Slashdot Mirror
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.'"
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!
The original conviction was in 2006, and it was then taken to the High Court which has only just overturned it.
As the article on Slashdot indicates, the 2006 ruling was overturned recently, which is why it's news.
You can google for more info, but many articles fail to convey how incredibly popular this program was in Japan. In 2006, it was reported that 1 in 3 computers had this program installed. Add that to the fact that most folks in Japan had very fast Broadband speeds even in 2006, you can imagine the amount of files that exchanged hands.
I'm glad to see that the correct ruling has been made, finally...
I'm somewhat confused. The ruling was in 2006? Why are we hearing about this now?
It seems obvious: the original ruling was in 2006, the appeals-court ruling is recent.
We live, as we dream -- alone....
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 got overturned now.
Before it was just part of the usual corporate shenanigans. Now, we might very well be witnessing one of the first signs of sanity amongst the human species since the invention of the internets.
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.
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.)
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.
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
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.