, dats, lossy as well as non-lossy data-compression technologies, not to mention microphones and every single net-capable electronic device be arrested pronto.
After all they're facilitating copyright infringement. Even digitally one might add for most of them!
Not Buzzword 2.0 compliant. Please speak english.
Well, the argument is the same: he didn`t distribute them, he created the means of distributing them - and that isn`t, exactly, illegal. It`s, like other people allready said, like suing a knife maker because a blade of his was used in a murder.
Maybe not US anymore, but some place where writting multi-purpose software that protects privacy is not a crime. Japan's loss, that country's win. I just hope he doesn't have to spend long time in jail first.
Well Lindows for one offers a discount for their os when downloaded via BitTorrent.
Also Blizzard Interactive should be offering game patches via BT as well. (couldn't bother to find the sources but you get the idea).
Kazaa had announced an agrement a few months ago to distribute short films via it's network.
A french movie producer recently introduced a "fake" bootleg version of it's movie on all p2p networks. What it was in fact was a Sort of Making of with exclusive interviewa from the actors. The tone was pretty much "you should rather support the movie by going to the theatre etc.." Was a great success from what I heard.
But yeah I agree totally with you. P2p networks are 99% used in an illegal way.
Yet philosophically I adhere to the idea of a self maintained network, not server reliant and thus not censurable.
Artificial intelligence is no match for natural stupidity
I am a post graduate student who is researching aspects of P2P software. Its a really fertile area for research that is now starting to get seriously damaged by the civil and criminal suits that are getting about these days. I know of one serious research group that has pulled their software, that wasn't even file sharing related, due to fears of being held accounatble for its use. I also have not released anything due to fears of retribution (and my stuff has bugger all to do with filesharing also).
I would like to extend my Masters research into a PhD but is it going to have a future for long enough? I hope that this will settle down and go the way of the fears of video tapes, PGP, cd burning, etc... But in the mean time research that will benefit ad hoc networking will suffer.
It will be a sad day if everything P2P is banned - I wonder if those companies with miss chat, dns, nntp, etc
"In March, a virus swept through the program, picking up investigation records from a Kyoto Prefectural Police officer's computer and whisking them around cyberspace. Other police documents and Self-Defense Force materials have also been spread across the Internet through Winny. (Mainichi Shimbun, May 10, 2004)"
Was the virus exploiting Winny and automatically shared hard drive contents to the net? Or, the officer downloaded the virus by mistake and spread drive contents? Viruses usually destroy data, not disseminate, except for replicating itself etc.
Other police documents and other private information were revealed by humans, so why blame P2P or its author?
The punishment doesn't fit the crime, if it's even a crime. Expressing Free Speech (writing a P2P) can cost $26k+ and 3 years in prison? Laws like these are out of touch of society.
I think my RIAA boycot just became a boycot of all copyrighted material*. I will never pay for a license to use again. No movie theaters, video game rentals, the works... until someone fixes this nonsense.
Arresting scientists crosses the line. I wouldn't feel right supplying the cartells that make this possible.
* = That doesn't permit redistribution.
Anyone but a hypocrite can tell you that most P2P apps are indeed made for trading copyrighted material, much like emulators are made for running copyrighted roms. Claiming that they have a lot of potentially non-infringing uses is just an excuse. Black & Decker tools are made for construction, and in 99.99% of cases they are used for construction work.
...is that according to it, computers should be outlawed. Yes, you heard me. Most every computer out there is a vechicle for copyright infringement of software, audio, movies, pr0n (which is also copyrighted), used to facilitate communication between people or such traffic and so on. Nevermind the millons of PCs that are spamming or infecting others, or anonymizing illegal traffic because they're open relays. All used for crime.
Same goes for everything running the network infrastructure. The Common Carrier status may protect them legally, but not in this context. They're all massively contrbuting to illegal acts. Right down to the computers running the Internet backbone itself.
Both private individuals and corporations typically have some form of violation, if nothing more than expired software they use anyway, or more users than they're licenced for, or being zombified spam/virus boxes.
Like P2P apps, computers in general have legitimate uses. But if you want to talk numbers, they too get drowned out by the fact that PEOPLE aren't law-obidient. That is neither the fault of computers nor P2P apps.
