Jari Ketola
10 May 2004 11:31
Isamu Kaneko, an assistant researcher at Tokyo University, has been arrested by the Japanese police. Kaneko, the developer of the popular Winny P2P application, is accused of breaking Japanese copyright laws.
According to the police Winny helps and promotes copyright infringement and piracy. Winny, which provides its users with anonymity, became a focus of concern for Japanese authorities last month, when police and military documents were spread on the network.
Kaneko was arrested because Winny allowed people to download games and movies from the Internet in violation of the Japanese Copyright Law.
Kaneko is one of the first file sharing software developers in the world to be arrested. He has affirmed the allegations, and admitted that he expected the arrest, because Winny clashes with the copyright law.
It will be interesting to see whether or not Japanese law can shift the responsibility from the users of the software to the developer.
Source: Mainichi Interactive