Slashdot Mirror
Japanese ISPs To Cut Net Access For File Sharers
modemac writes "Four major Japanese telecom organizations, which represent 'about 1,000 major and smaller' domestic ISPs, have agreed to forcibly cut the Internet connection of filesharers. They're specifically targeting users of the 'Winny' program, trading copied gaming software and music. The article states that a new set of ISP guidelines will be drawn up on how to cut off users who 'leak illegally copied material onto the Net.'"
This is pretty much what companies in the U.S. do too. People that seed a bunch of copyrighted files often get cease and desists from their ISPs and if it keeps happening the ISP will sometimes (not always, as it's beneficial for the ISP to keep them around) cut their service off. TFA seems to claim that the majority of this is going to focus on "leakers" of copyrighted material: this means mass-seeders and probably scene groups. It's doubtful that the ISPs are going to end up cutting off many _downloaders_ of the material, but mostly focus on the _distributors_: which is pretty much precedent for ISPs at least in the U.S. and I would assume globally.
Now according to Wiki, Winny is intrinsically anonymous, and the only way the police were able to track those sharing the files was by them boasting on the Winny forums of their upload. So we probably would have heard about this earlier had Winny not been built to be as anonymous as it is now - it seems that the issue has been prompting arrests and controversy for five years or more.
Also, expect 2ch to go bananas over this in the next couple of weeks.
As a content creator, yes I hope it DOES happen. Because I'm sick of self righteous pricks helping themselves to the fruits of my hard work and paying fuck all in return. Especially the pompous ones that come onto slashdot and try and define stealing hollywood movies as some kind of fucking civil rights issue.
grow up.
I don't know what your comment is referring to exactly, but I might as well raise the question of how people in Japan use the Internet anyway. On the Soulseek network with the Nicotine client and geolocation based on IP, I don't think I've ever come across a file-sharer from Japan. Perhaps Japanese share files in their own isolated Internet communities? Since they appear to provide very little to the international community, news of restrictions on file-sharing in Japanese shouldn't trouble us as much as similar reports from North America or Europe.
Some ISPs in Eastern Europe solve this problem by setting up a DC++ server for their subscribers. When subscribers can share music and films with people from their own city, there's less burden on the connection to the wider Internet.
I am not using filesharing copyright infringing material at all, so my major concern is how it would affect me as a user of a legal filesharing? How do they detect if a customer is using winny or bittorrents?
In US there were reports that customers are cut off just because of the sheer volume of the data they are uploading or downloading. At least Japan is not doing that...
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
Um, yeah. You haven't lived here in Japan have you? People don't push back. They let companies plow them over and say nothing. There are no consumer rights in Japan. If they really do this and I lose my net access, that's it. I just lost my net access.
I'm already really throttled. I DL US TV slower now that I have FTTH than I did on ADSL. I have 83Mbit, but it only seems to work when I downloading something from a website or something.
This is going to do nothing to subscription rates. People get the fast service because it isn't much more expensive than the slow, and because the guys from SMAP are in the commercials. It has nothing to do with the speed, because, honestly, most Japanese people can barely even type.
This is not a good development for me...
Simple enough, if 99.9999% of the traffic is for "illegal" sharing, then make it legal and collect a tax. Pay off the media producers and problem solved. Everyone wins.
Views expressed do not necessarily reflect those of the author.
Also, aside question: how can a copy be illegal? I get that it can be illegal to create and to posses, but how can the copy itself be illegal? If it's made on a USB stick and then thrown out (ownership of the copy has ceased), the copy by virtue of not having changed is still illegal. Who do you sue, the USB stick?
(I figure they mean illegally possessed copies, but imprecise language like this bugs me a bit.) Two years ago, a major Internet provider tried to introduce a measure to disconnect users from the Internet whenever the company detected the use of Winny or other file-sharing software.
However, the provider abandoned the idea after receiving a warning from the Internal Affairs and Communications Ministry that such an approach was regarded as Internet snooping and might violate the right to privacy in communications.
According to the new agreement, copyright organizations would notify providers of Internet protocol addresses used by those who repeatedly make copies illegally, using special detection software. I can't imagine how "special detection software" might reliable determine whether copyright infringement is going on without looking at the transmitted data. Isn't it then obvious that the copyright organizations are doing "Internet snooping and might violate the right to privacy in communications"?
Actually, even companies like Verizon are looking into this. I think it's an exciting time.
