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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.'"
Congratulations on your purchase of a brand new nigger! If handled properly, your apeman will give years of valuable, if reluctant, service.
INSTALLING YOUR NIGGER.
You should install your nigger differently according to whether you have purchased the field or house model. Field niggers work best in a serial configuration, i.e. chained together. Chain your nigger to another nigger immediately after unpacking it, and don't even think about taking that chain off, ever. Many niggers start singing as soon as you put a chain on them. This habit can usually be thrashed out of them if nipped in the bud. House niggers work best as standalone units, but should be hobbled or hamstrung to prevent attempts at escape. At this stage, your nigger can also be given a name. Most owners use the same names over and over, since niggers become confused by too much data. Rufus, Rastus, Remus, Toby, Carslisle, Carlton, Hey-You!-Yes-you!, Yeller, Blackstar, and Sambo are all effective names for your new buck nigger. If your nigger is a ho, it should be called Latrelle, L'Tanya, or Jemima. Some owners call their nigger hoes Latrine for a joke. Pearl, Blossom, and Ivory are also righteous names for nigger hoes. These names go straight over your nigger's head, by the way.
CONFIGURING YOUR NIGGER
Owing to a design error, your nigger comes equipped with a tongue and vocal chords. Most niggers can master only a few basic human phrases with this apparatus - "muh dick" being the most popular. However, others make barking, yelping, yapping noises and appear to be in some pain, so you should probably call a vet and have him remove your nigger's tongue. Once de-tongued your nigger will be a lot happier - at least, you won't hear it complaining anywhere near as much. Niggers have nothing interesting to say, anyway. Many owners also castrate their niggers for health reasons (yours, mine, and that of women, not the nigger's). This is strongly recommended, and frankly, it's a mystery why this is not done on the boat
HOUSING YOUR NIGGER.
Your nigger can be accommodated in cages with stout iron bars. Make sure, however, that the bars are wide enough to push pieces of nigger food through. The rule of thumb is, four niggers per square yard of cage. So a fifteen foot by thirty foot nigger cage can accommodate two hundred niggers. You can site a nigger cage anywhere, even on soft ground. Don't worry about your nigger fashioning makeshift shovels out of odd pieces of wood and digging an escape tunnel under the bars of the cage. Niggers never invented the shovel before and they're not about to now. In any case, your nigger is certainly too lazy to attempt escape. As long as the free food holds out, your nigger is living better than it did in Africa, so it will stay put. Buck niggers and hoe niggers can be safely accommodated in the same cage, as bucks never attempt sex with black hoes.
FEEDING YOUR NIGGER.
Your Nigger likes fried chicken, corn bread, and watermelon. You should therefore give it none of these things because its lazy ass almost certainly doesn't deserve it. Instead, feed it on porridge with salt, and creek water. Your nigger will supplement its diet with whatever it finds in the fields, other niggers, etc. Experienced nigger owners sometimes push watermelon slices through the bars of the nigger cage at the end of the day as a treat, but only if all niggers have worked well and nothing has been stolen that day. Mike of the Old Ranch Plantation reports that this last one is a killer, since all niggers steal something almost every single day of their lives. He reports he doesn't have to spend much on free watermelon for his niggers as a result. You should never allow your nigger meal breaks while at work, since if it stops work for more than ten minutes it will need to be retrained. You would be surprised how long it takes to teach a nigger to pick cotton. You really would. Coffee beans? Don't ask. You have no idea.
MAKING YOUR NIGGER WORK.
Niggers are very, very averse to work of any kind. The nigger's most
Welcome to Niggerbuntu
Niggerbuntu is a Linux-based operating system consisting of Free and Open Source software for laptops, desktops, and servers. Niggerbuntu has a clear focus on the user and usability - it should Just Work, even if the user has only the thinking capacities of a sponge. the OS ships with the latest Gnomrilla release as well as a selection of server and desktop software that makes for a comfortable desktop experience off of a single installation CD.
It also features the packaging manager ape-ghetto, and the challenging Linux manual pages have been reformatted into the new 'monkey' format, so for example the manual for the shutdown command can be accessed just by typing: 'monkey shut-up -h now mothafukka' instead of 'man shutdown'.
