In today’s file-sharing world we might think in terms of Kim Dotcom against the U.S. Government or The Pirate Bay v Hollywood, but these copyright-related rivalries mean very little in the East. Indeed, today they have a much bigger battle to contend with. It seems that in the land of the rising sun the players in an anti-piracy campaign run by the movie industry have grown so popular that they have shifted into popular culture.

NO MORE 映画泥棒 (NO MORE Movie Thief) is an anti-piracy ad played in Japanese theaters to advise against the illegal camming of movies. Since its launch in 2007 it has featured two main characters. The first is Camera Otoko (Camera Man), a guy in a black suit with his head replaced by a camcorder. The second, Patrol Lamp Otoko (Patrol Lamp Man), is a blue-suited gentleman with a red flashing police light for a head.

Somewhat unexpectedly (or perhaps not) the odd duo have proven a hit with the Japanese. In addition to inspiring hundreds of pieces of neat and sometimes unsettling artwork they are appearing more and more in popular culture. Even the vibrant Japanese cosplay scene is feeding on their inspiration.

But now, thanks to a great spot by ITMedia.co.jp, the latest wave in the NO MORE craze is about to hit the streets. To commemorate the camming phenomenon both characters have been turned into action figurines by toy giant Bandai, each designed to be worn as accessories.

Currently Bandai are offering several different designs for 3024 yen ($28.99) a set, a steal for those with a deep desire to outwardly depict the camming of a movie and ultimately the arrest and imprisonment of the perpetrator. According to Google Translate, they also come with a snack that looks like gum, perfect for those on a diet looking to cut down on theater food bills.

Up next week, Bandai releases action figures of the entire original Pirate Bay crew and a double pack featuring Kim Dotcom versus Chris Dodd. We wish…..

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

On October 1 2012, Japan introduced brand new legislation targeting users that not only upload (distribute) music without permission, but also those who merely download. There were no half measures on punishments either, with infringers facing up to two years in jail.

With those using P2P software to obtain music naturally being the most vulnerable to monitoring, the effects on those networks were both immediate and dramatic. According to data gathered by the General Association of Copyright for Computer Software, populations of three key file-sharing networks plummeted as the law was introduced and have since failed to recover.

So what effect did this exodus have on the market for recorded music?

According to figures published by the Recording Industry Association of Japan (RIAJ), after the new law was passed physical sales increased, with CDs enjoying a boost of 5% between October 2012 and June 2013 when compared to the period October 2011 to June 2012.

However, when comparing sales during the first eight months of 2012 before the law was introduced with the first eight months of 2013 with the law in effect, a different picture emerges. Total CD music sales this year are down a full 7% on the same period in 2012.

Given the legal threats against file-sharers in place since October 2012, the overall digital market isn’t looking great either, despite subscription services enjoying a sales boost in excess of 500%.

Japan’s NHK News reports that digital sales between October 2012 and June 2013 are down 24% on the same period in the previous year. Furthermore, figures published by the RIAJ show that despite digital album sales being up 52% over the same period in 2012, overall digital sales for the first two quarters of 2013 are fairing even worse, down 26% on the same period last year.

Another shift in the market has been witnessed in the CD album rental market, a popular method of listening to music in Japan. According to the RIAJ, since the introduction of the new legislation rentals have increased by 50%. However, no such boost has been seen in those making purchases.

“The new law has been effective in increasing the amount of CD rentals, but seems unconnected to the number of people who are actually buying music,” RIAJ chief Kenji Takasugi told NHK.

Was that a confession that harsh legislation online doesn’t affect the numbers of people actually buying music? Could be, and consider this. While album rentals go through the roof another interesting thing took place in the first half of 2013 – sales of digital singles dropped 34%. Perhaps those rented albums aren’t simply being listened to and returned?

Nevertheless, Japan is doing rather well overall and is set to become the world’s largest music market, bucking the trend by embracing physical formats while lagging behind on digital. What seems fairly certain for now is that threatening to send people to jail for downloading hasn’t helped much at all.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

In 2010 things came to a head. The leading producers of the 20,000+ adult movies released in Japan each year warned Taiwan that if it didn’t get tough on pirates selling their content on websites and even airing it on TV, legal action would follow.

In a sign of how desperate they had become, the Japanese companies added that if they had no remedy under copyright law, they would sue the pirates for spreading obscene material and damaging the health of Taiwan’s children.

As crazy as it sounds this approach had the potential to work. While authorities have done nothing to protect copyrights of adult material, they do arrest people for distributing obscene material. However, the authorities came to a decision this week and it was bad news all round for the porn companies.

The Taipei District Court Prosecutors Office announced that it would not be pressing charges against any of the Taiwanese companies accused of committing copyright infringement.

The lack of action lies with the current state of the law. Taiwan’s copyright legislation allows downloading within certain limits and uploading within much tighter ones, but does not allow reproduction or distribution of other people’s content on a large scale. However, while regular movies, music and other arts receive protection, porn is very much a second class citizen, and here’s why.

