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

FYI

[TiredGamer]

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

Re:2006?

[Sodakar]

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...

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.

Re:Criminal vs Civil

[IgnoramusMaximus]

Well then the pirates should add a counter ads to their pirated copies, mocking the original (like they already do with the MPAA ads in some torrents in the West). I see it something like this: The camera guy starts shooting, the cops bust in with guns drawn, the camera guy's lens flips up and a rocket launcher engages the cops, who back out, return with a tank, at which point the camera guy extends an antena and calls Gojira, the cops call Mothra, Tokyo gets flattened ... you get the idea ...

In fact, who needs the movie they were pirating?

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.

Re:downloading a file sharing program will be ille

[Joren]

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.