Welcome to general purpose computing, and general purpose communication. If the majority want to use it for something illegal, what do you do? There's simply no way short of crippling a PC into an appliance, limited to only do pre-defined tasks. If you can program it (even within a DRM-ridden sandbox), you can make it general purpose. And then you're back to square one.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Where do you draw the line? It's a slippery slope. One of the most commonly used protocols by far for illegal copying is Microsoft Windows file-sharing (otherwise known as SMB). So by your reasoning, if we can hold the author of a p2p system liable, then we ABSOLUTELY MUST also hold Microsoft liable when it happens on their systems. Or do you have some magic, objective point at which you can draw the line and say "this file-sharing tool good, that one bad"? Sorry, but you have to either deem file-sharing tools ALL ILLEGAL, or ALL LEGAL. And yeah yeah I know that SMB is used in legal ways too, but so are all file-sharing tools.
What's disgusting about this Winny thing is that Kyoto Police Department thinks the development of Winny itself is not criminal, but 47's attitude against the copyright law is. 47 had basically said on 2ch that the copyright law must be largely restructured to reflect the digital era and that's a part of the reasons why he wrote Winny.
Japanese constitution certainly ensures freedom of speech and thoughts, but it sounds like KPD is a thought police.
so what the hell were these cops doing with this shady anonymous file-sharing tool on their hardware anyway - after all, there are no legal uses for this type of application, no?
The Japanese cops have no-one but themselves to blame there. If someone in the prefecture is using this software to download copyrighted works, then it is time to clean up their own house first.. Same goes for the military. Security is your fucking job, fools!
Even if the coppers were using an installation of Whinny to keep an eye on what's moving about on it, it does beg one question:
If an organisation keeps important and sensitive documents on a windows box running shady p2p warez-sharing apps, do you think that they should be trusted with such documents?
I reckon this is just sour grapes because the chief of police picked up a virus while downloading pr0n...
The grandparent is speculating that decidedly most of the traffic through P2P applications is used to facilitate copyright infringement of movies, music, and games. Compared to the internet at large, this is not a lot of tcp/ip traffic, and there should be some way of eliminating illegal uses of the programs.
Also, you were quick to put words into his mouth. He never specifically stated that P2P application writers should be arrested, nor really even implied it.
I'm looking to get rich. I've got steps #2 (????) and #3 (PROFIT!) planned out, but am having trouble coming up with #1.
> Police said Kaneko was arrested because Winny
> allowed a 41-year-old man from Takasaki and 19-year-old
> from Matsuyama to illegally download pirated
> games and movies from the Internet,
So... arrest IE, Mozilla, Netscape, Opera, WSFTP creators...
help me i've cloned myself and can't remember which one I am
The high conviction rate comes primarily from the way job performance and opportunities for advancement happen in the Japanese law enforcement/legal system.
At the level of the individual officer, your job performance is how many "good" arrests you make (those that lead to convictions), and how many "bad" arrests you make (those that do not lead to a conviction). Making a bad arrest is essentially a career-killer. So, they are very careful to only arrest those against whom they have a watertight case. Somewhat more negatively, anyone with enough political influence that they *might* be able to get off won't be arrested at all. Organized crime figures are essentially immune to investigation from lower-level law enforcement--they can't get a conviction, so they don't even bother. Most negatively is what happens when a truly innocent party is arrested. There is intense pressure to build a case regardless of actual guilt or innocence. What percentage of innocent suspects are railroaded by the police is unknown, although probably not too high.
At the next level is the prosecution. Again, convictions are good, and failed attempts at prosecution==dead career. Additionally, as the parent post notes, there is a limited budget to bring about a prosecution. So, the prosecution ends up cherry-picking cases. Compounding the success rate is that (as elsewhere in the world) the police generally won't arrest anyone with the prosecuting attorney's OK. Again, this has the negative effect that "hard" cases aren't even considered, and there is the occasional attempt to railroad an innocent suspect.
At the last level is the judiciary. At this point, potential cases have been through two very stringent filters. The trial is almost unnecessary at this point, but judges do occassionally acquit. As the parent post notes, judges who acquit end up with worse careers. The analysis says this isn't based on acquitting the innocent, but to acquitting on "reasons of statutory or constitutional interpretation, often in politically charged cases." However, it seems that nearly any case with an acquittal is "polically charged" since the prosecution will use politics to their advantage in a weaker case.
