Japan introduces piracy penalties for illegal downloads | Hacker News Reader

Japan introduces piracy penalties for illegal downloads

bbc.com

85 pointsharisenbon30 comments

Just wait until someone gets arrested.

The technology will change once again to get around the legalese. Also of note, Japan has very strong anti-wiretapping laws[0] that prohibit carriers and other providers from port blocking, tapping or redirecting packets -- the only presumable legal way for these associations to check on downloaders would be to hold illegal content themselves and wait for a Japanese IP address to connect.

[0] http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E9%80%9A%E4%BF%A1%E3%81%AE%E7%...

Can they connect to a public torrent tracker and have them send a list of peers? That seems about as close to wiretapping as reading a public message board.

PS: That page is not in English, so I don't think it's vary useful for the average HN reader.

Does anyone know if the rightsholder honeypot method holds up in court? It seems that one could argue that the rightsholder implicitly authorized distribution by knowingly assisting in said distribution as a seed or peer, even if the intent was simply to harvest IP addresses.

IANAL and this is probably a stupid question, but it seems clever to me. ;)

Interesting how this will actually happen, given as all the popular Japanese p2p networks are encrypted - of recent their efforts have not been on downloaders but on uploaders since Perfect Dark is apparently leaking information on the latter.

This was discussed on tv in japan a few days ago and the agencies responsible for tracking people admitted their resouces were limited and they would focus only on people who multiply infrigments.

For now, I presume. The resources to do this sort of thing will only get cheaper as time moves on.

Dear nineties, please bring my Internet back, the Internet politicians didn't even care about.

It's simply a factor of how many people use a given medium.

As soon as a large fraction of the population uses it then legislators will start to care about it.

The only way to bring back the internet of the 90's is to start a new one. And once it is successful enough (which is only a matter of time) then legislators will once again become involved.

So what you really want is to kick off 90%+ of the internet population.

It shows how corrupt the Japanese government here is. Not only did they sign RIAA into law with little fan-fare.. they made it a criminal offense by default.

If you asked the RIAA exactly what they dream of, this is it.

How much different is this than the laws governed in US today?

If someone is downloading copyright protected movies / music, the MPAA / RIAA respectively will come down on them and subject them to fines.

Now, I don't know anyone that has actually been convicted of this, however, there are accounts.

Any first/second hand accounts?

Fines are for civil offenses. A crime can be punished by jail time.

There are no laws against downloading copyrighted protected movies/music that I know of in the United Sates. Indeed, I do so daily from dozens of sites, usually paying, sometimes not - I trust the publisher to verify whether they are authorized to sell/give me those files.

I could be wrong, but so far no one in the US has been charged with a crime for downloading. Fined, yes, but no criminal case.

The implementation certainly differs. The US at least keeps copyright infringement civil unless significant damage or financial gain has been made from the infringement. In Japan, the police already go after infringers, irregardless of the damage. They also put a lot of resources into breaking the encryption used in the various Japanese p2p networks.

Seems like a good time to switch to Usenet here then - not watertight but much less likely to get into trouble (at least I'm ready to try that theory). Anyone know a good Usenet provider for Japan based connections?

Haha, I find it funny that they're called the RIAJ, as though they are in collusion with the RIAA.

Well you would not download a nuclear plant ...

So.. Now the Japanese find willing VPN providers in Russia and/or China?

Nobody can trust their own government these days. Especially if said laws concern copyright laws.

It will be interesting to see what happens when/if things like this become more widespread.

How will the internet backbone cope if 90% of the traffic is being routed via China/Russia?

Not to get political, meta, or both, but it always intrigues me when people talk about "trust" in the context of third parties, most especially government. Government is made up of people, not unlike yourself, and those people are suceptible to the same personal pressures as anyone else. To imply that "government" should be trusted on its face also implies that the individuals that make up government should be similarly trusted. I don't think you'd agree with the later, so I don't understand why you're astonished that the former turns out to be untrue.

People, and the entities they comprise, earn trust by virtue of what they do. No more, no less.

You can have a system of governance where even though an individual cannot be trusted by themselves, it is more likely to trust the system given that a larger group of people have to make the decision together. (in fact most governments are setup like that, which is why the US government for example is more trustworthy than a dictatorship).

In the case of copyright law, the individuals voting might truly think they are doing the right thing for the economy, as not all politicians are corrupt (or so I'd like to think).

When you look at a bill like SOPA, there's no reasonable conclusion other than the majority is corrupt or the majority is willing to vote on something they do not understand. Both situations are fairly disturbing.

SOPA did not get passed, so it's reasonable to argue it's a sign that the system works.

The fact that a massive Internet backlash was required is a sign that the system is broken.

Yes, this is exactly how I feel. The law was horrible, but it had a majority. The only explanation is that the legislators are voting about something they don't understand or are flat-out corrupt.

The fact that SOPA wasn't passed after Wikipedia closed down in protest doesn't comfort me, because they'll still attempt to and be able to pass increasingly restrictive laws. The entire internet won't rally against every one.

Out of the Enlightenment period, there came about what scholars called enlightened absolutism; its meaning was often simplified into a short but accurate phrase: "Tout pour le peuple, rien par le peuple" (in French), or "Todo para el pueblo, pero sin el pueblo" (in Spanish).

I'm not aware of how much of it is taught in English, but the translation is roughly "Everything for the people, without the people's consent". The point of this phrase is that the governments/monarchies said they would act to protect their own people, apparently in good faith, but they only acted to protect themselves and the majority in power.

To directly address your point, those in government do not have "the same personal pressures as anyone else". Why? Because they are entrusted with representing an entire population.

No need, you can find great seedboxes in Europe that do everything you need. My personal favorite is FeralHosting[0].

0: https://www.feralhosting.com/pricing

Unfortunately they say little about who they are...

And so it begins...

whoa! why the 3 point down voting? I live here in Japan. Is it wrong to be depressed about this law too?

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