Peer to peer software creator arrested

[Giaguara]

Police raid computer whiz's office

Police on Tuesday raided the office of an elite computer engineer who was arrested a day earlier on copyright-related charges for developing and offering software that allows people to swap movies and video games.

Detectives searched the office of Isamu Kaneko, a 33-year-old research assistant at the prestigious University of Tokyo, and left with two boxes of documents and other evidence, a university spokesman said on condition of anonymity.

Kyoto Prefectural Police, who arrested Kaneko on Monday, refused to comment.

Kaneko's case has made headlines here as the first arrest in Japan of a suspected developer of file-sharing software. It has also sparked debate over protecting intellectual property rights amid widespread Internet piracy around the world.

Winny, the software Kaneko developed in 2002, has become a headache for movie and software makers here, and the industry has been lobbying police to rein in suspected copyright infringements for months.

The rise of free file-sharing networks on the Internet over the past several years has made it easy for millions of individuals to distribute music, movies and software worldwide. The recording industry last year began a wave of lawsuits against file-sharers in the United States.

Kaneko, who taught software development, was an outspoken advocate of Internet file-sharing. His software was popular, partly because of its claim that it protected users' anonymity, attracting as many as a million users here, according to media reports.

Winny was even being used by police officers. That came to light earlier this year when police files at some departments, such as wanted lists and crime reports, were leaked to the Internet after some officers' computers were affected by a virus called Antinny that only targeted machines on which Winny was installed.

In March, a warning was issued to police departments across the nation for officers not to link any personal computers used on the job to the Internet, according to police.

Creating software is a crime when the uses of the software can be wrong?

Maybe for the same reasoning they should arrest the people who have programmed spam email address harversters, who send spam, who have made progrmas with unwanted attached programs with them - anything on Windows world from RealPlayer to all p2p attached programs...

Police officers using that seems hilarious. Made me remember the so many times I have been walking downtown in my old home city, seeing the African selling handbags and pirated software and pop CDs on the streets - police not stopping them but rather wanting to get a discount as they are in uniform. I always wondered what would happen if I took a photograph and passed it further on the police scale, not to the local police but to the state police headquarters. As when one is in uniform, he should behave like the uniform requires, whereas on his free time .. up to them.

 

[Easter]

It would be right to arrest the gun-maker instead whom shoot wth the gun.

Maybe the news could be incomplete, more facts...

see ya_