Absolutely Free of Charge
Niggerbuntu is free software, and available to you free of charge, as in free beer or free stuffs you can get from looting. It's also Free in the sense of giving you rights of Software Freedom. The freedom, to run, copy, steal, distribute, study, share, change and improve the software for any purpose, without paying licensing fees.
Free software as in free beer !
Niggerbuntu is an ancient Nigger word, meaning "humanity to monkeys". Niggerbuntu also means "I am what I am because of how apes behave". The Niggerbuntu Linux distribution brings the spirit of Niggerbuntu to the software world.
The dictator Bokassa described Niggerbuntu in the following way:
"A subhuman with Niggerbuntu is open and available to others (like a white bitch you're ready to fsck), affirming of others, does not feel threatened by the fact that other species are more intelligent than we are, for it has a proper self-assurance that comes from knowing that it belongs to the great monkey specie."
We chose the name Niggerbuntu for this distribution because we think it captures perfectly the spirit of sharing and looting that is at the heart of the open source movement.
Niggerbuntu - Linux for Subhuman Beings.
The rain was getting harder. It was now precisely 11:51 PM, and Mark was into his fifth beer. He was feeling pretty invincible but the night was young, and he intended to get wasted before it was all over. He had put in a rough week at work and he deserved it.
He lit another cigarette. He and his drinkin' buddies sat in their traditional circle, in Ian's apartment. The talk wandered from sex to work, back to sex, to basketball, finally settling on sex. Mark had eaten lunch at Taco Bell, and had drunk four cups of coffee between lunchtime and quitting. In addition, the beers were beginning to settle in. And now, at 11:51 PM, Mark had to take a shit. He stood up. "Shit break," he announced. It was customary among this group to make such an announcement.
Mark walked to the bathroom. As he locked the door behind him, thunder boomed. It was storming out there.
He pulled his pants down and sat on the toilet. Ian's bathroom was a mess. He counted five empty toilet paper rolls, two paperbacks, and yesterday's newspaper. His friends laughed about something. The lights flickered for a moment, and the pre-shit growl came from within. He could feel the product lined up inside him for disposal. Then, he began to push.
Plop. The first piece fell to the water. Then some movement, and Mark felt the main feature inside him, the mother lode. He grunted softly as he squeezed it out. It crackled past his sphincter, and splashed neatly into the bowl.
Then another one queued up, and came out. It was almost as big as its predecessor. Mark would have well-purged bowels tonight, he realized with a smirk. He heard thunder again, closer this time.
Another one? Jeez, he thought. When was my last shit? It ventured forth, Mark's muscles helping it out. It was the biggest one so far. The shit's passage through his anus, that rarest mix of pain and pleasure, was longer than any he could remember. Ahhhh...the stout log advanced with conviction. This was definitely going to be his finest creation; this was a huge one. Still grinning, he wondered if Ian had a camera.
He pushed. Peering between his legs, past his genitals, he saw that it had reached the water. This was like seeing the longest freight train ever. Damn, it was a wide one. And it was still attached! And there was more! He pushed more, harder. It kept coming. He couldn't even feel the end of this one yet; soon it was bending, folding on itself like a sundae topping. Mark stopped pushing and caught his breath. He was sweating; he realized that however long this piece of shit was, it wasn't nearly all the way out yet. He still couldn't feel the end.
He pushed, he strained, it kept coming. His intestines couldn't be that damn long, but this shit just wouldn't quit. In fact, he was feeling the diarrhoeal urgency of *having* to shit. He dutifully answered nature's call, and pushed harder. His efforts were rewarded with more shit. His sphincter was too strained to even pinch the loaf off. It was whole and complete.
He couldn't feel the end.
Fear now came to Mark. He flushed the toilet to make room for more. Even as the bowl refilled, the cramps rose up, and he pushed. Within seconds, the shit extended from his anus to bottom of the bowl. The harder he pushed, the more he had to shit. And it was getting worse. He scarcely had time to catch his breath; his face was quite red as he grunted and struggled to keep up. The shit seemed endless. He looked between his legs again, and gasped as he saw that the bowl was fully a quarter filled with his product, the water dangerously high. The tank wasn't even done filling, but he flushed again. Unfortunately, the plumbing was unable to handle the volume of feces, and the toilet backed up. Mark jumped when the cold water touched his buttocks.
