Prosecutors appeal not guilty ruling for Winny developer

Thursday 22nd October, 06:16 AM JST

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8 Comments

sakurasuki at 08:02 AM JST - 22nd October

Well done, next step make the Pirate Party like the one in Europe!
n3312 at 09:54 AM JST - 22nd October

If they really want to stop piracy, why stop there? They should also prosecute the manufacturers of DVD Writers, developers of DVD ripping software and writing software, oh and the hard disk manufacturers for letting them store the data, and the PC manufacturers too for making all this possible. On second thought, sue the higher power of your choice for creating humans for making all this happen!
terebiko at 11:20 AM JST - 22nd October

He should prevail in this trial too. Can't believe they are still dragging this through the mud, the guy wrote some software. He just wrote a convenient piece of software, he is NOT responsible for how users use it. I feel for this guy, and I think the only reason he is on trial is because some bigwig had sensitive material downloaded from their hard drive while they were using winny to download some enka. Oh yeah, when are they going to take the authors of bit torrent and all the other P2P programs, to trial?
bushlover at 11:22 AM JST - 22nd October

Negligent drivers are not to blame for causing accident. It's the makers of their cars that are to blame. That's the similie to describe what is happening here. Stupid way of thinking.
adm_kenshin at 03:32 PM JST - 22nd October

Sadly the EU is moving in this direction as well... at least the Japanese judges have some spine left.
smithinjapan at 04:17 PM JST - 22nd October

If Japan wants to stop piracy, they should start by going to ANY DVD/CD rental shop in Japan and forcing them to remove the blank disks from their sales (at the counter). I mean, c'mon... what do people think they are buying the blank disks for while renting CDs?

Production companies are hurting, as they should be. They don't deserve the profits they are making simply for charging an arm and a leg for the right to listen to something that should be free. Most artists make the big money from tours/concerts, which is how it should be. Movies are still going to make a lot of money, and if they dropped the prices of movies in theatre to a flat rate of ¥1000, and released them at the same time as in Western countries, there would be less piracy and more movie-going. And start selling the movies/TV shows on iTunes Japan!

Anyway, I predict that Winny will lose, but really no punishment... it'll be all about face-saving and putting pressure on users.
temporaryVisa at 08:05 PM JST - 22nd October

I'm glad the Japanese judges are resisting another high profile show trail. The rights of individuals shouldn't take second place to political agendas. They clearly want to make an example out of this guy. They'd be better off stimulating creativity in the new generation of engineers rather than trying to punish it.
bdiego at 04:19 AM JST - 23rd October

They need to throw all prosecutors in jail, for not stopping copyright infringment and going after the real criminals. Just goes to show they're more interested in publicity than upholding what the law actually says.