This week, Japanese police have been carrying out raids all over the country against individuals alleged to have uploaded copyright works to the Internet. In total, 18 people were arrested for sharing movies, anime, music, games and software.
A 31-year old Japanese man has admitted to uploading 3 TV-shows and sharing 165 more on BitTorrent after he was arrested by Tokyo Police’s Cyber Crime unit. In his confession the man told the investigators that he used BitTorrent because he believed it was free of viruses and police. He was proven wrong on the latter.
Cyber-crime police have arrested a man who uploaded the movie ‘Wanted’ to a file-sharing network. The man, Kazushi Hirata, was detained after he added custom subtitles to a pirated copy of the movie and uploaded it to the Internet, in advance of its Japanese theatrical release. He faces up to 10 years in jail.
Following a huge increase in complaints from the music, movie and software industries, the four major Japanese ISP organizations have agreed that they will work with copyright holders to track down copyright infringing file-sharers and disconnect them from the internet.
Filesharing is getting more popular in Japan according to a recent survey by the Recording Industry Association of Japan (RIAJ). 3.5 percent of the Japanese Internet users is actively using p2p software to share files, compared to 2.7 percent last year.
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