It was now 11:57. Thunder roared outside as water and shit particles flowed onto the tile.
Mark's pants were bunched about his ankles, and he was in pain. The shit advanced relentlessly as he stumbled into the bathtub. He was almost panicking now, and
1,500,000 yen is about equal to $16,000 US.
No penguins were harmed in the making of this post.
I first read this as "Japanese Ruling Against Whiny Dev Overturned On Appeal" and immediately thought "well no wonder they ruled against him. Damn I hate whiny people!
suddenoutbreakofcommonsense
I'm somewhat confused. The ruling was in 2006? Why are we hearing about this now?
Am I misunderstanding the part that says: "will not be required to pay a 1.5 million yen fine levied by a December 2006 Kyoto District Court ruling."?
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.
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?
"Chance favors only the prepared mind." -Archimedes
He was actually caught uploading copyrighted material from his Winny client.
Slink around, shuffling your feet and bobbing your neck like the lazy retard you are.
Walk down the middle of the street because you don't know what a sidewalk is for.
Hang out at carwashes and mini-marts because everybody knows these are the best places to be a dope, I mean dope.
If you're a nigger bitch, shit three nigger babies into the world before 17 years of age. This assures that welfare money will support you, so your nigger men have more time to commit crimes.
And give REAL honest black people a bad name.
Oh yes, make sure each nigger baby has a different father.
Bastardize the English language in the name of nigger culture.
Make sure that several terms have multiple meanings and others have ambiguous meanings and that only 50% of nigger words are even complete words. Real niggers will know what you're trying to say.
As a culture, make sure there are always more blacks in prison than in college at any given time.
Hang out in packs of 10 to 15 and make sure everyone acts as annoying as possible. This helps to promote nigger individuality.
Always talk loud enough so everyone in the 'hood can fucking hear you, and if they are niggers, they will know what your saying, bro.
Wear clothes that are 10 sizes too big, making sure the pants hang off your ass.
Park at least 5 junk cars in your yard while being careful not to use the driveway. It's OK to abandon them in the street as long as it's in front of someone else's crib.
Exaggerate every motion, every tonal inflection and grab your dick a lot.
Do drugs, sell drugs, make drugs. Okay, don't REALLY do this, but it IS what niggers do.
Turn your backyard into a junk yard. If you don't have a backyard, turn your mother's into a junk yard.
Travel around leaching off relatives, friends, salvation armies.
Drink cheap wine and malt liquor every day, forgetting that "malt liquor" is just fortified cheap beer.
If you're a nigger buck: fuck anything that moves, no matter how ugly she is. After two 40oz, even the ugliest, fattest nigger bitch will look good.
Be charitable and covet fat, ugly white chicks. After all, they're niggers too. They can't help being so undesirable to white men that they have to fraternize with black dudes on a 20/20 trip. And white ho's are a special trophy too, especially the not so ugly ones.
Spray paint everything in sight with scribbles that mean nothing to white people but mean things to fellow niggers (except niggers from another hood who will probably go after you for tresspassing on their turf).
Use the term "motherfucker" in every sentence. It's one of the most versatile words in the nigger language, being a noun, verb, adjective and complete mini-sentence in event you run out of thoughts.
Stop in the middle of the street, blocking all traffic to converse with fellow niggers and have complete disregard for everyone else.
Overcharge customers at Taco Bell and pocket the difference.
Drive your car while slouched so low that you can barely see over the wheel (gangsta drivin').
Get a job under affirmative action. Then sit around all day pretending that you earned the position and that the other co-workers respect you. Whenever you fuck up, scream "racism!" & hope you get enough Generation X liberals in the jury.
Never, I mean NEVER, take any responsibility for your actions. Always blame others including Asians, Latinos, Mexicans, and especially Whites for your sorry ass stupid lives.
Be sure to get a dog, tie it up in the cold and mud and neglect it until it dies. Then start all over again. Cash must be used because you long ago fucked up your credit and checking account.
