Inspired by the principles behind the Freenet network, the Winny application attempted to make its users anonymous and although this was largely achieved, flaws were later exploited by police and copyright holders.

Kaneko always insisted that his software was not designed with copyright infringement in mind, but that did not stop him being targeted by the police. During May 2004, Kaneko was arrested by the High-tech Crime Taskforce of the Kyoto Prefectural Police on suspicion of conspiracy to commit copyright infringement.

After being released on bail the next month, the case against him started in September 2004 at the Kyoto District Court. During December 2006 he was found guilty of assisting in the copyright violations of Winny users and sentenced to pay a fine equivalent to $19,200.

Kaneko went on to appeal the decision and in October 2009 the Osaka High Court overturned the decision on the basis that Kaneko had never promoted Winny for illegal uses. This time the prosecution lodged an appeal, which took the case to the highest court in the land.

This week, Japan’s Supreme Court delivered its ruling on the case. The decision of the Osaka High Court was upheld and after 7 long years Kaneko was finally cleared of all charges.

Although there was one dissenting voice, the majority of a panel of five judges agreed that it could not be proven that Kaneko, now 41, had ever intended to promote violations of copyright law by the use of Winny. The decision on whether to break the law lay with users of the software, the judges noted.

Under current law prosecutors can still appeal the decision on technical grounds but assessments in the Japanese media suggest the ruling will stand.

The case has been closely watched by technology advocates who feared that a decision against Kaneko could have resulted in a chilling effect on software innovation. Such was the concern, a domain set up by the development community days after Kaneko’s 2004 arrest received a million hits and raised $100,000 for his defense in just 24 hours.

In the end the Supreme Court’s ruling was in tune with similar decisions around the world. As long as products aren’t marketed for infringing uses, their creators stay within the law.

Source: File-Sharing App Creator Not Guilty of Copyright Infringement

This download trend has not gone unnoticed by the local police either, who recently arrested an unemployed man for sharing 165 TV-shows on BitTorrent.

The 31-year old Shuichiro Tanaka was arrested by Tokyo Police’s Cyber Crime unit and was charged with recording and uploading 3 TV-shows in early June. According to reports, Tanaka also shared 165 more TV-shows between February and July this year.

The videos the man shared on BitTorrent were mainly Japanese variety shows such as “Waratte Iitomo” and “Genius! Shimura Zoo.” According to the police, this is the first time that someone was arrested for copyright infringement on BitTorrent in Japan.

Tanaka has confessed to the charges and stated that he used BitTorrent to avoid running into viruses and the police.

“I did it for people who missed the TV-shows. Because there is a potential for viruses on Winny and others, I used BitTorrent, which I heard police weren’t investigating,” Tanaka told the police while pleading guilty.

Unlike on BitTorrent, viruses are both prevalent and quite aggressive on the Winny network. One virus that surfaced three years ago was specifically targeted at file-sharers and threatened to report them to the police, or kill them if they continued sharing.

Although this is the first arrest of a BitTorrent user, it is certainly not the first file-sharing related case. Last year, a 33-year old Japanese man was arrested for uploading the movie ‘Wanted’ to the Winny network before its Japanese theatrical release. He was later sentenced to two years in prison.

Source: Japanese BitTorrent User Avoids Virus, But Not the Police

Now it is the turn of Japan to target a pre-releaser, this time of the movie ‘Wanted‘. The movie, starring James McAvoy, Morgan Freeman and Angelina Jolie, was released early September in the United States and Europe, but won’t enjoy an official Japanese release until Saturday. The movie is, of course, already available for download on P2P networks in its native English, but thanks to the work of Kazushi Hirata, a 33 year-old from the city of Sendai, the movie is also available with Japanese subtitles.

According to the authorities, after adding his own home-made subtitles to an already-released pirate version of the movie, Hirata uploaded it onto the Winny network, which is hugely popular in Japan. Hirata was tracked down on Thursday by the Kyoto Prefectural Police, who were also responsible for the 2004 arrest of Isamu Kaneko, the creator of the Winny software.

The arrest of Mr Hirata is believed to be the first in Japan relating to the uploading of a pre-release movie. According to a report, he faces up to 10 years in jail and a $95,000 fine.