Overall, the Japanese criminal legal system has some serious problems. Most of the problems come from the inability or lack of desire to attempt any "hard" or "weak" cases, but some comes from aggressively pushing a case which shouldn't have been brought in the first place. On the other hand, it mosly works. Overall crime and incarceration rates are low, and success is the hardes metric against which to argue. Still doesn't mean that the Winny author has a snowballs chance of getting off.
Hey! A non-moron replied! P2P apps show the hypocritical bullshit that Slashdot is infested with. The EXACT SAME PEOPLE will complain all day and all night about POSSIBLE abuses of RFID tags and how they should be outlawed because MAYBE someone will invade their privacy and do something illegal, then they'll turn around and defend P2P to the death, despite about 95% of all P2P traffic being ILLEGALLY traded items. The bullshit part is that they'll argue how you can't condemn a technology because of possible misuse, then they'll go and do exactly that with RFID.
It's always been accepted that the posession and/or use of items that are used almost entirely for criminal purposes can be restricted. Brass knuckles, lockpicks, radar detectors, and other things have been restricted in some way practically everywhere. If P2P software developers don't get their shit together and come up with ways to get the illegal shit off their networks, the exact same thing will happen to them. The continued facilitation of LARGE-SCALE piracy does absolutely nobody any good.
'Standards' in computing only impress those who are impressed by things like 'standards'.
Wow, +5, Insightful for that.
What you're failing to understand is that you can't directly compare the two things that you're comparing, RFID and P2P. I don't like RFID because if it becomes widespread I will be forced to use it in some way, and by using it I can end up placing my privacy in jeopardy, and depending on what that private information is and who detects it, the danger may even extend to my physical person.
On the other hand, nobody is going to force me to put a P2P program on my computer and use it to do illegal things. Even if I do use it legally or illegally, it's not going to cause privacy damage to any individual who doesn't also choose to install and use a P2P program.
Also, the potential for RFID to be abused against individuals or groups by other indivuduals or the government is quite high. The "abuse" of P2P systems isn't on the same level at all. The "victim" of P2P abuse is the content holder, and the only thing lost by the content holders is a theoretical potential sale. That's assuming that the copied content was even available to be purchased. Nothing physical has been stolen when copyright is violated. The privacy and safety of individuals is not violated by P2P file sharing. With RFID, both privacy and safety could potentially be violated.
By the way, copyright violation by individuals in a not-for-profit fashion usually falls under civil laws, not criminal laws. I defy you to name any computer application that can be said to be used "almost entirely for criminal purposes". Software doesn't go around killing people or stealing physical objects or causing physical harm. Even if you put it in the context of computer crimes, the software that is used to hack into other computers is often the same software that computer people use to administrate or secure their own computers. What you're talking about is like wanting to ban crowbars because suddenly a lot of them are being used to commit robberies and murders.
And finally, it hasn't "always been accepted" that certain objects should be banned because people use them "almost entirely" for criminal purposes. I don'te accept it. I think it's bogus that brass knuckles, lockpicks, radar detectors (are those illegal now?) and other things should be illegal. I notice the crime rate hasn't gone down after the banning of those objects. Might that be because banning the objects fails to address the reasons for the actions of the persons who go ahead and commit the same crimes some other way?
No object should ever be banned unless it can somehow by its very nature cause harm to others without any human action being applied. It is the action that is the crime, and to keep the crime from happening you have to get to the source of why the person decided to cause the action to occur. I know, we aren't real big on prevention here in 'Merc-uh.
Getting back to P2P, do you have some answer for all the legitimate file sharers who will be banging on your door after you ban P2P software, asking you why in the name of Pete they are no longer allowed to choose to share anything they own the copyright for? The number of people abusing the system is meaningless, except to give you an indicator that there is some reason for these copyright violations that needs to be addressed. Banning the object is not the answer.
But go ahead and do it your way. Ban P2P software. Then you can go on your merry way, singing to yourself, "The Emporer does have clothes, the Emporer does have clothes!" Everyone will move to Freenet or its equivalent and completely ignore you. And if you try to ban Freenet and start arresting anyone who uses it (because 95% of the users are abusing the system, of course) you will sooner or later end up with a civil war on your hands, as the educated and rabidly freedom-loving minority realizes they have lost all freedom of expression and have no reason to continue allowing the current government to exist.
If a law were passed tomorrow