Cram 5 generations into a two room government apartment and still be able to neglect your kids.
Then you too can be a true nigger, and anyone who finds any fault with anything you do is automatically a racist. They don't dislike what you do and wish you would do something better with your life, nor do they wish you would realize that other people exist and should be treated with respect. No, they're just racists who hate you because of the color of your skin, and everything bad in your life is their fault. You nigger.
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.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
Admit it. You're all a bunch of thieves. You're like a guy who finds a wad of five dollar bills in the street and gives them to all his vagrant friends instead of turning it over to the authorities like he's supposed to. THIEVES!! This guy should be bustin' rocks!
The difference of course being that the device that you list have abundant uses *other* criminally liable copyright infringing behavior. While P2P software reminds me of the brick of grape solids and sugars sold during prohibition with the label "warning, do not ferment, bottle, and age the product resulting from dissolving this item in water. Doing so will result in producing an illegal alcoholic beverage". ("Nudge, nudge, wink, wink" comes along decades later, but the manufacturers of the product would surely have understood the concept. As surely as the developers of P2P software do.)
digg... errr, sorry... slashdot is becoming more boring a predictable. very little of the posts are informative any longer despite what the mods say.
and it's funny that the political stories have come to a near stop even though all the legislation that supposedly made the united states a nazi nation is still in place. i guess the good fight doesn't mean shit when your boy is in office but suddenly will become a problem again when someone you don't like takes the throne.
did someone say fearmongering?
Just read about it in the newspaper. (Daily Yomiuri, for me.)
Unfortunately, the on-line version leaves off a few things.
For instance, Kaneko's lawyer's pointed out that auto manufacturers would not "be punished if speeding became rampant." (Reported in the print news.)
Also, the on-line version doesn't mention that, "A revised Copyright Law that prohibits users from downloading such peer-to-peer file sharing software will come into force in January." (The last line of the print article.)
Computer memory is just fancy paper, CPUs just fancy pens with fancy erasers; the 'net is just a fancy backyard fence.
Im oread the latest
First, let me just say: YATTA!. With that out of my system.. I, for one, am impressed by this turn of events! Was this appeal processed high enough in the Japanese court system to set precedence for similar cases in the future?
It doesn't really come as a surprise that this crap isn't considered passable in Japan though. Don't the Japanese people generally pride themselves in being sensible, logic folk? They have the worlds strongest work morale, longest life expectancy and best quality of life for the elderly. They are a huge player in the world of economy despite being a tiny island with very little to work with in the way of traditional valuable resources (oil, coal, etc.). Why should they start letting Sony et al harass their people? IKKEEEE, JAPANESE JUDGE-SAMA!
That being said, I am a "thief". I am aware that downloading something gives the creator no income and I do believe that content creators should make money if they make something people like. However, I never buy an album simply because I know that the artist who actually did the work gets a meager percent or two of the money I spend on his stuff while the record store and certain associations get all the rest.
A carpenter might bill you $100 an hour and take home $35 (35%) with his employer claiming the rest for insurance, sick-leave and all the management and responsibility the carpenter is freed from. An album costs about $30 and the artist gets about $1-2 for each album sold (about 3-4%). Until this changes, until artists truly open their eyes to the fact that they can make the same money without the backing of a record company while charging one hell of a lot less for their works, I will not spend my money lining the pockets of RIAA/MPAA executives!
Note, I do enjoy a good concert, be it a local band or Metallica, and I go to the movies whenever something seemingly worthwhile comes along. Also, I do buy movies I really like (like the Terminator movies, LotR Extended Editions, The Matrix, a few Jackie Chan movies, Marvel superhero movies, etc.). I just don't want to spend a crapload of money on a worthless plastic disk that I cannot even copy for personal use or put on my mp3 player, with no way of knowing that I like all the content on the disk AND knowing the artist gets next to nothing for my purchase.
Just read about it in the newspaper. (Daily Yomiuri, for me.)
Unfortunately, the on-line version leaves off a few things.
For instance, Kaneko's lawyer's pointed out that auto manufacturers would not "be punished if speeding became rampant." (Reported in the print news.)