In 1999, Japanese porn producers launched a copyright infringement lawsuit against Taiwanese pirates in the hope of holding them accountable for profiting from their content, but the case proved counter-productive. The Supreme Court decided that since porn movies are obscene they should not be entitled to protection under copyright law. The Prosecutor’s Office saw no reason to challenge that ruling this week.

Furthermore, the adult producer’s claims that the pirates were spreading obscene material and damaging children didn’t gain any ground either. The prosecutors decided that since the pirate sites displayed warnings and blocked minors from accessing their websites then there was no case to answer there either.

The notion that porn shouldn’t receive copyright protection was aired in the United States last year in connection with the thousands of copyright troll lawsuits currently overrunning the nation’s courts. Unfortunately the case was closed before that question could be answered.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

The new legislation, which kicked in October 1 2012, stated that those knowingly downloading copyright infringing material could face a two-year jail sentence or a fine of 2 million yen ($21,640). Existing legislation against uploaders of copyright content already provided for penalties of up to 10 years in prison and a 10 million yen ($108,202) fine.

The Japanese public hadn’t witnessed any large scale enforcement action since the law’s introduction nearly five months ago but all that changed a few days ago.

The National Police Agency’s Cybercrime Project and rightsholders including the Recording Industry Association of Japan have just revealed the results of an intensive three day anti-piracy crackdown.

The police say that they carried out raids on 124 locations in all 47 regions of Japan, to date arresting a total of 27 people for breaches of copyright law. The items being shared and/or downloaded unlawfully include movies, music, TV shows, games and business software.

The Recording Industry Association of Japan confirmed that at least two of the arrests related to their products. The first concerned a 41-year-old who had allegedly uploaded music using the file-sharing software ‘Share’ and the second involved a 42-year-old who allegedly uploaded a video clip using the same tool.

The MPA-affiliated Japan and International Motion Picture Copyright Association (JIMCA) say that a 40-year-old man was arrested February 19 for allegedly uploading copyrighted movies using the P2P software ‘Share’. An earlier raid netted the hardware pictured below.

In addition to the above, several other rights organizations were involved in reporting the remaining alleged infringers to the police. They are the Association of Copyright for Computer Software (ACCS), General Motion Picture Producers Association of Japan (MPAJ), Japan Video Software Association (JVA), General Institute of Japanese Society for Rights of Authors, Composers and Publishers (JASRAC) and the Business Software Alliance (BSA).

While this is the first large coordinated action since the new legislation passed October 1, Japanese police have also conducted smaller operations against alleged file-sharers. They include

• A man arrested for uploading English teaching materials (October 15)
• Three men arrested for uploading video games using WinMX (October 16)
• A man arrested for uploading word processing software to a cloud site (October 22)

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

These miserable specimens of unwanted code nearly always find their way onto users’ machines through deception, masquerading as something desirable but turning out to be something utterly unwanted. Only last week TorrentFreak was exposed to blatant spam disguised as documentary subtitles.

Malware and virus creators rely on similar techniques in order to deliver their payloads but fortunately we have software for dealing with these kinds of attacker. The same cannot be said about those who pollute file-sharing networks with fakes.

In addition to the straight idiots who think that renaming porn videos as kids’ cartoons is still somehow amusing, for years anti-piracy companies have dabbled with the concept of fake files. Nearly all were deliberately marked up as something they’re not in order lure people in one end with excitement and spit them out the other with disappointment.

However, the Japanese government thinks it can do better with a similar scheme, but with one that replaces the end result with enlightenment, the rage with a sense of fear, and those file-sharing urges with those that involve spending money.

Hot on the heels of the 2012 introduction of new tough legislation aimed at reducing unauthorized online file-sharing, local authorities have launched a campaign to draw attention to the perils faced by online pirates. But instead of targeting TV, radio or even social media, the government has gone straight to the source by advertising directly on P2P networks.

At the end of last month, Japan’s Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications in conjunction with movie and music studios announced “Operation Decoy File”, a copyright awareness campaign stuffed inside – you guessed it – fake files.

“To deter illegal distribution of content using P2P file sharing software the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications [and various rightsholder companies and organizations] will until mid-February 2013 conduct experiments to contribute to the enlightenment of users who attempt to download illegal content using the same software,” the Ministry announced.

A translation of the notice (original here, Japanese pdf) is shown below:

A Warning from the Organization to Raise Awareness of Copyright

Files with the same name as this contain content which is in violation of copyright when distributed over P2P networks such as Winny or Share.

Knowingly downloading and of course uploading files over the Internet that are protected by copyright law without the consent of the owner is illegal copyright infringement. Please stop immediately.

Also, from 1 October 2012, downloading content which is known to be available for sale is punishable by a maximum 2-year prison sentence and/or 2,000,000 yen [US$21,000] fine.

Our copyright organization is working to eliminate copyright infringement by file sharing software. In addition to consulting with the police to obtain the disclosure of users’ identities, we want to focus on user education.

Although it’s probably going to prove unpopular with most file-sharers, the experiment does raise some interesting points.

While fake files can be an enormous annoyance – including ones containing anti-piracy warnings – this method does reach the target audience directly. Knowing that a just-downloaded file could’ve have come directly from the authorities could serve as a reasonably powerful deterrent, without the need for user privacy to be compromised in any way.