As already discussed in the Slashdot story about this, the speed-up is only for authorized media, i.e. stuff from big companies that you have to pay for. You won't be able to get whatever obscure music or films you want for free at high speeds.
Unfortunately that is par for the course here. That's why people making commercial software, games, media, movies, don't aim them at the slashdot / digg generation any more. Who wants to entertain people who are whining, thieving pains in the ass?
I work in the media. We long since gave up giving a shit what teenagers want from TV. The marketplace is the 30+ viewer who isn't scared of buying the DVD.
It's not that the media doesn't understand the youth. its that the youth get what they pay for, ie: fuck all.
What a fucking shock. The person who actually creates something is modded as a troll, and the person who's whining about how it's his god-given right to copy anything he possibly can gets called insightful.
I didn't say it was my god given right. I said it was my legal right, and it is.
Personally I question how someone can be an artist, and yet know so little correct information about the laws that protect your trade.
Either way however, yes, your post is a troll. You were being spiteful, mean, insulting, and injecting no useful information into the conversation, and your statements are factually incorrect (possibly lies, depending)
Where as MY info however is reflected in US law, and also quite insightful as some of these 'artists' clearly are trying to 'steal' from me (DRM serves no other purpose.)
[* Steal used in the same sense you were using the word, not in the legal, moral, or dictionary sense of the word.]
I admit, my 'get a job' comment, while true, was a tad of a flame. But that was about it.
Finally, it is Quite hard to form a perfectly insightful non-flame non-troll reply to someone who is being irrational in their posts. I seriously would love to debate the issue, but I want my words to not fall on deaf ears, and by the tone of your post I don't believe you even care to discuss this rationally, only to push your agenda. If I come off as a troll at all, it is out of my frustration at that fact.
But I will try anyway. Please read this before blowing it off as BS, or hitting reply.
If you still after reading it through disagree with me, then I will leave you to it...
The only reason you or any artist is granted copyright, is NOT just for profit. Profit is a side benefit.
Copyright in its first forms was 100% a control method used by kings and rulers to silence those that would say bad things against them. I'm not claiming you are, but if you were to try to argue for that style of copyright again, you will have no friends here, or in any first world nation for that matter.
Afterwards, copyright became a tool to better man kind with science and art. This was the last version of it before now.
That is to say, if your work of art could not benefit man kind at all, there is no point in offering you a copyright at all. I also highly doubt you are arguing for that, as then you would have no recourse what so ever, nor anything to complain about anyway.
So, clearly, the only reason you get a copyright on your work at all is to benefit man kind. This used to be a deal struck between the people and the artists. The people give up some rights so the artist can gain, and at the same time, the artist loses some rights so the people can gain. This deal was, the people lose for a few years the right to copy that work, so the artist gains a monopoly on distribution to recoup their costs. In exchange, the artist loses the right to 'own' that work for ever, and the people gain the right to do with that work as they please.
Yes, that second part comes after the first, thus the 'limited time' part of copyright.
The problem here is, artists are not paying their end of the deal. They are NOT giving up the full rights to their work to better man kind. When I say 'they' I don't mean ALL of them of course. But they tend to use things like DRM which is effectively (assuming it would work at all) a lock that keeps it from the public once you stop caring about it. It's a little like writing a bad check, post-dated, but knowing it won't be good at that time.
So the reaction happens. Similarly, once you write a person bad checks enough, they will simply stop accepting them. If you try to pay with credit that never gets repaid, they start demanding their stuff back (repo.)
What we are doing now is not accepting your bad check type payments any longer, thus not honoring your copyright.
Granted, there are artists that have NOT screwed the public at all, and yes they are being harmed by the actions of
The decision of the Japanese authorities to cut off Japanese people from file sharing may be more of aspect of Japanese culture than a legal decision. File sharing is the fastest growing way of distributing cultural works (yes, even Brittany Spears pop tunes are cultural works) from outside Japan to Japan. This may be a sign that the Japanese authorities have come to believe that non-Japanese culture has become too prevalent in Japanese society.
Japan has never been a democracy. It has always been a rigid authoritarian culture. When the authorities decide to act, they simply announce their decision and everyone obeys. Japan did close themselves off from the west before for centuries between the late 1600s until the 1850s. This happened after the authorities decided that Western ways were becoming too powerful and were beginning to threaten their power. It may be happening again.
And, of course, it may be a total clusterfuck by a group of totally clueless bullies who have no idea of what they are fooling with. But then again, for young Japanese, what's the difference?
