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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.'"
You're reading this HTML file right now. Guess they'd better cut me off for sharing it with you.
Lets hope this really happens, let hope that ISP's in Japan really are this stupid and the Japanese citizens do the only thing that is logical. Cancel their service since it is no longer of any use to them so that ISP after ISP goes tits up.
At least in holland a lot of ISP's are happy to advertise with 'download music fast' without having any music service whatsoever. Copyright infringement is one major reason to get one of the more expensive subscriptions, if everyone just went with the cheapest most minimal subscription, you know the one that is plenty for email, the web, gaming etc etc, then ISP's will really feel it in their revenue.
On the longer term, lets hope the japanese ISP's learn very quickly that they opened the flood gates. If they can monitor this, expect everyone to come out. Just block winny? Don't count on it, every P2P program will be on it, and why just P2P, why not home run MMORPG servers, why not material that the goverment doesn't want you to host. Why not check every email for illegal material? Congrats, the ISP's in japan just become the enforcer for everyone with a gripe about the internet. There is reason the old telecoms never ever wished to do that with telephone services and they claim they have to keep a line open unless they get an outside complaint even if it is bloody obvious a phone line is only used for criminal activity. You do NOT want to become the police of your customers.
Lets hope that this turns sour for the Japanese ISP's very quickly, because if this doesn't go totally wrong for the ISP's in question, we will get it elsewhere.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
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.
I personally think that 99.99999% of the reason ISP's are coming round to the idea of punishing file sharers is that doing so will cut their costs, thus extending the profitable lifetime of their current levels of infrastructure. After all, they need to make room for this new media on demand thing.
I don't for a second think it's because they are concerned about copyrights. I doubt they'd admit this though.
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.
The main target for this act is to stop a file sharing program / network called Winny. Winny is one of the top File sharing program / network in Japan.
Many Japanese anime fansub groups get their original copy of the show via this network. I am sure there are tons of other stuff being shared on Winny, judging from the fact that they have a Software Download board where copyrighted materials are shared.
The creator is facing similar claims to that of the Bittorrent creator, where he has created a tool that can be used to share files with the advantage of being anonymous.
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.
It doesn't help that Winny was created for anonymous file sharing I suppose. But it's rather strange, I thought most people migrated to Share when the creator of Winny was arrested, and are now starting to move on to Perfect Dark now that anonymous file sharing isn't possible in Share. I'd think the latter two users would be targeted as well.
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?
THe MPAA and RIAA would be drooling if Verizon would be dumb enough to do this. Billions in capital just sitting in the bank and knowingly violate copyright laws.
This idea wont work in the west with modern IP laws protecting copyright. The companies will be held liable. Its the same reason alot of universities ban file sharing here in the US. The legal bills are not worth it not to mention they can save with infrastructure.
http://saveie6.com/
Actually, the Japanese tend to use a P2P called "Winny", which is loosely based off of the now defunct WinMX program. I haven't seen many of them on any of the other P2P programs much.
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.
plenty of japanese porn is done via bittorrent. not that I watch that filth, some guy told me about it. yeah, what a pervert.
In Japan, copyright enforcement is far stronger. Selling illegal copies of Gundam DVDs on an auction site will not only get you arrested, but it will get you on the 6 o'clock news. Counterfit merchandise is illegal to bring into the country, and will get confiscated at customs if you are caught. Im not sure I agree that the copyright here is that much stronger, there seem to be a lot of weird things going on. In Akihabara there are people on the street selling DVDs full of ROMs and bootleg porn every Saturday. They have been there for years. Every video rental store rents music CDs as well as DVDs and they have a stack of blank DVDR CDR and even minidisc media right next to the check out for people to burn themselves copies. The rental stores even have dirt cheap region free Chinese import DVD players stacked 6 feet high on every floor. Also, there are hundreds and hundreds of Manga cafe's (a place to hang out. drink coffee and read comics) with thousands of comics and hundreds of PS2 games available for customers to use. I highly doubt they are all officially licensed. Hard to believe though this may be convenience stores sell magazines with detailed articles on "how to use bit torrent" and "how to hack your PSP for iso images" It seems the government here has been spooked by the specter of P2P without really looking at all the other infringing that is going on.