the Japanese legal system is as tough on swappping
films as the US, as far as tolerance goes. It seems the sentencing
phase goes a little bit lighter than the US. An individual using
the popular P2P program "Winny" was popped for the sharing of just two
films. We have seen already that the MPAA, at least in the US has a
zero tolerance level for file sharing, remember the Hulk? Unlike the
RIAA which has been targeting users that share at least 1,000 music
files.
Winny is a Japanese
peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing program, possibly the most popular one
of all over there right now. It gets it's name from
WinMX, where the M and the X are raised one letter in the alphabet, to
N and Y. Kind of like HAL the wayward computer from 2001 a Space
Odyssey, who's name was derived by shifting each letter down
from IBM. Oddly, Winny has a claim to fame for being able to hide a
users identity, but in this case it obviously didn't work. So we best
take that cloaking feature with a grain of salt
The
Kyoto District Court sentenced Yoshihiro Inoue, 42, for violating
copyright law for installing the program on his computer to let
internet surfers download "A Beautiful Mind" and "Unbreakable" last
year.
"This is a wicked crime which makes nothing
of the efforts of film makers," Judge Yasuhide Narazaki said. The
sentence was suspended for three years.
Whew,
that was a close one. But at any rate folks, just be aware that
trading these movie files is not too swift an activity. Maybe in some
countries, but not in the US and now even Japan.
If you would like to read more about Winny, which has a very interesting
history, please visit
the Wikipedia page here.
No comments:
Post a Comment