Human civilization can and will devour itself trying to bring this sort of thing to a halt. Why? Because it's always gone on, on some level or another, and always will go on, on some level or another.
Prostitution is more illegal than file-sharing is. There are always efforts in most places in the world to stop it, but the best those efforts are ever able to do is slow it down a little. We're talking tens of thousands of YEARS here, people, and it hasn't been stamped out -- and never will be either.
Want to really stop it, and everything else society at large deems "unacceptable"? Then you need the ability to mass-erase an idea from people's minds all at once, along with every material reference to said idea, because you can't kill an idea: You can't stop the signal, Mal. Ah, but there's a problem there, too, isn't there? If any government or individual had that sort of power over people, then we're living in a world that makes 1984 look like amateur night -- and from there the human race would likely last about another two generations, tops, before completely dying out.
Want another example of what I'm talking about? Drugs. The world, for all of recorded human history and beyond, I'm sure, has had a problem with intoxicants of all kinds. Every culture does or has, at one time or another, tried to stamp them out. They all failed, didn't they, and for the most part our own efforts here in the U.S. are largely a waste of time, money, and resources; none of those efforts have or can really do much of anything to affect the idea of intoxicants. Remember Prohibition? Yeah, that worked real well, didn't it?
As I see it we, as a race, have three directions we can go to address this class of issue:
1) We can stop fighting it, accept it, and try to develop ways to work with it so that it doesn't necessarily have to be a zero-sum game all the time.
2) We can fight it tooth and nail to the last, hoping that it's actually possible to erase an idea from human consciousness.
3) We can continue the cat-and-mouse games that this class of things has always been surrounded by and interwoven with, and the people who get caught at them pay the penalty for being careless.
Where we are now is #3. What I WANT to see is #1 -- but I don't think we're evolved enough to get there yet. Where some authorities and most corporations want to go is #2 -- and they're ice-skating uphill if they try.
You are assuming I don't pay for my music. I do. Other than maybe 10 songs (SONGS, not albums!) everything I have as .mp3 which I didn't make myself is paid for.
.mp3 download directly. I refuse.
Oh yes, I create mp3s too! I would not call it art at all however, nor do I do so to sell them, generally they are recordings of things I wish to keep and archive. It's not some magical ability to which you alone are granted with.
The article, and issue, is about illegal file sharing.
I rip or download EVERY single album I buy.
I refuse to pay twice for this right, no matter the fact it's copyright violation to do so, or in your little world, 'stealing'.
I have never once in my life paid for a
I have not downloaded a single song in over two years. Wanna know why? Because I also have not bought a single album in two years.
Yes, I left that fact out earlier on purpose, mainly to trap you into arguing with me.
However by US copyright law, I am still violating copyright, or 'stealing' as you put it. Every one of your arguments still technically applies to me.
I wish I knew who you were, simply so I knew what art you created, so I can be sure to never buy or download your stuff. This horrid assumption that all pirates don't pay for what they download is what pisses me off.
And yes, I know there ARE pirates that will download your works and never pay. Despite that being wrong, your attitude doesn't make me feel too sympathetic towards you for it.
Just a little story (that matters not to you or anyone else but me)
When I was in middle school, the first band I really liked was Metallica. I own every album they made up to a point. The first 6 are on tape, the rest are on CD, with one (the black album) I actually paid for both the tape AND CD (before I discovered file sharing.)
Every album I bought as a tape, I later downloaded. Every CD before a certain point I ripped to mp3. The CDs after that point I ripped to mp3 myself.
Right up to their S&M album, which I also bought, a 2 CD set.
That was the last, and they have released albums after that too. Metallica also makes the same claim, that music I paid them for I am stealing if I don't pay them a second time for the mp3 form.
I have not bought, or downloaded, any of their albums since.
I am 30 now, and don't particularly enjoy their style of music anymore. Actually I haven't for quite some time, but more remember when I did, and more important, how much I did at the time. That is why I continued to buy their music for a time.
At least up to two years ago, I would have continued doing it as well, if they wouldn't have continuously called me a thief and threaten legal action against me. It's not that I can't prove every single mp3 I own matches to a CD or tape I own too.
I have quite the impressive CD collection. My mp3 collection does not sound as impressive, a whopping 9gb, because other than a very small handful of songs as I said, my mp3's match the CDs I own.
As I said before, I will leave you to your beliefs...
And I am sorry for this reply at all.