In a surprise decision, an Osaka court has found Isamu Kaneko, the creator of Japan’s hugely popular anonymous P2P file-sharing program Winny, innocent of all charges.
The 39-year-old computer scientist was initially accused of being an accomplice to the crimes of the users of his software, despite having no contact with them or any culpability other than being the developer of the software.
In 2006 he was found guilty of abetting copyright infringement and fined $15,000, with the prosecution seeking a year in prison.
However, he appealed the verdict, and the Osaka High Court finally reversed the previous decision and proclaimed him innocent. A presiding judge ruled that “merely being aware of the possible infringing uses does not constitute abetting the crimes.”
Although the logic of his prosecution would suggest that the likes of Microsoft should be held responsible for enabling criminal activity through the use of its Windows operating system, software which is found in the possession of most computer using criminals, most observers thought a guilty verdict a foregone conclusion.
Via Sankei.









Top 10 Most Followed Seiyuu
Wonder Festival 2012 Winter Wondrous As Ever
Ciel nosurge: “Your Date With Ion = $170″
Nisemonogatari – “Where Did All The Ero Go!?”
Police Hunt Ushijima for “Public Indecency”
Cops Bust Cop in Nude BDSM Club Raid
K-ON! “Causes Keionbu Girl Band Boom”
Vippers vs Vankers: 2ch Targets “Korean Propaganda”
Overflow Delays “Final” Game: “We Are Not Going Bankrupt!”
Ritsu Topless Manga Time – “She Has Boobs After All!”
Top 10 Most Boring Anime of Winter 2012
Behold: The ONACOUNTER
Future Diary Unveils Eye-Popping Scenes of Sex & Guro
K-ON! Pilgrims Invade London
Top 10 Essential Anime Elements
Lolicon Teacher Rapes Pupils 37 Times, Faces 30 Years
Strike Witches Movie Trailer Unveiled
China Menaced by Exploding Coins
TMA Makes “BL” Tiger & Bunny Cosplay AV
Hatsune Miku Takes Over New Chitose Airport
“Post The Highest Level Cosplay Ever!”
“Share The Cutest Cosplay Ever”
“Dolls vs Figures – Which is Best?”
“Why Do Girls Always Have Such Cute Rooms!?”
Ranka Lee Wedding Dress Cosplay by Tomia
Shoko-tan’s Madoka & Ika-chan Cosplay “Excessively Cute”
Guilty Crown Yuzuriha Inori Cosplay by Sasa
IdolMaster G4U: “Who Needs 3D Idols Now?”
Anegasaki Nene Cosplay by Rinami
“I Want To See What The Vipper Girls Wear To Bed!”
So Mr.47 got off huh? Does that mean a new version of winny is in the works?
He does look like an Asian Clark Kent!
did the 3 years of lawsuits instead of midnight snacking infront of the computer make him look so damn..good like that?
A tool is a tool. No matter how helpful and positive an invention is, some person will find a way to use it for harm. No matter how dangerous or harmful something is, someone will find a way to use it for good. It all depends on the user.
Children's cold medicine could relieve you of your cold. Or it could be used for murder or suicide. Too many of those pills and someone is gonna die.
Fire & gas (whether by themselves or together) = VERY dangerous, VERY harmful. You could burn or kill yourself, or someone else. But look how many helpful applications we have for them!
guns don't kill ppl. ppl kill ppl
NO! Pencils misspell words.
Spoons make Rossie O'Donnell/Roseanne Barr fat.
LOL
Daily Planet headlines:
"Clark Kent beats frivolous criminal charges. Luthor annoyed."
“merely being aware of the possible infringing uses does not constitute abetting the crimes.”
True, or else we're all guilty of abetting Mugabe's crimes.
I lol'd we should lock up inventors, all companies in the computer industry because they allow people to do it.
Logic failed is fail.
...wat
Winny creator is not amused
cute lulzz
Japanese Clark Kent, GO!
THAT is a handsome man. As another poster said (in a way, I'm far to lazy to scroll down a couple of posts to quote properly) he looks like he gets shit done.