However, it is also likely that such a scheme will only gain traction with the low hanging fruit, such as users who have difficulty telling the difference between a 360KB pdf and a playable MP3, even if they are zipped up or compressed in some way. Perhaps directing users creatively to an official download could’ve yielded even better results, although including a 25% iTunes discount voucher might be going a little far.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

This decline needs to combated, they insist.

After intensive lobbying by the music industry, in June this year Japan approved an amendment to its Copyright Law that would see downloaders of unauthorized music face stiff criminal penalties in addition to the civil remedies already in place.

The wording here is important. While in some countries downloading copyrighted media without permission is already illegal, it is usually the uploaders (distributors) of content that are targeted in so-called “3 strikes” style campaigns.

While Japan already has the legislative muscle to hit uploaders with up to 10 years in prison and a 10 million yen ($128,300) fine, this new legislation makes criminals of mere downloaders.

From today, knowingly downloading copyright infringing material can result in a two-year jail sentence or a fine of 2 million yen ($25,680). But there could be complications.

Tracking uploaders of infringing material is a fairly simple affair, with rightsholders connecting to file-sharers making available illicit content and logging evidence. However, proving that someone has downloaded content illegally presents a whole new set of issues.

On BitTorrent, for example, rightsholders would have to be the ones actually sending the infringing material to a file-sharer in order to know that he or she is downloading it. This scenario could cause complications, since rightholders already have permission to upload their own content, making the source a legal one.

But for the implications for ‘downloaders’ could be even more widespread. The generally tech-savvy BitTorrent user understands the potential for being targeted for sharing, but by making mere downloading a criminal offense it is now feared that those who simply view an infringing YouTube video could also be subjected to sanctions.

For some rightsholders though, even this kind of draconian regime isn’t enough. As reported in June, music rights groups including the Recording Industry Association of Japan say they have developed a system capable of automatically detecting unauthorized music uploads before they even hit the Internet.

But to do that they need to be able to spy on Internet users’ connections and compare data being transferred with digital fingerprints held in an external database. That can only be achieved with the assistance of Internet service providers who would be asked to integrate the system deeply into their networks.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

Uploading copyright material has been illegal for some time, but the criminalization of downloading has caused some to worry whether simply viewing a pirate music video on YouTube could render people liable to prosecution.

Understandably this kind of talk has the potential to lead to a climate of fear among Internet media consumers, but if that leads to increased sales at authorized outlets rightsholders won’t be too disappointed. In fact, after lobbying hard for this tough copyright law amendment, that will be very much “mission accomplished.”

Not surprisingly though, even the toughest of sanctions aren’t going to stop the big recording labels coming back for more mechanisms to protect their interests. And that they have.

Several music rights groups including the Recording Industry Association of Japan say they have developed a system capable of automatically detecting unauthorized music uploads before they even hit the Internet. In order to do that though, Internet service providers are being asked to integrate the system into their networks.

The system works by spying on the connections of users and comparing data being uploaded to the Internet with digital fingerprints held in an external database. As can be seen from the diagram, the fingerprinting technology employed is from GraceNote, with intermediate systems provided by Copyright Data Clearinghouse (CDC).

Once a match is found, rightholders want ISPs to automatically block the allegedly infringing content. But according to one report, there may even be requests to send out warning letters to uploaders. If implemented this would amount to the most invasive “3 strikes” style regime anywhere in the world.

The system is being promoted as a benefit to ISPs, in the sense that once installed (and licensed at a cost of around $600 per month) they can potentially avoid being held liable for copyright infringements carried out by their customers. Whether not having it installed will save ISPs from privacy invasion lawsuits remains to be seen.

Rightsholders have tried to get service providers to install this kind of system before, most notably resulting in the legal battle between music rights group SABAM and Belgian ISP Scarlet. That case ended in 2011 with the European Court of Justice declaring that spying on Internet users would breach their privacy and violate the fundamental rights of both the ISP and its subscribers.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

In an operation starting Tuesday this week and ending Friday, police targeted 50 locations around Japan and ultimately arrested a total of 18 individuals.

The ACA, an organization made up of various trade groups including the Recording Industry Association of Japan, International Motion Picture Copyright Association and various other film, music and software entities, said the raids followed a similar but smaller operation in November last year. In that action, 11 people were arrested and according to ACA, all have been convicted.

As appears to be customary in these cases, the RIAJ – the Japanese equivalent of the RIAA – has taken the step of publishing a list of the ages, sex, locations, occupations and copyright works said to have been shared by the 18 individuals.

They range from a 25 year-old taxi driver from Tokyo sharing Cross Game, Dragon Ball Kai, Evangelion, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood and Gundam 00 Second Season, to a 58 year-old construction worker sharing IBM Homepage Builder 12 and input method editor ATOK 2010.

What is striking about the arrests is that none of the accused appear to be heavy uploaders – the ‘worst’ pair appear to have uploaded 6 games, 2 comics and 4 music tracks between them.

While downloading in Japan was previously permitted for personal use, both up and downloading of copyright works are now expressly illegal.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

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: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

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: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.