Japanese Ruling Against Winny Dev Overturned On Appeal

Joren writes "In Japan, in a case that has been five years running, the Osaka High Court on Thursday overturned a lower court ruling that had convicted and fined the developer of controversial file-sharing software Winny of assisting violations of the Copyright Law. Originally charged in 2004, Isamu Kaneko, 39, a former research assistant at the University of Tokyo, was declared not guilty, and will not be required to pay a 1.5 million yen fine levied by a December 2006 Kyoto District Court ruling. 'Merely being aware of the possibility that the software could be abused does not constitute a crime of aiding violations of the law, and the court cannot accept that the defendant supplied the software solely to be used for copyright violations,' presiding judge Masazo Ogura said. Furthermore, in siding with the defense, the appeal ruling stated that 'Anonymity is not something to be looked on as illegal, and it is not something that applies specifically to copyright violations. The technical value of the software is neutral.'"

Comments

Criminal vs Civil

[v(*_*)vvvv]

This is the criminal case. Anywhere else where there is a P2P related case, they are usually civil, like a record label suing for damages. Only in Japan would the cops take you away in cuffs based on a tip from Sony Records. Well, maybe apart from if you were selling pirated DVDs on Hollywood Blvd...

Of course, this is truly absurd. If he was found guilty, they might as well arrest the inventor of every device that allows data to transfer while retaining the original. Copiers, recorders, VCRs, CDRs, DVDs... They have all been extensively utilized for criminally liable copyright infringing behavior, and surely the inventors would have had a slight clue about their use cases.

A court judge with some sense? Finally.

[Capsy]

It's about time people are held responsible for what their legitimate software does. I'm actually quite curious though. Does the judge really have sense, or is he tired of hearing about cases like this?

1,500,000 yen = zero Dollars

[icebike]

1,500,000 yen is about equal to $16,000 US.

Or in this case, zero.

Seriously, this represents a fairly substantial judicial bitch-slap of the lower court. The ruling not only rebukes the plaintiff but also the court that bought their theory.