This is like trying to jail the man that invented the gun, only becayse many people got killed by one...
Now if Sweden authorities were equally fair to TPB's four...
Osaka?!
*Thinks back to Azumanga Diaoh*
That dude gets shit done like a boss.
Oh my god! Look at the face of that guy behind him! X3
FOR GREAT JUSTICE!!!
Amazing. This is a nice message for freedom and liberty. I was hoping for this, and kind of knew it would end up like this, because as was mentioned in the article. All he did was make the app, and you can choose whether you'd want to share with everyone or not.
Microsoft SHOULD be held responsible for frustrating the public at large with inferior under-supported and otherwise malnourished operating systems.
P2P creator should have a bronze statue of himself riding a saber-toothed tiger and holding a broadsword erected in the middle of akiba.
+1 as in Triple Combo!
under-supported? Linux for lulz?
+1
he looks evil like the guy in GTO. You know the teacher who have a crush on Asuka.
wat
GTO, Great Teacher Onizuka.
Suguru Teshigawara
Amen.
What's this? A court that makes a fair and logical decision? Why can't we get these in the US?
Logic has a price in the US law system.
> A court that makes a fair and logical decision? Why can't we get these in the US?
> Why can't we get these in the US?
> US
You answered your own question.
unpossible.
Do much corporate interest and money depended judges to get such fairness in the US.
Could've sworn he was Chinese.
I'M ON TO YOU, MASTERINFAMOUS!
He could be from anywhere, but I swear he IS NOT Asian...
well now isn't that obvious...
haha
GOOD. P2P is never wrong.
^QFT, mate. QFT... ^_^
「間違っていたのはP2Pじゃない、世界のほうだっ!!」
- ル〇-シュ(18歳・男・エリア11)
Rough TL: What's wrong is not the P2P (system), but the world's law.
Correction there mate:
"It is neither good nor bad, but thinking makes it so."
W.Shakespeare
from: Hamlet Act 2
there never right or wrong, just thinking make it so
Agreed. +9000
You forgot the second part.
Rurushu(Lelouch) (18 Years Old. Area 11)
All he did was create a tool. He cannot be held responsable for how people use this tool.
Troof
All I did was invent the nuclear bomb, I cannot be held responsible for why millions are dead!
All I did was invent the corndog, I cannot be held responsible for the delicious choking deaths.
Remember dynamite? It's was made for mining, and look what the military use it for.
Remember the government, it was made to lead people and look what the politicians use it for.
Remember Sankaku, it was made to be a blog and look what Equality use it for.
Remember the military, it was made to protect citizens and look what the government use it for.
Remember Equality Now? It was made to combat sexism but look at what women use it for.
WIN anon 20:01
ccccccombo breaker!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The person at fault is the one who USES the tool. If someone used a hammer to smash a guy's head in you arrest the man that used the hammer, not the one that made it.
Yeah 17:31 Anon, we should put the scientists who worked on the Manhattan project in jail! Whichever ones are still alive anyway.
Hurrrrrrrrrrrr
Why? They were too dumb to build the bomb, it was stolen from the nazis.
Oppenheimer ftw.
Also truth.
Though your sarcastic attempt at phrasing this to sound like creating a tool is somehow the same act as using it gave me a nice laugh.
One person's human curiosity caused the invention of the bomb, but it takes another person's human curiosity to cause the use of the bomb.
It takes 2 to tango, as they say.
Also, the bomb is a tool that turns off human curiosity.
Seems like a fair, self-regulating system to me.
Semantics, but I generally agree.
The only exception would be if they were using the bomb in a desert or some such for research purposes.
Though one would hope we've learned basically all there really is to learn already, and there no longer is any legitimate reason to set one of those things off.
-
Anyway, if someone did attempt to nuke some place, I get the feeling that this Isamu Kaneko character (the guy this article is about) would dress in spandex and fly halfway across the globe in an instant, grab the bomb by hand and launch it off into space for us.
Seriously, that guy looks like he gets shit done.