The Winny network has always been touted as anonymous, and indeed functions on this level to a degree. The police were unable to crack the encryption used by the file-sharing part of the software, however, they did manage to exploit a loophole to identify certain users. Winny’s forum feature fails to protect the anonymity of people who start discussion threads. In the past the police have searched for copyright material in such threads and recorded the IP address of the poster. By initiating a file-transfer but denying connections from all IP addresses apart from the suspected infringer, when someone started to upload to them they knew that the original poster was sharing the illicit material.

Source: Police Arrest ‘Wanted’ P2P Pre-Releaser

“This is a visit from the prevalent Piro virus! Stop P2P! If you don’t I’ll tell the police!” it exclaimed, while another message threatened: “Ah, I see you are using P2P again……if you don’t stop within 0.5 seconds, I’m going to kill you!”

Graham Cluley, a consultant for Sophos said of the virus: “This is one of the most bizarre pieces of malware we have seen in our labs for quite some time, but it’s data-destroying payload is no laughing matter.”

Now, the Japanese police say that they have apprehended the three man gang responsible for the creation and distribution of the virus. One man wrote the code, they say, and the others placed it on file-sharing network, Winny.

However, due to Japanese law, it’s going to be tricky for the police to nail someone for creating the malware. They have a trick up their sleeve though, explains Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant for Sophos: “It isn’t illegal to write viruses in Japan, so the author of the Trojan horse has been arrested for breaching copyright because he used cartoon graphics without permission in his malware.”

The virus creator is a a 24 year old graduate student from Izumisano City in Osaka. It’s claimed he illegally used copyrighted images from an anime television show to create the virus.

The other two members of the group – a 39 year old man from Osaka and a 35 year old man from Hyogo – were also arrested for copyright offenses, unrelated to the virus. The men are suspected of uploading anime episodes onto the Winny network.

One of the images from the virus includes a song about fish-shaped pancakes stuffed with jam, which makes about as much sense as arresting a virus creator for copyright infringement. But hey, this is the 21st century – what did you expect?

Source: Virus Threatened to Kill File-Sharers, Creator Arrested for Copyright Infringement

The survey – carried out online and financed and operated by a trio of industry organizations, similar to their well-known US counterparts – RIAJ (music), the Japanese MPAA and ACC (software) – concluded that the number of internet users sharing authorized media climbed from 3.5 per cent in June 2006, to 9.6 per cent by September 2007, a near 180% increase.

The numbers of files downloaded increased by a large amount too. June 2006 saw an average of 194 files downloaded per user which increased to 481 by September this year. Audio files topped the download charts with 211 per user with video coming in next with 183. People downloaded an average of 43 images, 33 documents and 14 pieces of software.

The survey found that the favorite P2P sharing application in Japan is still Winny with 27 percent. LimeWire, which is very popular in the West took 18.8 per cent of the vote with WinMX sitting at 15 per cent.

BitTorrent, which is incredibly popular all over the world with tens of millions of users, ranked just 6th with 7.4 per cent.

Japan hit the file-sharing news headlines earlier this year when a bizarre virus on the Winny network attacked files and displayed strange messages.

TorrentFreak looks forward to being able to report a dramatic growth in Japanese BitTorrent users next year.

Source: Japanese File-Sharing Population Explodes

It’s reported that one of the images, which includes a song about fish-shaped pancakes stuffed with jam, has a telephone number included although it’s unclear to whom the number belongs.

Another exclaims “This is a visit from the prevalent Piro virus! Stop P2P! If you don’t i’ll tell the police!” while another threatens “Ah, I see you are using P2P again……if you don’t stop within 0.5 seconds, i’m going to kill you!”

Graham Cluley, a consultant for Sophos said of the virus “This is one of the most bizarre pieces of malware we have seen in our labs for quite some time, but it’s data-destroying payload is no laughing matter. It acts as a timely reminder to companies that they may want to control users’ access to P2P file-sharing software not just because they can eat up bandwidth, but also because they can present a security risk to your corporate data.”

Winny is the most popular P2P application in Japan. In 2006 the developer of the Winny file-sharing software was found guilty and fined 1.5 million yen for assisting users in copyright violations.

Source: Bizarre Virus Threatens to Kill File-Sharers

However, since BitTorrent is the best p2p protocol to distribure large files, it still generates almost 50 percent of the p2p traffic according to chachelogic’s data.

Source: Filesharing gains popularity in Japan