Also, the on-line version doesn't mention that, "A revised Copyright Law that prohibits users from downloading such peer-to-peer file sharing software will come into force in January." (The last line of the print article.)
I think the print version of the Yomiuri may have been slightly off on that point... the sources I have seem to say the law is dealing with copyrighted works, not programs that can be used to download them. Copyright act amended
Japan Strengthens Copyright Law Basically, the new legal ground seems to be that downloading works protected by copyright without permission is now officially a crime, but they have to prove the defendent knew the file was not distributed legally. Up until now, prosecution has been mostly (if not completely?) uploaders. Nothing is being said about downloading the software itself.
If you want it from the original source, and you can read Japanese, this link has the text of the bill itself in PDF format. I have not translated it so I can't verify whether the English news sources are correct in their interpretation or not.
-- Joren
And assumed this was another story about jwz.
Kudos to the high court.
Chop sticks can feed people, or be poked in people's eyes. Chop sticks don't violate laws, people violate laws. Technology is neutral.
Hope is the currency of fools
Winny was interesting as it was hard to trace.
Not like the "log in real time" p2p ip and file name in plain text.
Like with Skype and the German gov, someone may have found a way in?
Did a contracted gov developer find the hole?
Was a deal done?
All the chat about MS developer tools, gov tracking and the source code- stops?
Like this Winny becomes p2p history rather than a tech cause celeb in court.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
"A revised Copyright Law that prohibits users from downloading such peer-to-peer file sharing software will come into force in January."
I'm curious how they define the type(s) of software that are illegal. I don't need my door kicked in by federal marshalls executing an extradition order because an FTP client I downloaded happened to come from a Japanese server...
War as we knew it was obsolete
Nothing could beat complete denial
- Emily Haines
Since it fostered a community of covert P2P in Japan. Winny's successor, Share, and its successor, Perfect Dark, are both programs that use Freenet-like encryption and ensure anonymity of the user. IIRC the dev only posts new versions on Freenet and Share to begin with.
While the encryption isn't perfect, it is much more secure than torrents; with Share or Perfect Dark you can't even reliably tell who uploaded or downloaded what and when.
Read the outline and looked at the other five PDFs. It appears that, in addition to the outline (1251916_1_3), we have a statement of goals (1251916_2_3), a summary of changes (1251916_3_3), a statement of reasoning (1251916_4_3), a side-by-side comparison (1251916_5_3) (in vertical text, hey), and a copy of the affect elements of the current law (1251916_6_1) (not real sure about the last one).
I've read the outline. The rest of this is going to take a little time to digest (80 pages).
The outline, at any rate, doesn't indicate anything that would directly make downloading file sharing software illegal.
Computer memory is just fancy paper, CPUs just fancy pens with fancy erasers; the 'net is just a fancy backyard fence.
Hmm... most of the Linux distros have some or other p2p software installed. Will downloading fedora or debian become illegal in Japan after jan? Btw, does the law make distributing them on a CD illegal? :)
I'm hoping to have some time to read the links joren posted, so I can analyze the situation properly.
It looks like there is specific legal language forbidding setting up a manufacturing process to illegally replicate copyrighted works, and this law would explicitly extend that to the internet and to digital copying without specific media.
Many people assume that it is obvious that file sharing programs must be nothing more than an effective manufacturing process for materials that (under current law) are now automatically under copyright. And since file sharing programs don't provide a way to ask permission to copy, it would all seem to be quit illicit.
I have read enough of it to see that appropriate exceptions for backup and certain other legitimate purposes are in place. So I'm pretty sure that certain people who want to profit on even advertising themselves will find that the law doesn't have nearly the effect that they hope.
Computer memory is just fancy paper, CPUs just fancy pens with fancy erasers; the 'net is just a fancy backyard fence.
Since he's basically free and clear, Kaneko could do the bug patching necessary to staunch the viruses that ran rampant on the Winny network and forced many users to migrate to Share and Perfect Dark.
Since he would be fixing known bugs that reduce computer security, they would have a hard time pining copyright violations again on him, provided there are some double jeopardy conviction protections.
I also wonder if there would be any motivation to opensource the code now...