"but it takes another person's human curiosity to cause the use of the bomb"
That is not human curiosity, that is malicious intent. Its invention could pass as curiosity but its use cannot be forgiven...
too bad had we not nuked Japan, they would have been invaded by both americans and the russians, millions of casualties one the allies side, and millions more casualties on the japanese side. Japan would have been split into a communist and non communist part ike germany, and anime and all these other japanese things you love today wouldnt be around
Just forget the "sides" and the "ifs", no mater who is the enemy, I (or most of the people) can't imagine myself giving the order to drop those bombs on all that people... what "would be" is by no means an excuse to this massacre.
You are comparing apples and oranges, using only the "tool" concept. On top of that, you are comparing an amoral computer programme with a weapon; one out of many, which suggests that the particular weapon was chosen more for shock effect than a logical comparison. Since sensationalism has now been revealed as the goal rather than a fair comparison, the arguement is false, illogical and specious.
BTW, if you refer to the nuclear weapons, your logic is doubly flawed:
-the weapon had only been used twice in the 65 years since its creation; how does this compare to blades, slug throwers, poison gas, etc.?
-whenever the weapon has been 'improved,' at least in modern times, it was either by detonating a real weapon underground or by using computer simulation. How often have the previous listed weapons 'improved' in computer simulation, rather than applying it to its intended victim?
-the weapon, in its two uses, resulted in the deaths of 120,000 humans (I will not go into future deaths due to ionization radiation). For only being used twice, that makes the weapon 'cleaner' that the incindiary bombings of Dresden, Coventry or Tokyo; whereas the death toll due to the above listed weapons has exceeded the millions in each category, with no sign of letting up.
And they say nuclear war would be (future indeterminate - could be - is better) unrestrained
a guy was bashed to death with a toaster, FUCK YOU TOASTER + GUY WHO CREATED TOASTERS!
In that case the responsable for the millions of dead is the jerk who pressed the launch button. Probably the president of USA.
All I did was rape a loli, I can't... oh shit!
All I did was to put in the word "paedophile" in the Oxford dictionary, I cannot be held responsible for why lolis are getting raeped
Anon :36 makes me lol.
Correct, because in this scenario it is "it couldn't be helped."
"it can't be help" is the only reason and an end you can ever use for that scenario. NEVER. forget. that.
EXACTLY AS PLANNED.
winrar
Banzai P2P share
Banzai!
What happened to his left arm?
Hes been busy useing his own tool.
I'm glad he didn't get charged with anything, but to be honest, he probably should have been. No matter how this article wants to describe it, he developed it for anonymous pirating of material and even released updates dealing with security issues instead of dealing with things like the massive amounts of viruses that plagued winny.
Do people reading this site even realize most all of the raws and source material are released on Share (winny's decendant) LONG before anything like torrent sites anyways?
that guy's either asian clark kent, or captain aizen...
Now that you mention it, he actually does look like some combination of the two.
HAHA so true upon a second viewing!!
It is not the gun but the person who is using the gun is the one responsible...
This is why Japan is awesome.
YAY! P2P FTW, next case.
Not bad looking for a 39 year old...
He is pretty cute.
:3
Now we can see new version of winny ? ^o^
Well, Winny has largely been superseded by Share and PD. Stuff is spread among all three though, and supposedly all three's encryptions have been cracked (PD encryption earlier this year).
Not really sure anyone cares though since everyone still uses each. lulz.
Someone found innocent by the Japanese courts!? THE WORLD HAS GONE MAD
Opening the door to new ways on being able to entertain yourself, and enabling people all over the world to view new types of entertainment.
for some reason he looks like clark from superman, maybe the curly hair and square jaw and also looked damn handsome? we have a hero! now all computer should have p2p come preinstalled like browsers.
Besides the rustled suit
he looks fucking boss
Need to setup a JP P2P again sometime. Want more Gintama hentai doujins. Too bad fukken fujoshi took over the market. A (JP)doujin database that could omit yaoi would be awesome. The ones I know of keep them included.